101 Stories for Enhancing Happiness and Well-Being

Using Metaphors in Positive Psychology and Therapy

George W. Burns

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138935822
• eBook ISBN: 9781317374404
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Research shows us clearly what works in counseling and psychotherapy. Often by the time clients enter a therapist's office they have been told what to do—often soundly and sensibly—by well-meaning family, friends, and health professionals. The challenge for the effective therapist is how to communicate these same, sound messages in ways that the client is more likely to take on board, act on, and benefit from.

101 Stories for Enhancing Happiness and Well-Being harnesses the power of stories to translate the research from positive psychology into effective and practical therapeutic interventions. It communicates the core processes for enhancing happiness and well-being in ways that are easy to understand and incorporate into one's therapeutic practice and clients' lives.

	Part One
	Orienting to Happiness-Enhancing Stories

Introduction

If you change your story, you change your life, your experience, and your level of happiness. This is something I recently had confirmed for me by nine-year-old Lucia, the daughter of dear friends who travel a lot in the course of work, family, and vacations. Previously, Lucia had suddenly and inexplicably started to get anxious about getting on a plane. The anxiety developed with tension in her stomach and severe symptoms of vomiting and fainting when faced with an approaching flight. Terribly scary for a young child; terribly distressing for concerned parents.

In telling me the story of her recent trip back from England, she again began to experience the tension and feelings of nausea … and I was impressed. Simply by thinking about it and retelling the story, she could re-experience her feelings and experience them intensely. If the story was this powerful, I began to wonder, was it possible to change it to an equally powerful story of travelling comfortably and happily?

“I can’t change it,” asserted Lucia. “It is just there. It happens. I have tried. I can’t do anything about it.”

Lucia was stating something so many of us have said at times, including myself. When we have a strong, intense, extremely dominant thought or feeling, it is not easy to tell it to go away and expect that it will just disappear. And it may not be wise to. If you are in a situation of real threat or danger, it pays to give the situation highly focused attention. However, if you are in a low risk situation, such as flying is, then such thoughts are neither helpful nor functional. But how do you change them when, like Lucia, you believe you can’t?

This is the sort of situation faced by many of our clients. Someone walks into your office and says, “I’m depressed.” She tells you that well-meaning family and friends have told her, “Get out and exercise; Find a hobby or interest; Make some new friends; Do something for someone else; Look at the glass as half full,” etc. You know this is scientifically sound and sensible … but she is no better for this sound advice. She continues her story, saying she consulted her physician who prescribed some antidepressants and advised her, “Get out and exercise; Find a hobby or interest; Make some new friends; Do something for someone else; Look at the glass as half full,” etc.

Again you know this advice is well grounded in sound research from the fields of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and positive psychology but still it hasn’t worked. What do you do? What more do you have to offer that has not already been offered? That the scientifically sound and sensible advice offered to your client has not been accepted or acted on previously means that, if you offer the same, you are likely to meet with the same response: yet another failure experience for your client. In turn, this is likely to create more feelings of helplessness for your client rather than hopefulness.

As therapists we are in the best possible time ever to be practicing our profession. Never before has there been so much research evidence about what works and what doesn’t. However, people are still increasingly suffering psychological and mental health problems and, put simply, therapy doesn’t always work. Why? Well, it is one thing knowing the research that shows us clearly what works in counseling and psychotherapy. It is another thing knowing how to effectively communicate that knowledge, skills, and strategies to the client. The science of our professions lies in knowing what works well. The art of our professions lies in knowing how to communicate that science, effectively and helpfully.

The real challenge for the effective therapist—once we know the interventions that research has demonstrated to be helpful—is how do we communicate those same, sound messages in ways that the client is more likely to take them on board, act on them, and benefit from them? One thing we know from the above—and all-too-common—case example is that direct and authoritarian advice does not always work. If it does, it is the simplest and quickest way to do therapy: tell someone once what to do and they do it. But how often, as with our depressed client above, does that actually work?

It is here that metaphors and therapeutic stories come to the fore. Stories can, have been, and are used in psychotherapy as metaphors, or indirect suggestions, to help effectively communicate a therapeutic message that will commonly provide the means or pathways to facilitate a client resolving their problems. Therapeutic stories can help bypass resistance, particularly when the therapeutic metaphors are generated by the client, come from the client’s own story, or are built collaboratively with the client (Burns, 2001, 2007).

What Do I Mean By Metaphor?

I confess to deliberately being vague in my definition of metaphors throughout this book. I do not want to draw pedantic lines between metaphors, anecdotes, analogies, similes, and stories—as one might in a pure literary sense—but rather see their commonalities as symbolic forms of effective communication, especially in therapy.

Metaphors are far more common in our everyday language than most of us are aware. They fall off our tongue, they color our language, they trigger associations—and each of these previous phrases is a metaphor. They may be a single word, a phrase, a sentence, or a longer story. Some may be explicit and conscious while others may be more implicit and unconscious. However, in a broad stroke of the definition brush (which is also a metaphor!), the term metaphor in the original Greek meant “to carry something across” or “to transfer.” In literature it refers to carrying one image or concept across to another. It is the comparison of two unrelated concepts or images based on a resemblance or similarity (such as the broad stroke of a brush and vague definition above).

Metaphors are used in language and literature for creating beauty, polish, emphasis, and—importantly for us as therapists—engaging the listener at a more symbolic and different cognitive level. They are thus an expressive, creative, perhaps challenging, and powerful form of communication. As therapy is a language-based process of healing, heavily reliant on the effectiveness of communication between client and therapist, the use of metaphor in therapeutic stories can link with familiar language structures of the client and assist the client’s process of change.

Why Use Metaphors in Therapy?

Metaphors and stories are efficient and meaningful methods for communicating about experience. They are a way of sharing what we have learnt with others in a manner that will, hopefully, make someone else’s journey easier and more enjoyable. Thus, a therapeutic metaphor is usually offered to a client with the express purpose of assisting that person to reach their goals in the most effective and efficient way. It is about filling the experiential gap between what is or has been, and what can be.

Even a brief look at history will show that every culture, since the time we humans began communicating through language, has used stories to communicate values, morals, and standards. In fact, even before language we painted our stories on cave walls. It is therefore little wonder that the world’s greatest teachers chose stories, parables, and metaphors as their preferred medium of education. Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and Loa Tsu did not lecture. They told stories. They did not quote facts, statistics, or evidence-based data but told tales of life. They offered a parable or story that opened the range of experiences and interpretations available to their followers. Their stories have lived on for as long as two and a half thousand years, and are still retold by their followers. They knew that stories are a means of communicating par excellence. Not only do we learn from stories, but we love them.

As therapeutic teaching tools, stories are engaging and interactive. They teach by attraction, bypass resistance, nurture imagination, and elicit search-for-meaning processes in the listener. They develop problem-solving skills, create outcome possibilities, and invite independent decision-making.

The impact of stories was recently demonstrated for me when I was conducting a workshop on using stories in therapy at an international conference. The day before one of my colleagues presented a keynote lecture on his research, with several slides of data projected onto a large screen. At one stage, he illustrated a point with a story about his family dog. The next day I asked my audience of about 500 people if they remembered his fifth slide and what it was about. Not a single hand went up. However, when I then asked who remembered the story he told about his family dog, almost every hand went up.

As well as being lovers of stories, we are also all storytellers. We reconnect with our loved ones at the end of a day by relating the tales of what happened to us at work, home, or school. We share our experiences, our trials and tribulations, our joys and triumphs, and our humorous encounters through stories. We get home and say, “You’ll never guess what happened to me today.” … And launch into a story.

Why This Book?

First, I have a long-standing interest in stories and their ability to communicate important life messages—and want to share with you both that love and the therapeutic effectiveness I have found in using stories. Not only are stories able to communicate those important life messages but they also have the power to communicate them effectively when other styles of communication may not. This is illustrated in the example given of my colleague who gave the keynote lecture at an international conference. Attendants remembered the story of his family dog. They did not remember the scientific data on his fifth slide.

Second, not many of us like to be told what to do. Direct and authoritarian forms of communication tend to trigger resistance and rebellion, but tell a story and a person is not being treated in an authoritarian way. They are simply being offered a story about which they have a choice of accepting or not. A story is not just a more user-friendly way of communicating an important message, it is also an empowering way for someone to choose whether to take on board a message … or not.

Finally, I just love stories. I guess I have loved them from that early age when my mother sat on my bedside and read me night-time stories that had me slipping into a peaceful slumber. It was not just the stories but also the process of listening to, being absorbed in, learning from and engaging with the teller that aroused in me a lingering curiosity. Why do we love stories? Why do we feel engaged in them? How can we use stories helpfully and meaningfully to enhance our well-being? Well, it’s that very curiosity of this that led me to working with stories in my professional life as a therapist and, in turn, putting together this book that you now hold in your hands.

What Does This Book Offer?

First, I am a practitioner of therapy. I enjoy books and strategies that are simple, practical, and essentially usable. I want to offer you some of the beneficial things that I have learnt over a life time of being a therapist in ways that are pragmatic and applicable.

Second, with this purpose in mind, I have presented 101 examples of therapeutic, metaphoric stories arranged in 17 chapters reflecting 17 core areas of life concerns that therapists commonly encounter. The 17 chapters also are themed on positive outcomes and grounded in interventions that research from the fields of positive psychology and cognitive behavior therapy have shown to be effective.

Third, each chapter commences with a brief introductory description of, and evidence-base for, the theme of the therapeutic outcome stories of that chapter. While I want to give you the evidence base, I don’t want to distract your attention from the stories with interruptive referencing and notes and so have avoided these as much as possible in the text, opting instead to provide a section at the end of the book with my resources and potential future reading opportunities for you.

Fourth, each story is prefaced with its Happiness-Enhancing Characteristics that summate the:

• Problems addressed
• Resources developed
• Outcomes offered

for that particular story.

I have provided these (a) to assist you to see the therapeutic characteristics inherent in each story, (b) to show you the processes I go through in creating stories for an individual client, and (c) help familiarize you with a process by which you may go about creating your own therapeutic stories for your own clients. Just as my ultimate goal in therapy is to empower my clients to live their lives well and independently, so in this book my ultimate goal is to help empower you to become an effective, independent metaphor therapist.

Finally, each chapter is shadow-tabbed on the page edge to allow you to quickly access a chapter or story when working with a client toward a particular therapeutic goal.

What Is the Link between Positive Psychology, CBT, Mindfulness, and Metaphors?

Positive psychology, cognitive behavior therapy and mindfulness are among our most researched and evidence-based approaches to psychology and psychotherapy. As well as containing many scientifically sound strategies and interventions, they take a practical and positive orientation to resolving life issues by facilitating healthy functioning through happiness, enhancement, and well-being.

As such, there is little need for me to describe the history, underlying philosophy, or specific interventions of these approaches. They are already well documented elsewhere in the literature. However, as I mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, knowing what works is one thing. Communicating that effectively to an individual client is another. In this latter area, most of our major approaches to therapy have been lacking. Consequently, I want to offer methods for communicating essential therapeutic interventions in ways that work. Let me illustrate with an example.

Two strategies that are well-founded in the positive psychology research are that exercise and gratitude serve as preventatives to depression, reduce the rate, severity, and length of depression, and facilitate greater levels of happiness. Great. It seems simple: tell a client to go home and exercise daily or record three things they can be grateful for at the end of each day, and their depression will be fixed. But how often has that actually worked for you or your clients? If it does, it is obviously the simplest and quickest way to do therapy. However, my experience has been that it is not the most probable outcome. People need to have their...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part One Orienting to Happiness-Enhancing Stories
• Part Two Happiness-Enhancing Stories
• Part Three Creating Your Own Happiness-Enhancing Stories
• A Guide to Creating Your Own Happiness-Enhancing Stories
• References and Reading Resources
• Index