Let me tell you a story...

If you watched the first Leader’s Debate, between the three British main party leaders, a couple of weeks ago, you may have noticed how often they used lines like: “I was in my constituency last week, talking to a group of ......, and one of them told me about....” This story-telling technique is known in therapeutic circles as metaphor.

Therapeutic metaphor is a form of suggestion through the use of stories or anecdotes. These can be examples from life, real or imaginary former clients, literature, folk tales or mythology. Classical mythology is full of tales which can be used as metaphors. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice, for example, is about dealing with grief and the futility of trying to hold on to the past.

Founder of modern hypnotherapy Milton Erickson was well known for his use of “teaching tales”. These were stories about his own life and previous clients – possibly real, possibly fictional – in which his clients could find their own meanings. I often use life experiences as metaphors for my clients. I may tell smokers, for example, that my father was forced to give up smoking after his heart attack – but it was the lung cancer that finally killed him.

Advanced therapeutic metaphors have a “nested loop” structure. See if you can spot it in this one, which I wrote for a client with the (very common) fear of public speaking.

“I heard someone on the radio recently talking about a famous actor – I forget his name – who is physically sick before every performance. He regards it as both normal and essential – he feels he has to be nervous to give a good performance. You know, I used to do quite a lot of acting at school, and eventually my father also encouraged me to go along to the debating society, and always to stand up and say something, even if it was only ‘Mr Chairman, Gentlemen’. I discovered that however nervous I was before I stood up, the nerves always vanished as soon as I started to speak. I eventually became Vice Chairman, and found that I was better as Chairman than as a speaker. So I suppose it was natural that when I became a Freemason I would go quickly up through the offices in the lodge – which are really just acting – and become Master, which is a mixture of role-playing and chairmanship. And years later, having been Master in the Craft three times, and now Master in the Royal Arch, I still get nervous before I go into the lodge room, but those nerves still vanish once I start to speak.

“And it’s a great pity that my father, who never became a Freemason, isn’t around now to see what his encouragement and advice led to. And although I’m not physically sick, like that great actor, before I speak in public, I still have that twinge of nervousness which all speakers learn to value and harness to their benefit.”

Although metaphors were very noticeable in the first Leaders’ Debate, I don’t remember any in the second – I wonder why?