Relatively new to ACT, I thought of this metaphor with clients who have a hard time with anxiety/intrusive thoughts:
Imagine you're at an auction where thoughts/feelings are being auctioned off. You're allowed to inspect the 'products' before the auction begins, observing what they're like, possible functions, even how you might categorize them. When the auction begins, you sit down and "positive" thoughts come up first, then later more difficult thoughts/emotions. Which thoughts/emotions do you want to bid on and how much are you willing to pay for them?
Often, the client will say "I don't want to pay anything for the negative ones", to which I'll reply "well it seems like you're paying a lot for them right now, what might be a reason for you doing that?".
As I said, I'm quite new to ACT so there may be aspects of this that are not precisely ACT-consistent, so any direction on that would be great.
Greetings I'm relatively new - Response submitted by mihail.m.nedkov on January 28, 2017.
Greetings
I'm relatively new to ACT too, but either way I'd like to share my thoughts on the metaphor you've crafted.
In my honest opinion, it's very good at having the person experience in a more evocative way the costs of clutching to certain thoughts. However, I think that this metaphor would suit work on defusion from the conceptualized self better.
Also, I suppose that the part with bidding on positive thoughts might fuel some experiential avoidance - "bid on the positive ones and they'll come more often / will become more believable / will manage to push the negative ones away" and if I were to use this metaphor, I'd drop this part.
Overall, you've created an excellent metaphor which allows for variations - e.g. bidding on eBay / bidding against your valued directions (for example something in the lines of "Do you think the life you'd like to lead / the person you strive to be would be the highest bidder on that thought? Why not?)