Can Symbolic Modeling Help Me?

"What would I like to have happen?"

This is the fundamental question that drives the Symbolic Modeling process.

Most of us know a great deal about our problems; we are trained to “problem-solve,” thus keeping the attention on the problem. We devote far less attention, time or energy to exploring our solutions.

Symbolic Modeling uses a guided process that helps you fully develop the vision of your positive potential, getting detailed clarity on what it is you want to manifest in your work, your relationships, your life, and your inner self.

What are typical issues people come to see you about?

Just about any issue that would bring you to counseling or coaching could potentially benefit from working with the internal metaphors which ‘encode’ that issue in your mind/body.  Symbolic Modeling helps to identify and clear blocks--physical, mental, and emotional--that keep you from your goals.

Symbolic Modeling is particularly helpful with changing old patterns of thinking, behaving, or feeling. It can clear resistance or old beliefs that no longer serve useful purposes.

Examples of typical issues include: transitions of all kinds, grief over loss, relationship issues, including separation and/or divorce, mild to moderate anxiety and mild to moderate depression, trauma resolution, weight loss, and smoking cessation. Clients come to work on sticking to an exercise program, improve their concentration, get clear on a career move, or to flesh out a new business plan. They come to improve their creative productivity—like removing writer’s block or find material for song lyrics.  Physical symptoms can also respond to Symbolic Modeling as blocks are cleared energetically.

Are you more than ready to change, but just can’t seem to make it happen or to stay with your desired change?  Being really clear about exactly what needs to change and how that might happen may be your next step.  Or you may feel there is something holding you back (hear the metaphor??), but are unclear about what it is.

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How is it different from what I've tried before?

Counseling: Symbolic Modeling is quite different from many traditional therapeutic approaches. When ‘in your metaphor world,’ it feels like a semi-trance state, in which you are in touch with an extraordinary part of yourself you may feel you’ve never connected with before. It’s not unusual for clients to tell me they feel they’ve plumbed depths in one or two sessions they’ve felt they never gotten to in years of other forms of therapy. They describe the session as being very visceral—a true mind/body experience. Clean Language questions, with their deliberate limitations, mean you, the client, directs the process. You are determining the content, the pace ... and the solutions. You are the expert on you; we are truly partners in the process.

Coaching: Symbolic Modeling and Clean Language can be used to address the same goals you may have gone to see a coach about: helping you get clear on what it is you want and need, figuring out what you need to do to make that happen, and motivating you to take the steps. Like other coaching approaches, Symbolic Modeling and Clean Language focus mainly on such goals rather than on the past. And some coaches similarly encourage you to determine the session’s content and come up with the right solutions. So, what I do isn’t different from what many coaches are trying to do; it’s just that using this process is a particularly effective way of doing it!

Asian Body Work and Acupuncture: Symbolic Modeling works to enhance body work, removing blocks and allowing energy to flow more freely. Symbolic Modeling will surprise you at how quickly you get to the very heart of an issue, often discovering it’s not at all what you expected. Shift this, and the rest seems to flow naturally.

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How many sessions might I need?

This varies from person to person. Some clients schedule regular appointments, weekly or biweekly, especially those working on long-standing issues. They may work over a period of 6-12 months or more.

Other clients may schedule one or two sessions and feel they have resolved their current dilemma. They may call back every few months when another issue arises.

The helpful thing is—the metaphors will tell us what you need. Most clients report they have a sense of when their metaphor world is properly aligned and/or shifted, and the metaphors themselves confirm it.

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Can I do SyM for myself?

You will learn skills over the course of repeated sessions that you can apply for yourself. Once you learn to access your own metaphors, you can certainly do so easily. You can apply the same questioning process to them, even use the process to work with your dreams. And you can certainly use Clean Language and its process for yourself every day!

But for a full-on Symbolic Modeling session, most people find it far easier and more effective to have a facilitator asking the questions and steering the session. When you do it for yourself, you are having to manage both the mind/body, visceral experience of exploring your subconscious world and consciously and cognitively managing all the information that emerges and strategizing how it might all be fitting together and where it needs and wants to go. That’s a lot to try to do at once! As your facilitator, I hold the space for you and keep track of it all so you can concentrate on the experience itself.

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Hear a Sample Session

Hear me facilitate a Jon Mejia, a radio interviewer, who wants to stick to an exercise program. (Click to listen; right-click or option-click to download)
>> SampleSession-15min.mp3