I know I have read it somewhere !!!

I just cant recall where.

There is a story (a metaphore) for The Visual Squash. Its something about two towns in a kingdome and one town only sleeps in the daytime and the other sleeps in the night (or something like that). Then there was a troll who lives under a bridge between the two towns, and the two towns had to come together... Does that seem familiar to anyone ??

Any links or quotes, or a book that has this metaphore woulld be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Well there's always David Gordon's Therapeutic Metaphors, and Sidney Rosen's My Voice Will Go With You - the Teaching Tales of Miltion H Erickson MD is likewise a good source.

And you can always make up your own...look for what you're trying to get across: connection, blending, two-things-become a third, and find examples of that in the world around you. "Imagine how an artist might need to make something orange. And he might have many colors of paint, but not the one he needs. And as long as the red paint and the yellow remain in their tubes, they'll just be red and yellow..." and that sort of blah-blah . In your odd hours, make lists: Things that grow. Things that combine. Things that have motion....

And use on the fly the metaphors the person in front of you is using. Free-falling fun!

Dave,

For some reason your post reminded me of the wizard of oz...... I kept thinking about Dorothy and how she thought that the answer to her problem lay in someone else and how she persevered and in the end managed to meet the person who she thought would have the answer only to realise that they did not and she was downhearted until some other nice person pointed out that she had the solution to her problem all along and was just now aware of it.

I would be inclined to list the steps of the visual squash and also the principle behind the technique. Find natural occurances of the steps around you and then build a story around that.

When I want to teach about building a big, bright picture of a future you desire I start off talking about the TV show Heros and how there is a guy who has a power he sees visions of the future and then paints on a hugh canvas in bright bold colours. Do you get the picture?

Jason

Two boxers knocking the living daylights out of each other like Ivan Drago and Rocky then at the end they have a mutual respect for each other and unite in that...

Bandler and Grinder making friends

Ok well maybe not...

Probably get myself squashed saying things like that

Wayne

Thanks everyone for the great comments. I can tell that all have the best of intentions.

I thought someone might have remembered the story I was origionaly refering to in my first post. I have the David Gordon book, but dont remember reading that story in that book. However, since Bridget listed the Dave Gordon book in her post, I am fairly sure that I will only need to scan some pages and I will find the story I was looking for.

Yet, another example of how all the resources I needed were right at hand.
Still, I am glad to have other people to interact with, weather they are individualy or collectively the ANSWER TO ALL MY PROBLEMS, or not.

FFRDave wrote:

Thanks everyone for the great comments. I can tell that all have the best of intentions.

I thought someone might have remembered the story I was origionaly refering to in my first post. I have the David Gordon book, but dont remember reading that story in that book. However, since Bridget listed the Dave Gordon book in her post, I am fairly sure that I will only need to scan some pages and I will find the story I was looking for.

Yet, another example of how all the resources I needed were right at hand.
Still, I am glad to have other people to interact with, weather they are individualy or collectively the ANSWER TO ALL MY PROBLEMS, or not.

Dave, I'm sorry if it sounded like I was saying that particular story was in there; I just listed the book because it has so many. The resources you need to construct metaphors are even closer to you than this forum.

trust the force luke..... trust the force

Bridget,
Constructing metaphores is what I do most of all, and I am good at it. Constructing them with an outcome in mind and then achieving that outcome is a different matter entirely. I am usulay pretty effective when I make a simple story to illistrate a point, or evoke a certain emotional response in a person I am talking to.

What I had hoped to do, was to do a little disecting of THAT METAPHORE and then use its structure to build others of my own. Even if I just wrote out five or six of my own Visual Squash Metaphores, that would be enough experience with that structure to begin constructing them on the fly, at will, in conversation.

When I was taking my first training for Basic NLP Practitioner, my mentor told me that I was already an expert at metaphore. At that time I had no well defined or productive outcomes in mind, and I was often misunderstood and out of rapport. What was going on was that I was often painting rather dark metaphores and using my listeneers as characters in the metaphores, thereby freaking alot of people out pretty effectively. All of that has changed thanks to all that I have learned through NLP.

I still have not taken a moment to look in the David Gordon book for the Visual Squash Metaphore, but I am still fairly sure its in there. I have read it once and plan to begin my second read in a week or so.

David

FFRDave wrote:

Bridget,
Constructing metaphores is what I do most of all, and I am good at it. Constructing them with an outcome in mind and then achieving that outcome is a different matter entirely.

What do you see as the difference between constructing metaphors without an outcome, and with an outcome?

The difference would be that one outcome is just a flash with only a quick mental image and no concious forethought or planning to guide the build of the metaphore.
I work with radiation. Perhaps on a job we are planning to do, a laborer wants to just dig up a highly radioactive pipe and then toss a bunch of lead on it. My mental picture might be his hands are eggs on a frying pan which is sitting on the pipe. With no planning, or forethought, I would raise my hand and say something like, "if you try that, Fred, your hands will be tomorrows breakfast !"
It might have been better from a professoinal standpoint to point out that that pipe line reads 4,0000000000000 Rad (we actualy have nothing like that where I work), and his dose would be way over any limits we would have. Then, simply tell him he cant just do it that way. That is an example of a metaphore without an outcome. Technicaly, the outcome is that the laborer would recognize that the pipe would be just way too "hot" for him to handle it that way.

The outcome I often got at those meetings was uproarious laughter from everybody in the room. Before long, nobody took me seriously and I had a real problem.

Another example might be that some horrable murder happens and is reported in the paper and everyone at work is discussing it. I might then tell the group of people that are discussing it that, "if I were a murderer like that, I would have hidden Susans body by cutting it into smaller pieces, and then, and then, so nobody would, ect. ect." until the whole group were silent and I would never understand why they all just went quiet and wandered away. Then when Susan wouldnt talk to me, I would be offended. I dont EVER put my friends and colegues into any metaphores anymore, EVER !!!

DISCLAMER: The above are only examples of past behaviors. They are not actual recollections of any real events, nor are they intended to causes any discomfort to anyone who reads this post. I do not know anybody named Susan or Fred.

So neither of those metaphors had an outcome?

I suppose I should have specified.

Well thought out, desired, outcomes.

So you already know how to create metaphors, and furthermore to do it on the fly. According to your post above, it's "what you do most of all" and you're good at it.

And you know what an outcome is, and you understand what a well-thought-out desired outcome is as opposed to the ones you say you were getting.

What's stopping you from creating metaphors that get desired responses when you know the desired response you're out to get?

Mostly, (the exceptions (and I assume there must be some)) I am prettywell on target with regular common language and talking to people. I still get a photo flash in my mind and then I take a step back to check if the metaphore fits and then I run with it.

Example:
I have relandscaped my yard and had a kid working with me. He had saved up a fairly good little pile of cash from the wage I paid him. All through the job we talked about a variety of subjects including his desire to buy a car. I noticed that he often got stuck making a decision, he would go tword, and then away, and then tword. He wanted to buy a junker and then didnt want it, and then he wanted to again.
Finaly, he did buy a car. It was a Honda Accord, and he actualy found a pretty good one. It was a nice clean car, but it didnt run very well. He did some minor tune-up type fixes and in the process had broken a wire that went to the fuse box. It was not just any wire, it was a part of a Honda engineered part.
After all of this, he called me saying that he now wanted to sell the car.
I knew that he was prone to wandering in whatever direction he was pointed and often made little progress. (In my mind) I saw a GPS plot with a North, East, South, and West pointer, and a little junbled line that went in a small circle on a map. This was my own internal representation of his situation.
I decided that I wanted to influence him to stand by a choice he had made and teach him how it feels to be sucessful in that.
I told him that he was (is) like a traveler who want sto get somewhere, but never actualy does any traveling because as soon as he heads North, he changes his mind and heads west instead, but then decides that North was the better choice, but then heads south instead. I went through several of these NESW, and WNSE, and NSWE scenarios until I heared only silence in the phone. And then I told him that if he wanted to get anywhere in life he needed to make a choice, pick a direction and then stick to it.

We repaired the wire and he is now enjoying the car.

My desired outcome for THIS post was that I would learn the Visual squash metaphore structure and be able to use THE VISUAL SQUASH STRUCTURE on the fly like I do all other metaphores.

I know a lot of people who would not want to get an NLP session or a hypnosis treatment, or recieve any therapy for smoking or drinking, but still want to stop smoking or drinking.
I would like to be able to construct a Visual squash metaphore, tell it, and perhaps even influence someone to have a more healthy life.

So yes, you have a good strategy for getting metaphors.

And you know what a visual squash is -- taking two things that are different, and combining them into a new third thing.

What examples of that can you imagine in the word around you (and feel free to use the one I provided much earlier in this thread if you like it), and what pictures might you make now? And what story might you slip into a conversation about that?

I'm actually much cruder about it. I just hold out a hand (the one they used if they've already talked about it) and say, "So it's almost like you've got this...and yet you also have this...(holding out other hand) and you need a way to... I don't know... put it all together somehow (doing that)..." And then I demonstrate pulling the combined whatsit into myself and taking a deep breath..., letting the new feeling show in my face and body... Conversational squish. If metaphors occur to me along the way (aside from all language being metaphorical), I'll use em.

Now I'm not saying that's the only or even the best way, but I will say it gets visible and audible changes.

Dave --

love the 'photo flash' and 'step back to check'. Nice system you got there.

Hmmm.

It really helps to have additional models.

My first model of a Visual Squash occured in my first training. The person was seated and I simply followed the script in the book, having them raise their hands and imagine a thing, and so on.
My second model of a Visual Squash, was found in some metaphore I read somewhere, and I still dont quite recall where.

Now I have a third model (Thank you Bridget), in which I just have a conversation about the one part and the other part, combining to make something new and interesting.

Thank you Adiran also. Its nice to recieve posative feedback

Now, I think I may just remember where I saw that metaphore. I think it may be on another website in the section on the Visual Squash. I will look their now. I am sure glad it took til now to find it though.

Dave if you do find it on a site be a love and share the link with the rest of us you can never have too many metaphors

Ah, ha !!!

I FOUND IT !

Its in the David Gordon book I have been reading, Theraputic Metaphores. On page 24, 25, and top of 26.
A story about two villages one, the Land of Nod, and the other named Rollin Hills. There was a troll who was the only living being who had ever made contact with either of the inhabitants of those two villages.

Now that I have the story, I will try to do a websearch in order to make a link for people on this forum.

Its a made up story by a freind of D. Gordon and not an actual fairytail that could be searched and ofund on the internet. Youll just have to buy the book.

So be sure and tell us what metaphor(s) you made for your own personal squishing.