Get Out of Your Head Using Metaphors

Language and cognition are arguably the most important adaptation in the human species within the last few million years in our evolutionary history. This adaptation helped us to exchange and pass on information, plan for the future from experiences of the past, and derive novel ways to problem solve as a result of experiential learning (Nowak, 2000).

These adaptations can also be conceived as the main source of our psychological suffering (Hayes, 2005). Ruminating about past events and catastrophizing about the future. Using our logical abilities to solve internal problems leading us to lose sight of the bigger picture. Losing touch with the discrimination between what is in and out of our control. Taking time away in the moment and becoming psychologically distant from family, friends, or co-workers despite being physically present.

It is human nature to become entangled in our thoughts as a result of taking the content as literal (Stoddard & Afari, 2014). We listen and believe what our mind tells us. Buying into the thoughts is not always problematic, however, in order to keep checks and balances it is important to learn when to listen and when to see the mind as just a space for syntax, syllables, and images while committing to value based actions.

Metaphors help penetrate our entanglement in our thoughts across six psychological domains : rules, reasons, judgments, past and future, and self (Harris, 2009).

Metaphors are intended to direct our attention to our concrete experiences and bypass the inevitable language traps that we get stuck in.

Related posts:

They have a thousand stories about entire worlds and eternities before me. Of all things, this was first to inspire any sense of humility in my young heart — the fact that before me there simply was…

3. To create a project with serverless we can use the “sls create” command. here -t refers to the type of template that we are using and -p refers to the project name. As a demo I will select the…

A recent study by Inrix found that the number one category for car camera usage is to catch drivers on footage while they’re breaking the law. This is likely due to the fact that there have been a…