“Much of the time, I feel like life is squeezing the emotional breath out of me,” Katie explained. “My doctor says I’m depressed, but it feels more like I’m suffocating; mentally I mean.”
By comparison, Ed’s account of his conundrum was substantially different than Katie’s, yet equally descriptive. “I feel like I want to crawl out of my skin,” he reported. “A counselor I saw said it’s anxiety, but that doesn’t really capture it for me. It’s like my insides can’t settle down.”
Jane also had a metaphorical narrative for her discomfort. “I feel heavy and slow, you know, like some blob that’s sitting there and getting nowhere. A psychiatrist diagnosed me as suffering burnout, but it feels more like my mind is stuck in the mud,” she explained.
Physical Terms
Of course, when clients use physical terms (suffocating, skin crawling, heavy and slow, etc.), I always insist they get checked out medically. The use of strong and persistent physiological descriptions for emotional states should alert therapists to rule out medical issues before pursuing mental health treatment. With these three folks, no physical problems were found.
Until people get branded with more formal diagnostic labels (depression, anxiety, OCD, etc.), they often explain what ails them in their own words and metaphors, and they usually do so in terms rich with imagery and figurative meaning. Katie was suffocating, as she put it, using an impactful term that most of us can relate to in a visceral way. So what?
Often, colorful personal descriptions, rather than terse professional ones, hold vital clues to the source of an individual’s angst, as well as how to address it. Unfortunately, too many people in my profession and, increasingly, the public, are quick to brush aside home-grown explanations in favor of the pithy, abstract lexicon of psychology. As I’ve often said when speaking to groups, “My profession tells you things you already know in words you can’t understand.” Hyperbole for sure, but when it comes to describing a person’s distress, too often, uncomfortably close to the truth.
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Anxiety Disorder?
I mean, if some mental health type declared that Ed (above) was suffering from an “anxiety disorder,” would that be more instructive and useful than him stating he felt like crawling out of his skin? Take a moment to visualize “anxiety disorder,” and then try imagining “crawl out of my skin,” and you’ll understand which descriptor provides a more informative picture of what was happening in this man’s internal experience.
Personal descriptions of emotional distress, particularly those that emerge intuitively through mental images, metaphors and visceral experiences, provide guidance as well as insight. When Katie said she felt as if she was “suffocating” (figuratively), her metaphor pointed to several potential approaches to healing.
For example, she began studying pranayama, breathing exercises taught in Yoga, and we conducted many of our counseling sessions outside in the open air. Both these techniques directly addressed her metaphor — “suffocating.” When these simple efforts afforded her significant relief, and quickly, Katie wondered why.
“I can’t give you a rational explanation,” I told her. “But by heeding the intuitive wisdom inside of you that spontaneously generated the suffocation metaphor, we tapped into a form of healing uniquely connected with your experience.”
Using his own intuitive description as a clue to how he might heal, Ed pursued therapeutic massage to soothe his agitated skin, and meditation and nature immersion to calm his crawling insides. Stuck-in-the-mud Jane took a class in interpretive dance to gain greater expression and flexibility, combining this with Tai Chi to enhance her sense of lightness and flow.
While many in my profession and pop psychology in general are smitten with labels and categories, sometimes metaphors are far more useful than literal nomenclature. Rather than imposing our terminology on the internal experiences of our clients, we do better when listening closely to their figurative descriptions, and then utilizing these rich metaphors in crafting a path toward healing.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
