Imagine that you selected a spot to plant a garden. You worked the soil, planted the seeds, and waited for them to sprout. Meanwhile, you started noticing a spot just across the road, which also looked like a good spot — maybe even a better spot. So you pulled up your vegetables and went across…
An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Metaphor We’re the fish, and our language is the water. How would a fish know if they were wet if they’d never been out of the water? Jumping out of the water helps you to notice the water.
An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Metaphor Your feelings about this person/situation is like having a fish on a hook. As long as the person/situation is there in front of you, you can see that he/she/it is wriggling and in pain. But the only way to make sure that he/she/it stays on that fishhook is to…
An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Metaphor It is as if you needed a place to sit, and so you began describing a chair. Letʼs say you gave a really detailed description of a chair. Itʼs a grey chair, and it has a metal frame, and itʼs covered in a fabric, and itʼs a very sturdy…
An acceptance and commitment metaphor. You know that horrible feedback screech that a public address system sometimes makes? It happens when a microphone is positioned too close to a speaker. Then when a person on stage makes the least little noise, it goes into the microphone; the sound comes out the speakers amplified and than…
Think of yourself as an expanding balloon. At the edge of the balloon is a zone of growth, where the same question keeps being asked: “Are you big enough to have this?” No matter how big you get, thereʼs always more “big” to get, and the same question keeps being asked. When an issue presents itself,…
An Acceptance and Commitment Metaphor Many of our goals involve getting rid of something or stopping something. We might call these “dead man goals” because a dead man could achieve them perfectly well. What would it be like to have goals that required us to be alive?
An Acceptance and Commitment Metaphor Imagine a chessboard that goes out infinitely in all directions. Itʼs covered with black pieces and white pieces. They work together in teams, as in chess — the white pieces fight against the black pieces. You can think of your thoughts and feelings and beliefs as these pieces; they sort…
An Acceptance and Commitment Metaphor Imagine that you are a soap bubble. Have you ever seen how a big soap bubble can touch smaller ones and the little ones are simple absorbed into the bigger one? Well, imagine that you are a soap bubble like that and you are moving a long a path you have chosen….
An Acceptance and Commitment Metaphor Suppose we had this box here. This (put various items in; some nice, some repulsive) is the content of your life. All your programming. Thereʼs some useful stuff in here. But there are also some old cigarette butts and trash. Now letʼs say there are some things in here that are really ugly….