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The Power of Mental Pictures

• nikatwork 12y ago
  The section on using metaphor to visualize and control anxiety was of particular interest: > If a patient describes his anxious thoughts as a monkey on his back, McGuinty will ask, "What does it look like, is it your friend, does it have a name? Could we train it? ... Could it become a pet in some ways? Are there any good things about it?" This kind of approach, says Lynne Angus, a psychologist at York University who has studied the use of metaphor in clinical psychology, can be really effective: "Instead of having something attacking you, you then start to befriend it. It starts giving you agency over the experience."
  • goldfeld 12y ago
    Doesn't it brush dangerously with schizophrenia, though? Given that anxiety and stress are common factors leading a person under risk into losing sanity, I feel that something like this could backfire and drag someone over the edge. But then I'm no psychologist.