Designing Metaphors for Addiction

Your mind works as a servo-mechanism. That means it serves you whatever you request & those requests come from your visual & audio thoughts, as well as your automatic programs that reside in your subconscious. So....how appetizing is the platter you are being served today?....
Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht

TUNING IN...

The appetites or needs of those living under the darkness of addiction are very specific & so the sound-bites or written words need to be designed to meet these needs. As creative writers, we tend to work in metaphor or story telling & this is a perfect way to tempt the subconscious mind.

When writing in interactive self-hypnotic suggestion, I can cover lots of territory with a few simple images. When the listener or reader enters the image, the metaphor becomes multi-dimensional & therefore much more powerful. I'd like to introduce you to a sampling of my favorites:

THE CHILD & THE MULTIPLE COATS

While many of us have heard the term inner-child, few of us work with this concept on a daily basis. The child-self is separate from the mature-adult or higher self. This is an extremely important concept for my listener or reader. Just as he is not his thoughts, emotions or body sensations, he is also not his inner child. This technique is called disassociation.

The child-self remains with us throughout our life & right now, in this very moment, your child-self is with you. It doesn't matter what you are doing. The child is never far away & as you come to recognize it, you are then free to manage your emotions, because your child-self is wearing an emotional coat, or if you prefer because it is summer, a tee-shirt with the name of the emotion written across the front. There are all sorts of coats or tee-shirts. Some you have had for a very long time, perhaps almost from birth & others were placed on you as a young child. As you became older, more & more coats or shirts were placed on you perhaps by your parents, siblings, relatives, clergy, teachers, neighbors & even your community at large.

We all have a large variety of these. Some tend to be very controlling & rigid. Others may be woven from fearful threads or those colored with guilt or shame. When these are worn it is often difficult to think, much less dream freely about what you might like to have for yourself; what you might like to experience in life. When you are wearing one of these you might hear yourself thinking or saying out loud that "you can't do something or that might be ok for others but not for you." When these coats are worn one lives in a locked world. In this instance you curtail your inner gift of creativity, keeping yourself in the corner of life.

Those individuals harboring addiction often have a huge collection of rather dirty coats & so a shopping trip is definitely in the plans The listener is delighted to know that these coats can come off in an instant & new, colorful, light coats can be chosen instead.

When working inside this metaphor I like to spend time examining each of the new coats....admiring their qualities, the strength & durability of the fabric, the uniqueness of the design, as well as the great fit. I suggest a few very powerful new coats & perhaps a few that appear on the surface to be less important. This part of the metaphor is aiming towards balance, which of course is something that the addictive listener needs as well.

THE BALANCE BEAM

Balance is a key ingredient for healing addictive tendencies. The balance beam is a simple metaphor & most individuals have observed gymnasts performing on a balance beam & so they are familiar with what it is. The beam can be painted with the name of a particular issue & the listener can practice balancing in this area of life.

THE MATURE OR CORE SELF

The mature self is separate from the child-self & is completely free from emotional coats. Getting in touch with this powerful element of the personality is very important for the individual harboring addiction. There are many ways for the writer to introduce this part & literature is filled with examples. However, I like the listener to uncover their own mature or core self & so one way is to take them to one of the creative parts of the inner workshop where there is a block of valuable carrera marble, as well as a hammer & chisel.

As work begins, the chips fall away & the figure can be seen emerging. Then the listener notices that he is not the only worker on this project. The mature or core self is also chipping away, wanting to be free. I've found this metaphor to be extremely empowering as the relationship with maturity begins on a mutual working stage.

THOUGHTWARE OR CHOOSING WORDS

No matter how simple a word, it has intrinsic value when writing therapeutic material. Negatives are never utilized in any images, except for cleaning or clearing or manipulating in some positive way. It's important for the mature or core-self to understand that part of it's work is to clear or heal negatives, no matter how "old" they are.

All words flow towards building or suggesting strength, as well as what is the desired outcome. When an individual reads or listens the brain waves are slowed & so the door of the subconscious mind is opened, allowing even simple words that are self-affirming to perform at high levels.

COMPLIMENTARY METAPHORIC MP3

I've placed a complimentary mp3 SpokenWord program at the following link. The name of this program is The Life University.

You can make something happen today. Good things can happen to you & for you right now. As you learn to break your big plan for success into small steps, you can take the first step right away. Your success is a matter of your expectations. Once these are accepted by your own inner mind, the plans are placed on the drawing board. You are the one who stretches your horizons & then designs the roadway........Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht

This program takes the listener or practitioner of self-hypnosis to the powerful Life University. The listener has the opportunity to visit skill building areas that may need more structure in his/her own life including emotional management, thought management, goal building & action classes, life balance, health, work ethics & motivation, relationship building, spiritual enhancing & opening, future pacing & planting & much more.

This program allows one to self-assess, to find areas that may benefit from change & to actually plant the mind programs to do so. This is an ideal program for those who truly want to move on & to truly make those changes that will greatly impact their lives.