An Acceptance and Commitment Metaphor We try to stop thoughts, but thatʼs impossible. Itʼs like trying to constantly hold an enormous inflatable beach ball under the water, but it keeps popping up in front of our faces. We can allow the ball to float around us, just letting it be. So rather than stop the thoughts, we can…
An Acceptance and Commitment Metaphor There are things in our language that draw us into needless psychological battles, and it is good to get a sense of how this happens so that we can learn to avoid them. One of the worst tricks language plays on us is in the area of evaluations. For language to work at…
An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Metaphor Do you care how many people wear argyle socks? Well, what I want you to do isreally, really develop a strong belief that college boys have to wear argyle socks. Reallyfeel it in your gut. Really get behind it (I canʼt!) Well, really try. Feel overwhelmingly strongly about this. Is…
When you are playing cards with your mind, how do the trumps work? Does ‘Rational’ or ‘Makes Sense’ always trump ‘Feelings’ or ‘Thoughts’?
Imagine that you are in the process of climbing up a big mountain that has lots of dangerous places on it. And imagine that my job is to watch out for you and shout out directions if I can see places you might slip or hurt yourself. But I’m not able to do this because…
Imagine you are going on a journey. Somewhere really special, where you really want to go, somewhere you’ve wanted to go your whole life. When you get to the train station you see two trains. One is a bit odd-looking and strange, some of the seats look a bit hard and overall it looks a…
Picture your life as a movie. The first episodes have already been shot. Now the production is moving on. Imagine that you are the director and you can direct an actor that plays your part. But you’re a special kind of director with limited power. You can’t go to the screenplay writer and ask him to change the…
When caught in a rip current, swimmers often intuitively swim towards the shore, unwittingly swimming directly against the rip. This is the main reason rips are so dangerous, because the strong current keeps pulling the swimmer back into the ocean, so even the strongest swimmer makes little progress, risking exhaustion and drowning. Experts advise us…
The Cold Shower Based on a metaphor submitted to ACBS by Sarah McCormack You are thinking of taking a shower but you discover there is no hot water: If you had the choice to have a cold shower…or not to, you might choose not to. Because it’s cold, it’d be uncomfortable, you could do without…
Sandstorms are violent wind storms that occur in the desert when high winds lift particles of sand into the air thus unleashing a turbulent and suffocating cloud of sand. They can occur unexpectedly and last for as little as a few minutes or as long as a few months. Regardless of how long they last,…