Clients do not have speedometers glued to their foreheads. What matters most is maintaining forward movement and growth, not the amount or the rate of movement. By drawing attention to this process, therapists can help clients learn to discriminate a sense of expansion from a sense of constriction or loss of choice or possibility that comes from being hemmed in by avoidance or fusion. ACT uses various meta- phors about journeying, sports, or growth to orient clients toward recognizing the qualities of vitality and growth in their behavior. If clients are able to discriminate these qualities, they can use them as guides for effective action. The following transcript demonstrates a metaphor that can be used for this purpose.
Client: I feel as if I’ve been playing it safe for so long, as if I’m always scared.
Therapist: I’d like to share a metaphor and see if you feel it fits the experience you are talking about
here. The metaphor is of a basketball game. There are two basic groups of people at a basketball game: the people in the stands and the people on the court. People in the stands have certain sorts of conversations. They sit there and talk, analyzing the game, trying to figure out what’s happening, cheering sometimes, eating, whatever. They do lots of talking. But, ultimately, how much impact does this have on how the game turns out? Very little, right? Let’s contrast that with the people on the court. The kinds of conversations the people on the court have are all about advancing the game. They aren’t doing a lot of judging and
predicting how it’s going to turn out. In order to play well, they are working on being present, fully invested, and moving the game along. The kinds of conversations they have affect the game strongly and make a big difference. And, ultimately, they are the ones taking the risks. How the game turns out matters most to them. Where do you find yourself in your own life: Are you sitting in the stands, watching, evaluating? Or are you on the court, working, having conversations that will advance the game?
Client: In the stands.
Therapist: Where do you want to be?
Client: Of course I want to be on the court.
Therapist: If you were going to be on the court this week, what would that look like? What is one thing
you could do that would let you know you were on the court? Here’s another metaphor that can be helpful on this same point:
Therapist: [draws image in figure 7-1] Now, the dominant metaphor
of the good life in this society is that life is always supposed to be going up, getting better over time, until the moment you die, preferably in your sleep or some such. I want to suggest that you’ve been following this metaphor without knowing it for a long time, always trying to get better, achieve the next goal, have better self-esteem, reduce your anxiety, rack up the next accomplishment. Whatever.
Client: Okay, that seems about right.
Therapist: In therapy here, we’ve been working on a bit of a
different metaphor for what it means to live a good life. This metaphor is more like an expanding circle. It isn’t about things getting better in life, but about how much space you have to live your life in, how much room you have to move around, having freedom. [draws image in figure 7-2]
The way this metaphor works is that you are always either expanding or contracting in your life, growing or regressing. And on the outer edge of this circle there is always some experience. A good deal of the time, it’s something difficult. Let’s say, for you, it often takes the form of fearing you will panic or go crazy. So, here’s the thought “I’ll go crazy,” and here’s the feeling “anxiety.” In a particular moment in your life, your bubble happens to bump up against these. The question life is asking you at this moment is, “Are you willing to have this—are you going to say yes to this experience and have it inside you, as part of you?” Or will you say no, which means your bubble will draw back a little and start
Figure 7.1
to distort. You say no enough times, and your bubble starts to get small, and you don’t have much room to live in at all. Now, in this metaphor, some things are always on the outside, always asking yes or no, and life is waiting for you to answer. The question we are working on here is, “Are you going to say yes or no to life?”
ACT therapists also help clients discriminate between these qualities in their own behavior during sessions. A therapist might notice a shift in session between behavior about avoidance, fusion, or reason giving into behavior that is a form of committed action (e.g., making a choice to do something life affirm- ing or exploring a possibility) or that involves opening up to a fear or judgmental thought. The role of the therapist in this moment is to draw out the difference between the client’s subjective experiences of these respective forms of behavior so the client is able to better discriminate between them in the future. For example, a therapist could let a client talk for a minute or so about why he or she is stuck in a current pattern of behavior. This could be followed by saying, “You’ve spent the last couple minutes talking about all the reasons you are stuck. As you did this, did you feel freer and more open, as if your life were expand- ing, or did you feel more and more stuck, as if the life were draining out of the room? Just slow down for a second and check out your experience at this moment before you answer the question.”