I kept hearing ACT therapists talk about "buying" thoughts, so I took this idea to its extreme and wrote out the following, which I sometimes bring into sessions with clients:
The Store Metaphor
By Shane Knox
Let's imagine that your mind is a giant store. Since this store is your mind, you're the only customer. Oh, and you also have virtually unlimited money! All the merchandise in the store symbolize your thoughts, emotions, memories, urges, etc.—everything that goes on in your mind. Some of the merchandise you like, some you don't. Some of it seems really important to you, and other items are trivial. Some products are useful, or fun, or trendy, or unhealthy. Just like a real store, you probably have positive or negative judgments about lots of the items in the store, and others you just feel neutral about.
As a customer of this store, you don't really have direct control over what merchandise the store has for sale. But what do you have control over? Well, you decide what to buy! Your purchases will probably influence the store's future inventory. For example, if you buy lots and lots of staplers, the store will likely order more. And if they continue to sell out of staplers, the store will probably make a bigger stapler section to accommodate the apparent demand. So as customer, you do have some control over what the store sells, but it's a slow power, and there are no guarantees—it's really ultimately up to the store what's on the shelves.
So you can't control what's on the shelves, but you do get to choose what to buy. You choose what to take home with you. You likely don't like certain products, so why do you buy them? Are there any thoughts or feelings that you've “bought” that have actually made your life less rich?
What might it mean to “buy” a thought or feeling? It means you've “taken it home with you”. To “buy” a thought or feeling is to think you own it, to strongly identify with it as part of who you are. It might also mean you feel you must act on it. Or to put it another way, you believe this thought or feeling as if it's real and not just a thought or feeling. It's to mistake it as a solid object rather than just a passing experience. (Spend some time thinking about what it means to “buy” a thought or feeling, using personal examples if you can.)
It's not easy to scale back our spending and make conscientious purchases—we're often tempted by products that deliver short-term benefits at the expense of long-term well-being. We sometimes think we need something we actually don't, or get addicted to buying things in general. Even if we try to avoid the store altogether, there are bound to be reminders about what to buy in the form of advertisements and societal messages.
Ultimately, though, the “merchandise” you buy is your decision.
Thanks for sharing this Metaphor! - Comment submitted by scottpalasik on February 19, 2013.
Dear Shane,
You have really developed a well thought out and descriptive metaphor here. I can picture the store rows of items (thoughts) on a shelves as far as the eye can see (kind of like a giant Sam's Club). I particularly enjoyed the practice of "Spending some time thinking about what it means to "buy" a thought or feeling". This gets at the crux of choices and how we can change our behaviors by examining our thoughts.
This "buy in" is so important in life. I know you said we have "unlimited money", what if we didn't. How might having a limited supply of currency change the metaphor if we can only spend a certain amount on the thoughts that service us best. What thoughts would we want to own? At the same time, what thoughts do we let sit on shelves collecting dust? We can't throw them away, however we don't have to buy them either.
Thanks again,
Scott
Scott Palasik PhD, CCC - SLP
University of Akron
School of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology
A little Acceptance thrown in too..... Comment submitted by docberf on December 4, 2014.
I've used a very similar scenario with my ACT groups that I call "The Supermarket of the Mind". Very same shopping metaphor (I usually ask who has ever shopped for groceries at a supermarket...a pretty universal experience). I then proceed to ask:
1. When you shop for groceries, do you go through and put everything that's on the shelves into your cart each week? (Resounding "No" from everyone). Why not? Usually the responses come along the lines: "Because I can't use/don't need everything." "Just buy what I need that week", etc. We usually concur that the best strategy is to buy what we can use and leave the rest on the shelves.
2. I then take it a step further and ask, "And I bet before you leave the store you stop by the manager's office to complain about all the products that were on the shelves that you can't use and demand that he not carry them any more, since that would surely make your marketing much simpler to know that the store only carried what you needed, right?" Generally, no one agrees with that and as we explore why not, we hear "Because I might need some of that stuff on other weeks" or "Just because I can't use it right now, doesn't mean I won't need it sometime" or similar ideas (which is a very nice way of introducing context and present moment awareness into the metaphor too).
3. Finally, I ask: "And in this whole scenario, guess what your mind's job is?" This will usually be a bit of a go round as we consider different "jobs" in the supermarket (manager? shopper? etc.) and try to compare it to their experience of their mind. At some point (if it hasn't been suggested by one of the group), I'll offer: Doesn't your mind work kind of like the stockperson? He/she isn't concerned with what you need or what you can use, what's good for you or bad for you this week, or even what you like or don't like. Their only job is to KEEP THE SHELVES STOCKED WITH EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING (also helping with Acceptance and Willingness to encounter products week to week that we dont like, can't use, etc. but no big deal since no one forces us to buy them).
Helping to draw the distinction between stocking the shelves and shopping from the shelves helps with a number of core processes from defusion to self-as-context (shopper vs. stocker vs. contents of my cart).
It's one of my favorite metaphors to use because everyone can relate and really have fun exploring it.
Keith Berfield