The Metaphor Of The Ball On The Beach To Regulate Emotions

The beach ball metaphor is a very useful resource for regulating emotions, especially anxiety. It is a strategy that makes use of visualization and that also demands performance in another dimension: creativity. If this is so, it is because each one of us handles our problems in a particular way and this original exercise shows it to us.

To assess the relevance of this type of tool in psychological practice, it is necessary to first understand what we mean by therapeutic metaphors. It is a series of constructions, stories or rhetorical figures where the patient must find a relationship between an initial concept and some type of associated personal reality.

An example, one of the best known therapeutic metaphors is that of quicksand. In this exercise, the objective is to understand that sometimes, the more we struggle with our problems, the more we sink. The solution in many cases is to stop and make contact with what we have been avoiding so much.

Therefore, in these types of resources, the patient must carry out a series of psychological processes that will be of great help during the therapeutic process. First of all, you need to understand the metaphor. He must also feel identified and establish a correspondence between what is explained and what happens to him.

Last but not least, it is necessary for the person to be able, by himself, to think of some type of strategy that can help him in his life based on that resource that the psychologist has presented. The latter will act as a facilitator at all times, but will never solve for the patient the small challenge suggested in this exercise.

What does the metaphor of the ball on the beach consist of?

For the metaphor of the ball on the beach to have an effect and to help us, we will resort to visualization. As the psychologists McCurry and Hayes, S. C (1992) explain to us –in their research work Clinical and experimental perspectives on metaphorical talk–  creating mental images favors the later memory of metaphors. In this way, we can make use of them when we need it.

So, let’s see what this exercise consists of.

Visualize in your mind the following situation …

You are on the beach, it is a calm, clear day. The light saturates every corner of that perfect setting. However, you are not feeling well. You are anxious, a large number of emotions accumulate in you, all together, all stirring in an almost painful way: you feel fear, shame, anguish, anger …

• All that emotional universe is contained in a ball. This object symbolizes what is inside you, what you feel and that disturbs you in a desperate way. That feeling is so annoying that all you want is for it to go away. And how do you do it? Approaching the beach and dunking that ball in the water.
• Visualize that image with definition: imagine yourself straining to submerge that object. You don’t want anyone to see or perceive it. The only thing you want is for it to disappear forever, for the ocean currents to carry it away forever. Now, every time you submerge it, the ball goes back up. What’s more, the more force you exert, the more force it emerges again, hitting even yourself and making you lose your balance …

The metaphor of the ball on the beach, and you, how would you solve it?

The next step in the beach ball metaphor requires effort on your part. As we pointed out at the beginning, this resource requires a certain touch of creativity. In this way, and to better solve it, take into account these factors:

• The ball symbolizes your emotions : your anxiety, your fears, your anger, your shame … Dimensions that you have been hiding for a long time. However, you already know what effect doing the latter has, everything gets even worse and gets out of your hands.
• What could you do following the metaphorical device of the ball?

Let’s see below what is the most common (as well as useful) response to this proposal.

The best strategy is to stop submerging this object . We must stop losing energy, fighting against what is not possible or healthy : hiding emotions or submerging them does not work. As it is also not suitable, accumulate even more that discomfort.

We must catch the ball and go to shore to sit quietly with it. The objective? Deflate it. You have to make all the internal air that is in it disappear. That way, we will feel much better, more relieved. However, first you have to know where the valve is, that button that is holding the air.

Here, the metaphor of the ball on the beach should serve us so that each of us can find our own particular strategy to make our anxiety, fear or shame find its way out. We must find that “mechanism” that allows us to understand why we feel this way, facilitating access to the path that frees us from that discomfort.

Achieving it is not easy, but at least with this tool we will remember that the ball of our emotions cannot be hidden or submerged. The emotional world is accepted, understood and released.