A Dentist, unable to express or assert himself, felt weak inside. The
Metaphor of this weakness was soft clay. Questioning the clay, it became
hard as steel. By exploring the steel, he could see rivets. When asked what kind
of steel that could be, he said battleship steel. From the soft clay, we
developed the Metaphor into that of a battleship. Later that same week, he
went to a convention. One of the speakers said that Dentists had the highest
rate of suicide. Within two seconds this battleship automatically fired back,
"not the good ones." Prior to this, he couldn't speak up in a group of three people, no less four hundred.
A woman who reported feeling cold towards men and lovemaking found the
Metaphor for this coldness as ice. Tracing the ice brought us back to when
she was twelve and being molested by a boy her age. Within the memory, the
ice melted, became warm in the sun, and poured over the twelve year old and
comforted her, allowing her to relax. Now seeing twelve, feeling less anxious
in that memory, twelve looked into the boy in the eyes, told him to stop and threw him off. Now that the memory was finished and no longer playing in the
back of her mind, the ice/coldness was gone, and her reaction to men was
transformed.
For all of his adult life, a male patient couldn't control his rageful outbursts. He came into therapy after he broke his fist while punching a car door. In therapy, we discovered a tight ball in his stomach. Upon closer examination, the ball was a ball of fire. The ball went into his past, burning and intimidating those who hurt him. After it was done, it was just a small flame. This way he could still have his feelings without losing control again.
A woman who procrastinated most of her life felt like she was standing
before a Metaphorical rickety bridge and afraid to cross it. The fear was like
a rope around her. We discovered that the rope first came to her as an infant
when she was being ignored. As she could see this inner child curling up into
a ball, the rope fell to her side. As she was skilled at knitting, we then
explored the possibility of reweaving the strands of this rope. She
immediately saw the rope weaving into a hammock, a hat, a cloth cover and a
ladder. The hammock, hat, and cloth cover went to the baby. Comforting
the baby as the hammock rocked the baby, the hat and cover warmed her
body and the baby uncurled and relaxed. The ladder then went to the adult
image stuck at the bridge. As it tied itself to one end of the bridge, the other
end went to her hands. She could now safely cross the bridge knowing that if
the bridge did give way, she could hang onto the rope and still be safe. It was
a different experience for her to hold onto a safety rope than to have a rope
of fear tied to her. After that, procrastination ceased to be an issue.
A woman, a victim of incest by her father and uncle, felt like she was "going
crazy" when getting in touch with her real feelings about what happened.
The 'crazy' feeling was swirling all around her. When asked what it was like,
she said it was like many atoms swirling around her. The atoms had a
nucleus, which was like a bomb...an atom bomb. Inviting the atom bomb into
her past, it went through an old basement door. Because the bomb was
swirling, the father and uncle thought it was her and went in after her/it. As
soon as they went through the door, it slammed shut. A few moments later
there was a nuclear explosion. When the dust settled, the basement was
completely filled up with the fall-out from the explosion. Through the years,
the violations that took place in that basement had continued to play in the
back of her head. Now that the basement was permanently filled in, the memories could no longer take place in that basement again.
A Chiropractor had difficulty increasing his practice as he is unable to assert
himself with patients as to the need for additional treatments. He was afraid they would think he wasn't concerned about them and would not like him or want to keep him as a treating physician. The fear, upon closer examination, was
experienced as squeezing, and was squeezing his abdomen. The squeezing is
like two hands grabbing. While he was aware of times he'd felt rejected as
a child, when the two grabbing hands were asked where they would like
to go, they went to a premature baby in an incubator. Since his parents
couldn't get to the child to hold and comfort it, the squeezing hands went to the baby and held and comforted the infant. As he watched the squeezing hands go the baby, his emotional reaction confirmed that it was real. As the hands preferred to stay back there with the baby forever, he no longer experienced the squeezing around his stomach and was able to assert himself with his patients without fear of lose, separation or rejection. This also helped him to assert himself with other people in his life.
A patient, a compulsive talker, once complained "I can't stop talking when
I'm with people...I sure am long-winded." Asking what kind of a wind that
long-winded, wind could be, he said 'a very long wind.' Asking where it could
blow from, we traced that long wind to a window. It was a child's room
window, and inside that room the wind was coming from a screaming child
that no one wanted to be bothered with no matter how hard he cried.
Attending to that child in the way the child needed quieted the baby. The
wind then stopped and his need to talk dissolved.
A man has trouble forgiving his alcoholic, schizophrenic father who urinated
in his face when he was six. This led us to anger resident in his head. The
heat and shape of this anger was like a hot rock. Inviting the hot rock back
to the memory of his father, by time it arrived there, in that scene, it had cooled down and transformed into a mirror. At that point, it went to his father's face. The father, looking into the mirror saw his own shame, stopping the shameless act. In his mind's eye he saw his father zip up his pants, look the boy in the eyes, pat him on the back and say, "please forgive me, I didn't know what I was doing." With the memory concluded (instead of truncated and frozen) and the anger no longer resident in his body, he was finally able to forgive his father.
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