Therapeutic Metaphor: Jigsaw Puzzle

I seem to be writing a lot about metaphors I use from time to time in therapy. The fact is that I don't use metaphors all the time, nor do I use any of the ones I'm writing about a lot, but I think they're fun, sometimes they're very useful, and I'm finding them easy to write about.

From time to time a client just starting therapy may profess some confusion about what to talk about. This can especially be the case with people who have a lot of issues going on or who haven't previously talked much about their life experiences and are unaccustomed to organizing their thoughts into a linear narrative. There are a lot of ways I help them ease into a productive discussion, from simply asking "what do you want to change in your life" to suggesting that we focus on whatever is causing the most distress, to asking what happened that lead to the decision to pick up the phone and schedule an appointment.

Since I like to cover a lot of ground with my clients from the first meeting, I am apt to ask questions that lets us explore a wide variety of topics, so we often wind up addressing a lot of things. Sometimes I use the example of a jigsaw puzzle: the first thing to do is to simply turn all the pieces facing up so that we can start to look for the big picture, patterns and boundaries of the puzzle. Similarly, when clients simply begin putting all of their issues "face up" we are able to quickly begin sorting them in a way that starts to make sense.

A couple of other metaphors sometimes come up along these lines. I may just reassure the person that they can "jump into the pool anywhere", either the shallow or the deep end. In other words, whatever topic we start talking about will inevitably lead us to where we need to go. Sometimes (generally later in the therapeutic relationship) I may speak of "letting the dog off the leash" and following the conversation where it needs to go. Like a trusty bird-dog it will generally pick up the scent and lead us in the right direction.
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