Sage psychotherapy tries to give you alot of metaphors to combat anxiety. They sometimes work.
Metaphors they've used so far - cognitive defusions are like a chess game (I can add the one from Buddhist ananda group, thoughts are the waves and weather while you are submerged), 'sitting with' anxiety and that also being used literally in metaphor if that makes sense, not using a shield against anxiety while your thoughts are hitting you but instead using acceptance, juggling and witholding, let thoughts pass like leaves down a river. They really like to use metaphors, which maybe is part of the overall touchy/feeliness of the program. They want their metaphors to resonate.
Basically I have a maybe negative obsession against using metaphors that I developed in high school. So I have to think about this and decide whether or not the metaphors provided are useful to me. I did appreciate the 'anxiety is life getting narrower' pseudo-metaphor, and did appreciate that 'sitting with anxiety' was literally sitting with the thoughts.
I could've just told Julie that ' I didn't engage in her metaphor', like I was thinking. I'm maintaining aloofness from my thoughts. The pieces of paper really were just pieces paper, they had no relation to my thoughts. Aside from the fact that they were 'being thrown at me'; so the manner of the thinking process was truthful. Julie kept saying - there you go, removing them from your side. I hadn't even realized I was doing that. Then when she said, 'try leaving them there - just sitting with them', that did make sense to me. It wasn't a fight because they were just pieces of paper and I hadn't established any negative value to them. But it was interesting that I kept pushing them aside and it eventually ended with simply 'sitting with' them. So I did appreciate the metaphor then, but I found it irritating that she changed - she threw the papers nicer and slow than she had been doing when I had the shield.
I did appreciate that Julie got me giggling and laughing during the throwing part.
I did appreciate that Julie maintained 'coping strategies that haven't worked in the past and that maybe you are done with.'
I was witholding with Janet too that I was frustrated and that I have obsessions, not compulsions, and didn't say it in individual. But we never got around to talking about how I used to believe I 'can't drive because nowhere to go', or that I feel bad about the gas when I could be biking, or that I'm in alot of conflict about navigating, rules of traffic, glare, that I can't concentrate through mind wander, timing - being late, and there were just so many worries.
So, back to metaphors. When are metaphors appropriate? Clearly the 'sitting with' anxiety metaphor worked well for me in that instance with the shield, and the shield worked well as a metaphor too- things you do to protect yourself from your thoughts. These worked because they were metaphors that were hands on. I got to actually see the shield, and try-while-doomed to protect myself from my thoughts. Even 'let go of your shield' could be a metaphor. Literally, put it down,
By the way, this program would be such bullshit if I hadn't done CBT before and have some degree of self love and the knowledge that I'm not only my anxiety. Because they harp on it so much.
The only way they win is
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