Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Somatic EMDR Trauma Therapy
Integrative Trauma Therapy on the Norfolk/Suffolk border
If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there… Lewis Carroll
Traditionally, metaphor has been thought of as a poetic way of speaking, a way to make language more colourful and interesting. Well of course it is that, but it’s also much more. Far from being just a fancy way of speaking, some researchers of the human mind go so far as to say that metaphor plays a major part in defining our very sense of reality.
Continue reading “What’s your Metaphor?”
I’ve been thinking about options this week and trying to reach a decision. Then I heard this little story …
The little bird had been in the cage for a very long time. It would sit on it’s perch and look through the window to the great outside world beyond.
It would gaze in awe at the birds flying free outside and wonder how it felt to spread your wings and soar. Sometimes another bird would rest on the sill outside and their eyes would meet. Then the outside bird would fly away and the little caged bird would feel more trapped than ever. But early one morning an opportunity came – the cage door was left ajar and the little bird could see that the window was open too.
His little heart pounded – this was his chance. He thought about how wonderful it would be to fly freely and as high as he wanted to go. He thought about resting on a branch and singing to his hearts content. He wondered what the earth would look like from high above and what it would feel like to soar. He thought about all these things for a very long time and his excitement grew. He thought about these things until the sun set and the moon came up. He could see her outside the window. Oh how she beckoned him. And just as he thought about answering her call the cage door was closed again. The owner had returned.
We all know that stories are entertaining.
If a story interests us enough we’re hooked.
I’m guessing we can all remember that lovely feeling we had as a child whenever we found ourselves transported to another world – the world of story.
And as adults it’s the same thing. If we love to read it’s a wonderful thing to get lost in our imagination and forget the world around us for a while. And movies too take us on a journey into another reality, another life, another point of view.
But stories are so much more than that too. They hold immense power. They can change reality and they can win wars. Juries base their decisions on them, corporations increase their profit through them and we live our lives by them.
Working with Dragons
Close your eyes for a second and think of the word dragon.
What kind of image do you conjure up in your minds eye? What kind of feeling do you get? Do you think of a huge and terrifying creature? Is it evil and destructive?
Or maybe your dragon is magical, magnificent and benign.
But whatever kind of dragon springs to mind, the chances are on some level you’re being influenced by every image you’ve ever seen and every experience you’ve had relating to that one word dragon.
Because for most of us, dragons are a part of our psyche …
The following is an extract from a book I am writing about the journey of the Fool through the Major Arcana in the Tarot.
The chapter it comes from is called ‘of Stories and Symbols’ …………
It’s quite a natu
ral thing to be fearful of death. It’s nature’s way of keeping us alive of course and having a strong survival instinct means our genes get passed down and evolution can carry on doing what it does best.
After all, the survival of the fittest process would soon go to pot if we didn’t have a basic primal urge to stay alive.
But what about when the fear of death becomes pervasive and stops us enjoying our life?
I’ve heard it said (and I can’t remember where or by whom) that we can never be truly alive until we come to terms with the inevitable reality of our own death.
So is it ever a good thing to put the thought of death to the back of your mind and concentrate on the day to day matter of life instead?
Metaphor isn’t just a poetic way to make language more interesting. It’s also a vital mechanism for abstract thought and an efficient method for communicating abstract concepts.
It’s also claimed that it plays a major part in the way we understand ourselves and the world we live in.
But why do we think metaphorically? What’s the point of abstract thought?
What happened to create this symbolic way of thinking, and what purpose does it serve in evolutionary terms?
We’re not the only creatures who think, reason and understand. In many ways we use our brains in the same way as other species do. We still have the reptilian and earlier mammalian parts of our brain that function on an unconscious level and govern a large part of our existence and survival.
But at some point the human brain evolved further; it began to think of one thing in terms of another i.e. symbolically – and so developed the ability to think in terms of the abstract. Continue reading “Is metaphor who we are?”