Using metaphors to help remember your strategy

Acceptance and commitment theory teaches us that the trick is to strive for psychological flexibility. The three components of psychological flexibility are:

● Show up to the present moment.

● Let go of unhelpful thoughts and feelings.

● Do things that you value.

If we, regularly committing to things that we value, are able to do those things with present moment awareness, and allow any thoughts or feelings that are uncomfortable as we engage in our valued action, then we might not feel happy every moment, but we’ll have all kinds of different thoughts and feelings. Within our varied thoughts and feelings, there will be more likelihood of moments where we feel happy.

The paradox is if you strive to feel something all the time, it’s going to feel more and more elusive. But if you commit to things that you care about and live with the possibility that your thoughts and feelings change, then, over time, you’re likely to feel as though your life is rich, full, and meaningful.

As we’re striving to accept and embrace uncomfortable emotional experiences, we want to use metaphors to facilitate our personal internalization of relevant ideas, frameworks, and concepts. While the concept of going towards our internal experiences is theoretically simple, it isn’t easy to do and there are numerous nuances to it that can make it hard to remember.

Metaphors fall into two major categories: identifying symptoms through personification and metaphors to help you remember effective processes.

One category includes personifying the different internal experiences. Personification of our internal experiences helps us to notice the different voices, in real time, and decide how to respond to each particular personified voice.

Examples of personification of our different internal voices include Worried Voice, False Comfort, and Wise Mind. Once personified, we can notice the voices as they happen, label them, and respond to them more effectively. For instance, we know to challenge Worried Voice, particularly when it’s urgent and spiraling. We also want to intentionally access our Wise Mind to help us defuse from the back and forth between worried voice and false comfort. You could also have the voice of Depression, the voice of OCD, the voice of Mania and the Self-Critical voice. All these examples can help you personify your experience and help you remember that just because a certain thinking pattern arrives in your mind doesn’t mean you have to follow it.

The other category for metaphors includes processes. If certain processes get you stuck, you can use a metaphor to help you remember what to do differently.

For instance, inflated responsibility is a process that many people get stuck in. Inflated responsibility occurs when patients take as much responsibility for a thought as they would for an action (e.g., thinking about hurting someone is equally as terrible as actually hurting someone). The other form of inflated responsibility is taking responsibility for something that we don’t have control over, like how other people think or feel.

One example of a metaphor that could help you remember what inflated responsibility is:

My OCD has a Rolodex of bad memories. Whenever I feel guilt, it starts thumbing through that Rolodex.

You could use this as a reminder that having the feeling of guilt is making the thoughts seem true or seem like you’ve done something wrong. Rather than engaging it, you could think, “I’m going to throw away that Rolodex.”

The next metaphor is for intolerance of uncertainty. The metaphor is:

My OCD is like a congresswoman filibustering any decision I try to make.

When you notice the filibuster, you can think, Quit the filibuster, Mind. I should make a decision and live in it.

Here’s a third metaphor:

My worry is like a faucet. I’m trying to contain it before it spills over.

This metaphor could cue you to use scheduled worry time to contain your worrying.