Healing the Trauma of Abuse

Using Metaphor Therapy

  The generative question which drove David Grove in his initial creation of Metaphor Therapy 
was, “Where do people go when they dissociate?” Using this question and his unique 
integration of Client-centered therapy and Ericksonian hypnosis, David produced this most 
complete therapeutic approach for healing of all aspects of traumatic abuse.
This approach directly addresses the traumatic consequences of depersonalization , i.e., being 
out-of-body, fragmented and having interjected the perpetrator.
The next slide is a summary of the healing questions used in Metaphor therapy for traumatic 
healing. 
For more information you can look at http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/problemdomains.html. The article  
includes David’s original work and his later extensions in the “Clean” use of language for Traumatic 
Healing.

» © 2009 Monroe Judkovics
 Basic Metaphor Clean Language Questions

Start Locating in Space (1) DefiningAttributes (2)

"And what do you want?
"And how do you know that "And where is ...?' "Does it have a size or shape?"
you don't ........'? "And whereabouts?" "And then what happens?"
"And where in your body is ....? 'And is there anything else about ...?
"And what kind of ...is that ..

"And what happens just before ...? " And that's ...like what?"
"And where did ..... come from?"

Moving Time Back (3b) Metaphor Moving Time Forward (3a)

"And would be M(2) interested in coming

back into your body?"
(M2 is a fragment which is Out-of-Body) "
Solution Finding (4) And then what happens?"
"And could .....go out of your body?" "And what happens next'?
And does ...go out of your body?
(If No movement) And you want ..(name)... to leave and And what needs to happen ...........?
.....(name) .... won't leave and what could happen?
(Introjection/Possession) And take as much time as you
"You want to do..... and you
can't do ... and what could happen?" need.
Full Syntax
"And would M(1) be interested in going to
M(2) or would M(2) be interested in going
And [clients words]. to M(1)?"
And how could M1 go to M2 ?
© 2002 Monroe Judkovics Based on David Grove's
And when/as [clients words], And when could M1 go to M2 ? Metaphor Healing. Modified from
(M1 and M2 are in the body and disjoint. http://www.devco.demon.co.uk/CleanLanguage.html
Splitting) © copyright 1998 Penny Tompkins and James
[Clean Question]? Lawley