A facebook follower asked me to help her after describing her situation:
- “…I never loved myself, although others love me…I feel like I’m falling apart…”, R.,Egypt
This message will just deal with the metaphor in her message, “I feel like I’m falling apart”.
People use many metaphors to describe how we are;
- I feel 10 feet tall;
- I feel down; or
- I’m beside myself with anger.
It’s tempting to guess what R means by her metaphor and to imagine she means the same thing I would mean if I said it. I use a coaching method called Clean Language and we don’t assume we know what the client wants.
I might ask her more about the metaphor, but, as it seems uncomfortable, I’ll ask about positive things.
Brian: “When you feel like you’re falling apart, what would you like to have happen?”
R might talk about a positive metaphor that means she is no longer falling apart. More likely, that won’t come immediately and a different type of thought or feeling will be expressed. If there are no immediate answers, R may say she doesn’t know.
R also said she “stands out” in some good ways, so I may ask her:
“What kind of ’stand out’?
and then
“Is there anything else about ’stand out’ “?
Slowly we will build up some answers from R’s thoughts, feelings and beliefs. We may understand patterns of behaviour or feelings, how the world looks from new perspectives and understand our strengths more.
If we have a clear sense of our strengths, look at things from a useful standpoint and see how we work, then we can make the choices we need to to feel good about ourselves and overcome low self esteem.
I hope to blog soon about some exercises that will help us do just this. For now, if you have the same thoughts, answer the questions above and email me.
Tags:Clean Language,feelings,Metaphor
