The transcript of a talk below, or video (I’ll add a link soon) if you would prefer to hear me explain this to you, is perfect for beginners to metaphor research, or for therapists (and specifically person-centred therapists) who would like to learn more about metaphor use in therapy.
Thank you for joining me today, it is a pleasure to be in your company. I’m going to discuss one specific aspect of linguistics research into therapy and counselling. Remember, when I talk about therapy and counselling, I am specifically talking about person-centred therapy — but the comments I make could be relevant in other settings too, for example those which use person-centred approaches.
I want to start by talking about some important metaphor work by Lakoff and Johnson. If you are interested in metaphors, you will likely have already heard of them. Lakoff and Johnson studied metaphor use broadly, what I mean by that is not just in therapy. Their fascinating book talks about metaphors in depth, is an interesting and accessible read so perfect for anybody wishing to find out more about metaphors generally. I used their work largely as the basis of my research about metaphors. They define metaphors as relating one concept to another to aid understanding of the matter being discussed — keep this in mind as we will use it as the basis for what we are going to talk about today.
Lakoff and Johnson define several types of metaphors — those I’m about to discuss only refer to a few of these but are the more relevant ones if you are interested in therapy. It is important to emphasise that metaphors, however, are everywhere! If you’re anything like me, once you start to notice them, you can’t stop!
The content of metaphors themselves are ‘socially defined,’ — what I mean by that is, metaphors relate to shared understandings that come from the culture a person surrounds themselves in. So the ability to understand a metaphor depends on you sharing similar cultural understandings to the person who is using it. That is of course varied — for example, would you say you have a ‘Western’ culture or a more local culture — like I know there is some language that is used mostly by people from the county I am from in the UK so I may understand metaphors relevant to this — but I might also understand metaphors used by somebody in the relatively similar culture like I’m British so may understand metaphors by those who speak English in the United States of America. This is a much broader, and very interesting topic, that I won’t go into in too much detail here — but it is worth keeping in mind, especially as it shows how important it is to consider yourself in relation to language use, and that is true in more general terms too.
Moving on now to the content of the metaphors themselves — and some of what Lakoff and Johnson said. The first type of metaphor I want you to consider is called an ‘orientational’ metaphor. Put simply, we are talking here about metaphors which refer to directions like ‘up’ and ‘down.’ I’m sure you can think of several ways you may use these yourself as they are very commonplace.
For example, you might say, “I feel peaky today!” if you are feeling in a good mood.
Or you might say, “I feel really down — really low — today,” if you are not feeling in a good mood. We use these so commonly but often don’t stop and question why we use this language.
Lakoff and Johnson think such language use is ‘embodied’ — if you’ve had an experience of walking tall and proud when you feel good, and slumping or slouching when you don’t feel so good, you’ll understand why these ideas relate to orientational language like ‘up’ and ‘down.’
Another type of metaphor Lakoff and Johnson describe, which is really relevant in the therapy setting — as we’ll discuss later — is about life being ‘like a journey.’ You have probably heard this in language like, “I finally feel I’ve reached my destination in life,” or, when people say, sometimes quite trite things like, “it’s the journey, not the destination that counts,” to talk about life in a general way.
So those are two (or many) types of metaphors that Lakoff and Johnson mention which seem relevant to therapy. But what have researchers said about metaphor use in person-centred therapy specifically? This is one of the better explored linguistic research areas about person-centred therapy but — even so — it has not been extensively studied. There is more research about metaphors in therapy which speaks about therapy in more general terms though, beyond person-centred therapy.
The first finding I want to talk about relates to how metaphors should be used — most researchers think that they should be introduced by clients and suggest that the same metaphor could be used in responses by the therapist. The reason for this relates to what we were talking about earlier — remember how metaphors relate to culture, and that culture can be described in different ways — so the introduction of a metaphor shows that the person is happy using it and feels it best represents how they feel, even if only in that moment. In therapeutic practice this has been thought of in terms of empathy — so the metaphor use can be used by the therapist to empathise by giving information about how the client is feeling which the therapist can use to respond to in an empathic way. For that reason other researchers say that metaphors are like poetry, as they give explanations, usually of feelings, that can be difficult to put into words. This may mean their use is particularly helpful for people who have experienced particularly complex types of trauma.
Another way metaphor use has been considered in therapy is in terms of a progress check — so therapists could listen carefully to the metaphor the client is using to help them understand how the client has progressed. For example, a client who says they feel ‘down’ may later alter this to feeling ‘on top of the world,’ so suggesting they have progressed in their therapy. This might not be a method that all person-centred therapists feel comfortable with, especially as seminar research talks about how such feelings can fluctuate. But it is worth keeping in mind about another potential use of metaphors in therapy.
A third way metaphor researchers have considered their use in therapy is by talking about specific disorders. Again, this may not be a preferred strategy by person-centred therapists because they may be against diagnoses like naming disorders as they feel this would mean the therapist assumes power over the client, which they hope to avoid. But, for interest, some metaphor researchers believe that clients who are suffering depression use metaphors like ‘falling’ and change these to ‘rising’ as they progress. Their suggestion, perhaps not surprisingly, is that these can be tracked to monitor how effectively therapy is working — which may be an idea not favoured by all.
I’m going to move on now to consider metaphor use in person-centred therapy specifically. I’m also going to talk about what I observed in my PhD research. I’ll use quotations on the screen but these are what is known as ‘approximations,’ so they are based on real therapeutic interactions between therapists and clients in person-centred therapy — but, to save anonymity, they are similar to the quotations I have used, rather than being the actual words that were spoken. It is worth mentioning at this point that I was particularly interested in metaphors for empathy and metaphors for empowerment. In fact, they often related — but keep this in mind as I explain what I found.
My first finding was that therapists and clients use the ‘life is like a journey’ metaphor we discussed earlier extensively. However, these metaphors were specifically used in terms of emotional journeys. For example, a client might say something about how they are feeling frustrated by saying, “It’s like I’m just treading water,” or, “I’m just floating along.”
And, interestingly, such metaphors were nearly always used in relation to feelings of control. So a client would say something like, “I’m trying to drive but the path is flooded,” to express that their emotional journey (the drive) had been halted by external forces, meaning they lacked some measure of control over their ‘journey.’ Vehicle metaphors were often used in this respect — so, being stopped from driving or being driven and not wanting to be driven, and the road being bad, or being given the wrong directions — and so on. These metaphors are quite interesting as they can be related to blame — the therapist can listen carefully to these metaphors to hear who the client is blaming — is it themselves (rightly or wrongly?) or is it someone else (rightly or wrongly?)
Another type of metaphor that was frequently used in the transcripts I analysed related feelings and emotions to senses and bodily feelings. These were useful in therapy because they could (usually) be readily understood by the therapist — so a client might say they were not able to grasp or touch their feelings — their feelings were ‘weighty’ and could not be made ‘solid,’ which is a feeling, possibly, more easily understood by a therapist who has experienced the same thing themselves (whereas saying, for example, ‘my sadness is heavy,’ may be less immediately clear).
Metaphors about weight in terms of emotions were very often used — but so too were metaphors about light, like ‘there’s no light coming through,’ for example for somebody trying to understand their feelings.
Metaphors which were frequently used also included metaphors about protection — but they related to their emotions and feelings in this context. For example, quite commonly used phrases like, “putting up walls,” or “barriers are up,” which also sometimes worked to show who was to blame for these feelings — like if a client wasn’t letting someone in, whether this was a positive or a negative thing to do.
Clients also frequently used metaphors to indicate their feelings of being restricted, like “it feels like I’m buried six feet underground,” or “I’m caught in a trap,” which again could be used to show they could not progress, and sometimes to blame other people, or themselves, for this.
Anybody familiar with, or just interested in, therapy will know that a common client complaint is how they feel emotionally disconnected. Clients used metaphors to demonstrate this by comparing themselves to machines — so they are trying to solve a ‘calculus problem’ or ‘flicking an internal switch.’ Such a metaphor being used by the client could show that they may not be engaging in therapy too so should be carefully listened to and considered by therapists.
And a final metaphor we discussed way back at the start which Lakoff and Johnson highlights was the orientational one. My findings were that clients only used these in terms of feeling ‘down,’ and not up — which suggests they might not be altogether useful for measuring progress — although further investigation may help to show whether this is the case.
Thank you for joining me today and I hope this has helped illuminate (see, metaphors are everywhere!) a little bit about how metaphors are used in therapy for you.
