A best-selling author and journalist tells how to learn more about symbolic modeling, a process that facilitates clients to create and explore metaphors around crucial emotions or personal dilemmas, he booked a session with James Lawley and Penny Tompkins. His mother had died a few weeks before and he decided that would be the starting point ...

My first experience with Symbolic Modelling was as a patient. Or, as a client, because this word is more appropriate to define myself. In my life I suffered from mental illness and this method was a decisive turning point towards my recovery, or better still, brought all my life to a turning point. ...

A client of Marian Way, Apricot Island, describes the changes that have taken place since her 90 minute Symbolic Modelling Session.

John's beautifully written personal story of how he came to be interested in alternate ways of knowing, the role Symbolic Modelling played, his hunches for the future, and the completion of his first novel.

This 3-part article contains a transcript for each of the two sessions where Penny Tompkins and James Lawley worked with a participant on a Symbolic Modelling training in 2001. The transcripts are annotated to explain some of the modelling involved and the purpose for each question. In part 3 the client describes - both in words and drawings - the changes she experienced during the sessions, and what happened in the following 6 months.

Clean Language and Symbolic modelling trainer Marian Way describes how a personal metaphor of 'a heart that knows' re-appeared some years after it's first emergence and, through 3 days of exploration in a Normandy garden, evolved into a life's calling.

These notes are based on my experience of using writing as an adjunct to clean language therapy and personal development. I have benefited significantly from the use of drawings... for exploring metaphors alone. However, at times I felt constrained by picturing...  I am used to writing and certainly feel more competent at it than I do at drawing. 

I started Grovian Metaphor sessions with Philip Harland. This turned out to be a regular monthly event for three years: three years of therapy was more than I had planned for, but it was such fun to do. It took a few sessions for Philip and I to build up the trust I needed, but once that was established I let all the demons out of the closet: all those secrets I had kept hidden since a boy. In my dreams they were monsters but when they came into the light they turned out to be just thin, tired, old men so grateful at long last to have been let off the hook ...

A therapist and client describe their experience of Clean Language and Metaphor Therapy (originated by David Grove)

The following feedback comes from Thomas Zelenz, a participant who flew from California, to attend a 7 day Symbolic Modelling intensive training in London in 1999. He has chosen to describe some of the personal changes he has experienced since returning home.