16 8. Use of symbols and metaphors
PART I: POINTS OF DEPARTURE
8. Use of symbols and metaphors
Aim. To understand how and why the training uses metaphors.
Therapeutic metaphors are stories or images that convey something that can amaze, inspire or open the mind. Metaphors can be simple and effective tools for teaching and learning. They are more than a way to talk about an experience. They can describe our experience; and they can be lenses through which we can understand and make sense of the world. They can help us to shift between insights and experience. A metaphor is a charged meaning, a mental map that can show us how things are or how they can be understood, and help us to see what we have not yet seen.
In therapy, it can be helpful at several levels to handle a problem metaphorically. Because a metaphor is distant from the experience that preoccupies the survivor, she can relax her conscious mind. By using a metaphor in therapy we externalise something; we draw an outline of what we are discussing and look at it together from a distance. We can examine it, grapple with it, and make the ideas it contains more visible and understandable, with less danger and at a distance.
It should be clear, at the same time, that metaphors are a powerful tool that can trigger strong emotional responses. A helper must therefore know how to assess whether a survivor is ready to use this tool, and must be able to handle a strong emotional response and possible retraumatisation. It should be clear that this method is not to be used in single sessions and that the helper must be available for further individual contact with a survivor if and when she wishes.
Metaphors provide a useful tool that helpers can use with survivors. Using metaphor, both you and the survivor can assess where she is, what she wants from the training, and the distance she can travel in her therapeutic journey. As she picks up insights from metaphor, she can begin to understand its transformative power. If she can learn how to use metaphor herself, the training will continue to be useful to her long afterwards. The techniques of guided imagery work and storytelling have been shown to be effective, especially with trauma survivors, who find it difficult to work directly on their experience because it triggers memories of the trauma and induces anxiety. Stories and metaphors can enable a survivor to reflect on her experience without re-living it. She can take sufficient distance and perspective to consider her situation from a position of relative safety.
In this training, we use a single metaphorical narrative to describe the experience and consequences of GBV. We explain the course that trauma takes in generic terms through the story of the Butterfly Woman; it remains a story but at the same time it is clinically accurate.
Another metaphor might be: think of a tree with lovely green leaves, and roots that grow deep in the ground; then a storm and lightning break its branches. Or: think of a pigeon, which is stronger than a butterfly. Or: think of a house, which is solid and well built; then war comes and bombs destroy parts of it. You can use your imagination to find metaphors that resonate with your survivors.
It must be remembered, of course, that metaphors lend themselves to multiple interpretations. Make sure you and the people with whom you are working have the same understanding. There are no right or wrong interpretations, but be aware that metaphors are rich and ambiguous. Make sure they play a helpful and therapeutic role in the context you are in.