December 27th, 2022

4 Mental Health Metaphors to Get You Thinking Differently

Lauren Chapin, LICSW

Thoughts are our daily companions. They are with us when we wake up, as we go about our day, and oh so often when we are trying to fall asleep at night. It is natural for humans to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so when we have a thought that feels uncomfortable or upsetting, we might try to get rid of it by pushing it down or trying not to think about it. Other times, we get wrapped up in these thoughts and let them guide our lives. Below are four metaphors to help interact with and respond to these distressing thoughts a bit differently.  

1. The Beach Ball

Thoughts are like a beach ball. What happens when you try to hold a beach ball underwater? Chances are, you can keep it down for a bit as the water pressure squeezes in, but as soon as you release your grip, the ball pops into the air. The same can be said for thoughts. For example, have you ever tried not to think about something only to have it pop up later when you’re trying to fall asleep? Pushing thoughts away is like trying to hold a beach ball underwater all day, it’s going to get tiring and it’ll come back up anyway. 

So what can you do instead? You could throw the beach ball further from you, but chances are it will just keep on floating nearby anyway. The best option is to let go and allow the beach ball to float freely. Although we might not want to keep our difficult thoughts around, the more we struggle with them the more caught up we get.

2. Purple Elephants 

Try not to think about purple elephants for the next 10 seconds. Ready? Go! 

How did you do? My  guess is that a purple elephant or two might have crossed your mind. This classic metaphor symbolizes an important lesson: you can’t force yourself not to think about something. The very act of trying not to think about something causes you to have to remember what not to think about. Instead, practice noticing when a thought pops into your head, acknowledge its presence, and then try to re-engage in whatever you were doing (repeat as necessary). 

3. Backseat Driving

Have you ever been annoyed by a pesky passenger telling you how to drive your car? Do you always do what they say? Probably not. Thoughts can be like passengers in your car chirping their input from the back seat. For example, “You shouldn’t go to that party, nobody likes you anyway” or “Don’t leave your house, it’s dangerous out there.” Whatever the passengers are saying, we have a choice to listen to them or not because we are the ones driving the car. Next time your brain is telling you something unhelpful, imagine the thought as one of those passengers; thank them for their input and keep on driving! 

4. Junkmail

​Like junkmail that crowds our inbox, not all thoughts are important enough to read into and analyze. This is quite easy to take care of in your mailbox as you weed through and delete promotional emails you didn’t sign up for. However, when it comes to thoughts, it’s easy to assign meaning to our “junkmail” and save it to the folder marked “priority” instead. For example, someone may have a thought about steering their car into traffic even if they have no desire to do so. While some people will write this thought off as strange or silly, other people may find it distressing and feel fearful that it could mean something about them. Remember that sometimes thoughts are just thoughts and humans are great storytellers, there is no limit to what our brains can come up with. Like junkmail, we don’t have to read (or read into) all of it.