When it comes to eliciting metaphors, Anxiety metaphors are usually the most challenging, but the thing is, anxious people have a range of additional symptoms.
On a late night in August 2020, after the Beirut explosion, I received a text from an unknown number.
“Help. I need help.”
To which I reply, “And you are…?”
“Sorry, I know it’s late, but I am travelling in a few days to a new job abroad, and I texted you as soon as I found your website.”
Eventually, she booked a session for the following day.
She arrived at the office very tidy and neat all around, but with misaligned eyebrows.
“What’s the problem?” I ask
“My friends call me Tricky Vicky, ever since I knew I had trichotillomania.”
I was not familiar with the term, so I replied, “That’s a diagnosis, I did not ask for that. What is the problem?”
“I want to feel less anxious, I constantly pull my eyebrows, and I found a job in Qatar. I need to be more presentable and manage this.”
“Fair enough”, here I explained the three-pillar model of IEMT and how Anxiety is a cluster of emotions usually called the nexus that is a result of other emotions, I then asked, “Is this familiar?”
She nodded.
“Which of these emotions is the most familiar?”
“Guilt”
“What’s that like?” and here I shared the pit of despair and lady up to her neck stories to make it easier for her.
“It’s like I’m in a very tiny dark box, and all around me are the sides of the box. It’s very very tight.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, ants. They’re all over my forehead.”
“Is there any light?”
“None…”
Tricky Vicky was in a container and has the hurts bias. Her burdens are small anthropomorphications that have a life of their own.
Upon growing her up and getting her to lighten up, the ants stayed the same size.
I let her go and did a follow-up a couple of weeks later.
The next session was done online, and when asked what has changed, she felt freer and more able to act, but the ants had increased.
The ants were the thoughts she had about what to do next; she had poor time management skills and relied on her memory to do her tasks.
The problem here was more of a training problem, as she was forgetting a lot of things she had to do, a simple task management software, and how to divide tasks in a productive and functional way by topic and priority.
3 months later, I followed up with her and the hair-pulling had stopped completely.
I asked her, “What happened to the ants?”
“I now have them in an ant farm in front of me, and I see what each of them is doing.”
Knowing if the problem is more of a training issue or a change work issue makes working with the client structure much easier.
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