The Power of Mental Pictures

> If a patient describes his anxious thoughts as a monkey on his back, McGuinty will ask, "What does it look like, is it your friend, does it have a name? Could we train it? ... Could it become a pet in some ways? Are there any good things about it?" This kind of approach, says Lynne Angus, a psychologist at York University who has studied the use of metaphor in clinical psychology, can be really effective: "Instead of having something attacking you, you then start to befriend it. It starts giving you agency over the experience."