NLP: Explanatory Metaphors
Metaphors can be divided into therapeutic and explanatory types. The purpose of therapeutic metaphors is to help a person solve a problem, while explanatory metaphors are meant to help someone understand something. A metaphor can take many forms:
- Direct analogy
- Story
- Personal experience
- Parable
- Anecdote
- Proverb or saying
- Legend
- Toast
- Fairy tale
- Anything at all
In general, the types of metaphors usually differ only in the way they are told and the surrounding context. Parables are told in a sing-song manner with a meta-message that it’s very important. Anecdotes are quick and funny. Legends require a message about ancient times and a long, detailed narrative.
With some patience and skill, one type of metaphor can easily be transformed into another. If I want to tell a parable, I’ll use a sing-song tone and make the main character Hodja Nasreddin or a Buddhist Master. If I want to tell an anecdote, it’ll be a quick story about Petka and Vasily Ivanovich, or Stierlitz, or a New Russian. A legend will be about heroes and sages of the past. A proverb usually just reminds us of some experience, and so on.
Remember the old story about the turtles?
Story
At the beginning of the century, there lived a scientist in America—let’s call him James. He traveled around the country giving popular science lectures about the achievements of science. One day, he arrived in a small town where most of the population were farmers. James took the stage and began his lecture. He was worried that the audience might not understand him, but the hall listened calmly. Only a tiny, frail old lady in the front row kept giggling. James responded by becoming even more eloquent, but she kept giggling…
When the lecture ended, everyone headed for the exit, but the old lady from the front row approached James and slyly asked:
“Mr. James, what do you think the Earth rests on?”
Stunned, James started recalling Kepler’s law, but since he was a wise man, he simply asked:
“And what do you think, ma’am?”
“The Earth rests on a giant turtle!”
“And what does the turtle rest on?”
“You can’t trick me! There are turtles all the way down!”
Anecdote
One time, Petka and Vasily Ivanovich got drunk. They wanted to talk to someone, so they went looking for Furmanov. They found him. Petka asks:
“Tell me, Furmanov, what does the Earth rest on?”
“Well, Petka, to be honest, on nothing. It just floats.”
“No,” says Vasily Ivanovich, “it rests on a turtle.”
“And what does the turtle rest on?” Furmanov asks in amazement.
“There are turtles all the way down.”
Proverb
The turtles that hold up the Earth go all the way down.
Parable
Once, a farmer wondered what the Earth rests on. He pondered this day and night and went to see Hodja Nasreddin. He said:
“Oh, Hodja. You have read many books, your hair is gray, and legends are told about your wisdom. Tell me, what does the Earth rest on? Why doesn’t it fall into the abyss?”
Hodja thought for a moment and, to buy time, asked the old man:
“And what do you think the Earth rests on?”
“In my opinion, on a giant turtle.”
“And what does the turtle rest on?” Hodja asked in amazement.
“I think, sir, there are turtles all the way down.”
Legend
This happened so long ago that even the memory of those lands has faded, the bones of those heroes have turned to dust, and the cities have become ruins buried in sand. But a legend has survived, passed down from generation to generation, and although many years have passed, the truth within it has not faded.
In an ancient country lived a young man, the son of a wealthy merchant. While other children played, ran around, and stole apples from neighboring gardens, he studied wise books, trying to understand the world around him. One day, a question began to torment him:
“What does the Earth rest on? An apple hangs from a tree, a tree grows from the ground, but what does the ground rest on?”
He asked Teachers and Sages, Priests and Elders, read wise books written so long ago that we can hardly imagine, but he could not find the answer anywhere. He spent a fortune, stopped eating and drinking, his mother cried at night, and his father’s hair turned gray before its time. One day, when a wandering dervish came to their city, the young man asked him his question.
“I can’t answer your question. But in the East, there is a country where a sage lives. He is so wise that even animals come to him for advice, and he answers them in their own language.”
The young man was inspired, took his father’s last money, and outfitted a caravan. They traveled for a long time through deserts, crossed raging rivers, fought off bandits and thieves. Finally, they reached a mountain where the Sage lived in a hut. The young man brought him the finest silks, gold dishes encrusted with jewels, bags of coins, and, laying all this before him, asked:
“Oh, wisest one. I have traveled hundreds of days and endured many dangers and hardships. I bring you rich gifts. You are my last hope. I know your wisdom is so great that you know everything in the world. Tell me: what does the Earth rest on?”
The Sage paused his prayer, opened his eyes, and, looking at the young man, said:
“It stands on a giant turtle.”
“And what does that turtle rest on?” the young man asked respectfully.
“There are turtles all the way down,” the Sage replied with a smile.
The point of the “turtles all the way down” metaphor is to make the phrase memorable and easy to refer back to. It’s much faster and more appealing than explaining various levels of generalization, information structure, and so on. A metaphor allows you to tap into a person’s experience and build new understanding on top of it, providing only the form, which each person can fill with their own content. Metaphors appeal more to the right hemisphere of the brain and help create vivid, colorful images that are much more likely to be remembered than dry explanations. They are also accessible to the unconscious mind.
Explanatory metaphors can be used both as a main teaching tool and as a powerful supporting system. The simplest option is a direct analogy:
- A tractor is just a very powerful car.
- A giraffe is a horse with a really long neck. And horns.
Ambiguity
Metaphors have a wonderful property: they are ambiguous. Depending on the context, they can evoke a wide range of feelings and associations, taking on different meanings.
Anecdote for the Occasion
Once, a Georgian father called his son, a two-meter-tall, strong Kakhetian. The father said:
“Gogi, I’m going to teach you wisdom. Take one twig and break it.”
He took it and broke it.
“Now,” said the father, “take ten twigs.”
The son took them and broke them.
“Now break a whole bundle!”
Gogi snapped it over his knee and broke it.
“Vakh, Gogi,” said the father, “you were born a fool, and you’ll die a fool!”
I love this metaphor when demonstrating a technique or exercise. You need to do it (or suggest an exercise) in such a way that you’re very likely to get the desired result; otherwise, the outcome may be completely opposite.
If someone is slow to join in on a group project, you can hurry them along with this anecdote:
Wife to husband: “Honey, let’s have sex…”
Husband: “Go ahead and start, I’ll join you in a minute.”
On the Relativity of Statements
Two friends meet:
“I heard you got divorced?”
“Yes…”
“What happened? You said she was a beauty, legs up to her ears?”
“Yes, but did you see where her ears are?”
At 20, he knew 9 operating systems. And not a single woman…
…I became a vegetarian not because I love animals. I hate plants…
One wife advises another:
“Don’t worry that your husband chases every skirt. My dog chases every car, but even if he catches one, he still doesn’t know what to do with it!”
An old maid, sexually frustrated, checked under her bed every night to see if a man had crawled under it… Ten years passed… and she bought herself another bed, to double her chances.
If someone really wants others to solve their problems for them, or wants a psychologist to explain why their “right heel itches,” you can tell this anecdote. It also fits when someone tries to dump their problems on you. You can use it in the context of “everyone has their own map.” Another area is intention and the context of “everything that happens to you is for a reason.”
A young woman is sleeping and has a dream:
She’s walking at night down a dark alley and suddenly hears footsteps behind her. She turns and sees a huge man following her. She quickens her pace. He does too. She walks even faster. He keeps up. She runs! The footsteps behind her start running too… She runs into a dead end. The man grabs her, turns her around… The woman screams:
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, ma’am, it’s your dream…”
This Anecdote Fits the Context of Stereotypical Behavior and Life’s Stability
In every woman’s life, there are three periods: in the first, she gets on her father’s nerves; in the second, her husband’s; and in the third, her son-in-law’s.
Responsibility for Actions, Assessing Consequences, Ecology
Mother-in-law (to son-in-law):
“You say I’m a burden to you… But who made me your mother-in-law, if not you?!”
About Taking Concrete Steps Toward a Goal
An elderly Jewish man prayed to God all his life, begging to win the lottery. Every day he faithfully prayed for this, until finally, one day, the heavens opened and a voice said:
“At least buy a lottery ticket!”
About Personal Experience and Trust
At one of Odessa’s intersections, a crowd gathered.
“Why are so many people here?” a passerby asks. “What happened?”
“Nothing, but everyone wants to see for themselves.”
About Lack of Personal Experience
Two Jews meet.
“Heard the Beatles, didn’t like them. They lisp, sing off-key, what do people see in them?”
“Where did you hear them?”
“Moisha sang them to me.”
A Texan talks about the size of his ranch:
“It takes me two days to drive from one end to the other.”
“I used to have a lousy car too,” his companion says sympathetically.
Suggestibility and Autosuggestion
Two neighbors meet.
“All day,” says one, “my wife complains about neurasthenia, neuralgia, neuritis…”
“How do you explain it?”
“Very simply. At the market, they wrapped a piece of pork fat for her in a page from a medical encyclopedia, under the letter N.”
On Context Reframing
“Daddy, who is a masseur?”
“A masseur is a man who gets paid by women for what other men get punched in the face for.”