Analogies in PBBT – A Love Story
Blog post written by Sanna Heijnis, Psychologist, Private Practice, Bilzen, Belgium.
I was an avid reader from a very young age – I devoured books from the moment I was old enough to hold them up. I loved stories. There was pure magic in the way that words could create lives, whole worlds, entire universes where anything could happen, and you could be anything. Matilda, Frodo, Atreyu, Pippi – as much as they may have differed from each other, I found something of myself in each of them. They were, in a sense, as human as I was. They knew fear and courage, weakness and strength, doubt and faith, like I did. And as I drew strength and meaning from their bravery through the parallels between their lives and mine, I was (although unaware of it) experiencing the power of analogy: This is like that.
One of the first encounters I had in my early twenties with the specific use of symbolism in stories for therapeutic purposes was through Jungian analyst and curandera Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book Women who run with the wolves. It made me look at storytelling in a whole new way, and aside from finding some personal healing there, the whole discovery of the concept just brought me joy. It turned out my paper childhood friends had been giving me much more than I was realising when I was out having adventures with them all those years ago.
Almost twenty years later, I had a similar joyful experience when I discovered RFT and later PBBT. Here’s this concept about metaphors and therapy again, only this time it turns out there’s a whole scientific paradigm about language that fits it?! It felt like my world just doubled in size.
The personal experiential journey that I have undertaken with PBBT has only solidified this. With every cut of the scalpel (another PBBT analogy that evokes functions like focus and precision) made by the PBBT facilitator, I felt myself drop into my self more and more. I have never been closer to myself than I am today. Though this work (like all truly deep therapeutic work) was very painful and difficult at times, the analogies did something that I can only describe as expand me, widening my perspective to hold painful experiences in a new way.
As much as I appreciate, value and indeed enjoy applying the behavioural analytical components that make up its DNA, it is the clinical application of metaphor and analogy that really made me fall in love with PBBT. The combination of the analytical precision that the ROE provides and the way carefully crafted analogies then work to shift verbal behaviour continues to amaze me every time I watch PBBT in action.
We can find analogy everywhere. Stories have it. Poetry has it. Music and dance have it. Nature is infinitely rich with it. Our minds are capable of endless creativity when it comes to relating stimuli as same as, different from, opposite or compared to, and containing each other. And PBBT gives us the means to apply that creativity effectively to alleviate psychological suffering and help people build better lives for themselves. For all the woes the gifts of language bring, I cannot think of a better way to use them.
