Personal identity is who a person thinks he is at heart; the way he answers the question: “Who am I?” is an internal agreement with his personal and social role. Most people represent their personal identity perfectly and easily in the pictures, which show: my business, my dreams and goals, my values, education, hobbies and contacts.
Nevertheless, there are cases when a person does not have some kind of inner core, some kind of holistic picture with which he could say to himself: «Who am I.» Sometimes a person really does not understand or ceases to understand who he is, where he is and where he is going. This inner confusion has very different roots and different manifestations: sometimes a broken life is behind it, sometimes it is the absence of an elementary habit to think about the future and think in general.
In this case, there is a very productive way to understand and work with your personal identity, this way is to work with personal metaphors. Personal metaphors are metaphorical ways a person sees himself.
We can easily give metaphors for our relatives and friends: this friend of ours looks like a bear, this one looks like a bunny, and this one looks like a fox. As a musical instrument, she is a flute, and he is an old brass tu.e…. It is also easy for most of us to find a picture that metaphorically depicts us and our life. Someone in such a picture sees himself as a rocket or a locomotive, someone internally feels like a tender lotus, and someone feels like a broken clock in an abandoned old house …
It is quite obvious that this or that personal metaphor is most seriously connected and largely determined by the self-awareness of the individual, his life values and his personal roles. An energetic person finds himself in more energetic metaphor pictures, an optimistic person has brighter and brighter metaphor pictures, a lost person’s pictures are often gray, dull and covered with fog. The friendly nature of the pictures usually indicates a person’s high emotional tone and his inner friendliness, and one or another character of movement in a metaphor picture reflects a person’s internal orientation towards people or inward, a tendency to go with the flow or a willingness to fight …
As a technique of diagnostic work, work with personal metaphors consists in the fact that a person is invited to look for a metaphor for himself and his life: a metaphor in which a person can recognize himself and in which he wants to recognize himself. The main personal metaphors that psychologists of the synton approach work with are the House of my soul and the Metaphor of life.
However, the most important discovery that was made in the synton approach is that by changing your personal metaphors, you can influence your life values, personal roles and your sense of self. No matter how ridiculous it sounds, but the children’s formula «What does life cost us to build: let’s draw — we will live!» — suddenly received the most real embodiment: as soon as a person begins to redraw the pictures of his personal metaphors, a basis is created for real changes in his life.
However, working with the metaphor of life is not only a diagnostic technique. It turned out that this is one of the simplest, deepest and most effective ways to work with the internal structure of the personality. This technique is not only an express way of seeing your present day, it is also an accessible and intuitive way to shape your future, your values and goals.
This technique of working with personal metaphors gives strong results in a fairly wide range of cases — both in cases of a serious «lost» personality, and in the lives of quite healthy and successful people, when a person has a picture of his life and himself in this life, but the person would like to This picture needs to be updated and corrected.
Bottom line: if you want to change your life, start changing the picture of your life. At a minimum, make your picture of life conscious. If you have only an unconscious picture, it may not build your life the way you would like, and in this case you are deprived of the opportunity to correct something.
He built life, but not that one. Someone or something that is important to you is not there. Life is empty…
If you find it difficult to formulate your metaphor, if the picture does not immediately appear in front of your inner gaze, look and listen to the metaphors of other people: even if you say “No, this is not mine!”, Gradually you begin to understand what is yours. See →
Case Studies
Alexander: three pictures of life
My picture is a bit sad. I am a large antique clock with a heavy pendulum. There is no one in the house. Tick-tock, tick-tock, even and endless tick-tock in the old house … I realized that I live in anticipation.
The clock symbolizes waiting, you do exactly what you need to do, right?
— Yes.
And the house is old, I would like to get out of this house, but for now it is chained like a clock to the wall …
— Yes.
And nothing depends on you, as in this picture?
— It seems to me that this strategy is the most correct… It is confident, accurate. Reliable.
How do you know that something new has come into your life? What other picture would symbolize it? Have you left the house?
— Yes, I left the house for nature … The hill, it became sunny …
Are you standing there or walking?
— I stand and look around, choose where to go.
The road will not be…
— Not yet, yes…
For you, this is an opportunity to choose your own path.
— The goal, I know, is there, but the road is not yet visible … More precisely, there are many roads there.
Good. Now imagine that the third event has happened: the appearance of your road, your path. How will you see that your path is already there?
— I’ll just follow it. Probably, it will be a path, a winding path, but I will go along it, search and try.
On the road, someone is shaking in a cart, someone is driving a bicycle, someone is flying in a luxurious open convertible, someone is climbing rocks with a huge backpack.
— No, I will go on foot, light, enjoying the walk.
On our own, without the involvement of third forces, rather alone and without much tension … Yes?
— Yes.
Is this the life you are shaping for your future?
— Yes.
Is it optimal for you, at least for now?
Well, I don’t really like it…
What would you change about it to make sure you like it?
— Add people, there should be more people …
Interesting idea! Do you want to get away from loneliness?
— Yes I want to. I realized that I would even like to be useful to someone for hours …
Applause!
Lena: when will I come out in life?
— Metaphor of my life: I am a graduate student, preparing for an exam in the reading room. I already know a lot of things, next to me there is a large pile of textbooks, I’m sitting focused, but I keep postponing the moment of the exam … Either it seems to me that I’m not ready enough yet, or I’m just afraid …
You are the one who sits on the priest and is afraid. She knows that she is ready, but she is afraid and is dragging out the time of her life. What would you like to change in your life, what metaphor would you draw to say: “I live right!”?
— Well, I’ll pass the exam, I know … But what will I do next, with a diploma …
Coming out with a diploma, I see that … what picture is next?
“I will apply my knowledge.
What picture do you see?
I don’t know, I don’t see.
Come up with a picture, Lena. If you don’t come up with it yourself, others will insert you into their pictures, and it may very well happen that in fifty years you will realize that you didn’t live the life you wanted.
— …
Imagine… Early, early morning, cold, fog… You are in the forest, the sun has not yet risen, so you can’t see anything further than a few meters. Wet underfoot, in cold dew, grass, broken branches crunch everywhere, wherever you go — thorny bushes and thick paws of firs grow out of the fog. You know for sure that somewhere nearby, nearby, there is a weedy path leading to a strong road, but the sky is covered with heavy clouds and the beckoning gap turns into another slippery ravine.
But here comes the wind. A few gusts, and the fog flies away, and a big yellow morning sun rises above the hazels. It already illuminates the tops of the trees, shifts the gray array of clouds and opens up the spacious morning sky. The forest is lit up, as if it is immediately warming up, and the dew lights on pine needles are already gleaming cheerfully. The sun floats and conquers new heights, the air warms up quickly, the foliage rustles under the gusts of wind and opens up a clearing for you, from where you can already see a clearing with a forest road.
You are on the way. Hello morning!