From the Therapy Cabinet — Part Four: The Meaning-Making Basket

Sometimes meaning arrives in words.

Sometimes it arrives as an image, a sensation, a memory, or a metaphor.

This basket is a little different from the others I have shared.

Inside are images, books, exercises, and other objects that invite us to explore our inner worlds through imagination, metaphor, the senses, and other projective techniques.

Sometimes an image catches our attention without us quite knowing why.

Sometimes we are invited to imagine a place, notice a colour, follow a sensation, choose a picture, create a metaphor, or describe what an experience might look, sound, or even feel like.

There does not always have to be an immediate explanation.

We can become curious instead.

What is it about this image that draws me in?
If this feeling had a shape, what would it be?
If this experience were a landscape, where would I be standing?
What might this image be saying that I have not yet found words for?
If this stone represented me, where would I place it?

In therapy, these invitations can offer another way into experiences that are difficult to approach directly.

They are not about the therapist deciding what an image or metaphor “means.”

The meaning belongs to the person experiencing it.

And sometimes, by approaching something from a different direction, we begin to notice connections, feelings, and parts of ourselves that had previously been difficult to see.

Perhaps that is why I think of this as the Meaning-Making Basket; a collection of different ways to wonder, explore, and, little by little, make meaning of our experience.