Dear Reader,

I’m writing to you from an airplane this morning. There’s a long line of people to my right, clutching their bags to their chests so they don’t bump me, fall coats stuffed under their arms. I’m wearing flip flops and a tank top, contemplating a poem: Today my overwhelm is an overstuffed overhead bin…holding it all together on the outside.

I learned this technique from poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer when I interviewed her:

• take an object in your view
• take a feeling or experience you’re having
• make a poem using that object as a metaphor

As Rosemerry writes in her poem Acceptance,

"Today grief is a long steady rain and the thing to do is to walk in the long and steady of it."

When I had therapists try this in my Business of Therapy program, they wrote:

"Today my worry is an open printer box overflowing with packing peanuts."

"Today my agitation is a window shutter in the South of France, flapping about."

Metaphors are a central ACT skill, and I’ll be teaching some tried-and-true ones in the North Carolina ACT Therapist Training I’m leading right now. Like the one I shared in a Wise Effort podcast episode about cognitive defusion: Sometimes trying to mentally figure it out is like trying to rearrange a spider web.

Why metaphors help:

• They change how a thought feels. When you see your thoughts as “a spider web,” you’re less likely to want to get entangled in them.
• They loosen rigid mindsets. A simple image can open new perspectives. If your worry box is full of packing peanuts, maybe it’s protecting something important—what else is in the box?
• They lower mental load. A simple metaphor can hold a complex concept, making it easier to pull up under distress. If grief is a long steady rain, maybe there’s no use trying not to get wet.
• They point you back to what matters. When your overwhelm is an overstuffed overhead bin, it’s time to open it, look inside, and decide what to place at your feet.

This week, I shared about the practice of metaphor on Emerging Form, the podcast hosted by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Christie Aschwanden, and I asked if I could share it with you.

You’ll also hear a poem I wrote about recovery—that I never planned to share. When Rosemerry asked why I wrote it, I told her: I’ve got to live the moral of the story.

I invite you to live the moral of your story, too. Choose a metaphor for what’s happening in your life right now—or write a tiny poem—and notice what happens to your perspective. Then, share it with me. I’d love to hear them.

Diana

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Dr. Diana Hill Your Wise Effort Guide

P.S. I’m on Substack! It was a goal I set alongside my group members during the Business of Therapy program, and it took a while to make happen… but the moral of my story is: follow through when it matters to you, but only if it doesn't overstuff your bin. Subscribe if you want more of these small, wise effort tasks in your week.

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