Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Metaphors
A Duck’s Therapist is passionate about uniting therapy and home life, streamlining the work of mental health professionals while empowering parents with robust support. By connecting the adults in children’s lives, we create a unified team to nurture kids from every angle, ensuring they receive the best all-around care.
Raising kids takes a village.
What’s Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) encourages embracing all emotions, even the tough ones, while staying true to your commitments. Like passing weather, feelings come and go, but ACT helps you remain focused on your values and goals, no matter the emotional storm. Instead of teaching kids to eliminate negative feelings, ACT teaches children to develop a healthier relationship with their internal experiences. Using engaging stories, imagery, and activities, ACT makes abstract concepts accessible, teaching kids to navigate feelings while pursuing what truly matters to them. It fosters psychological flexibility, empowering children to thrive despite emotional challenges.
Why Metaphors Are Magical for Kids
Metaphors can transform complex concepts into concrete, understandable images that match how young minds naturally process information. Children think in pictures, stories, and imaginative scenarios, so when we explain that emotions are like weather patterns or thoughts are like leaves floating down a stream, these concepts immediately make sense to them in a way that abstract explanations never could. Metaphors also engage children's creativity and curiosity, making therapeutic learning feel more like play than work. Research consistently shows that metaphor-based interventions increase treatment engagement and help children retain and apply coping skills more effectively.
Metaphors at Home
While metaphors are incredibly effective in therapy, they become even more powerful when parents incorporate them into daily family life, as children spend far more time at home than in therapy sessions. When parents use consistent metaphorical language, they create a shared vocabulary that helps children identify and communicate their internal experiences more effectively and gives parents more specific information about how to provide support. When children observe their parents using these same metaphors to navigate their own challenges, it models psychological flexibility and normalizes having difficult thoughts and feelings while still choosing meaningful actions.
Here are some great metaphors that are used in ACT therapy that you can also incorporate at home!
1. The Emotional Weather Metaphor
The Metaphor: Emotions are like weather—they come and go naturally. Sometimes it's sunny (happy), sometimes stormy (angry), sometimes cloudy (sad). The weather always changes, and we don't control it, but we can choose how to respond to it.
When to Use: Child is overwhelmed by intense emotions, difficulty accepting that sad/angry feelings are normal, trying to "make" feelings go away, emotional dysregulation episodes.
How It Helps: Teaches acceptance by normalizing emotional experiences and reducing the struggle against difficult feelings.
2. The Backpack Metaphor
The Metaphor: Difficult thoughts and feelings are like items in a backpack we carry. We can't throw them away, but we can choose whether to stop walking (avoiding life) or keep moving toward what matters to us, even with the backpack on.
When to Use: Avoidance behaviors (school refusal, social withdrawal), child believes they must feel better before acting, procrastination or giving up on goals, trauma-related emotional baggage.
How It Helps: Addresses committed action and acceptance simultaneously, teaching that we can move toward our values even while carrying difficult experiences.
3. The Mind as Sky Metaphor / Clouds in the Sky
The Metaphor: Your mind is like the sky, and thoughts/feelings are like clouds or weather patterns passing through. You (the sky) are always okay, even when there are storm clouds. The sky doesn't fight the weather—it just lets it pass through.
When to Use: Fusion with negative self-talk ("I am stupid," "I'm worthless"), overwhelming anxiety or depression, identity struggles or low self-esteem, difficulty with mindfulness concepts, depressive symptoms.
How It Helps: Promotes self-as-context and cognitive defusion, helping children separate their identity from their thoughts and feelings while fostering a stable sense of self.
4. The Driver and Passengers Metaphor / Passengers on the Bus
The Metaphor: You're the driver of a bus (your life), and difficult thoughts/feelings are noisy passengers. The passengers might yell directions (anxiety, sadness, anger), but you still get to choose where the bus goes. You can't kick the passengers off, but you don't have to let them drive.
When to Use: Feeling controlled by emotions or intrusive thoughts, decision-making paralysis due to anxiety, need to build sense of personal agency, difficulty with values-based choices, ADHD-related impulsivity, internal conflicts.
How It Helps: Strengthens committed action and self-as-context by emphasizing personal agency even in the presence of difficult internal experiences.
5. The Garden Metaphor
The Metaphor: Your life is like a garden where you plant seeds (actions) that grow into the things you care about (relationships, learning, fun). Some days are sunny, some rainy, and some have weeds (problems), but gardeners keep tending to their gardens regardless of the conditions.
When to Use: Lack of motivation or hope, difficulty connecting actions to long-term values, perfectionism, or fear of making mistakes, or a need to develop persistence and patience.
How It Helps: Emphasizes committed action and values while normalizing setbacks as part of growth.
6. Leaves on a Stream
The Metaphor: Imagine thoughts as leaves gently floating down a stream. The child visualizes placing each thought (e.g., "I'm scared") on a leaf and watching it drift away without trying to stop or grab it.
When to Use: Children experiencing rumination or intrusive thoughts, anxiety disorders, bedtime worries, when a child fixates on fears about school or separation.
How It Helps: Promotes cognitive defusion by helping kids observe their thoughts as temporary and separate from themselves, thereby reducing their emotional grip and allowing them to focus on the present moment.
7. Ball in a Pool
The Metaphor: Imagine trying to hold an inflatable beach ball underwater in a swimming pool—it keeps popping up, requiring constant effort and tiring you out. Instead, let the ball float on the surface while you swim freely.
When to Use: Kids who suppress emotions like anger or sadness, behavioral outbursts at home or school, or dealing with grief from family changes like divorce.
How It Helps: Illustrates acceptance, showing that fighting unwanted feelings drains energy, while allowing them to exist frees the child to engage in meaningful activities.
8. Tug-of-War with a Monster
The Metaphor: Picture playing tug-of-war with a big, scary monster (a complex emotion or thought) across a bottomless pit. Pulling harder exhausts you and risks falling in, but dropping the rope lets you walk away and do something else.
When to Use: Scenarios of emotional struggle, like tantrums from frustration, avoidance in OCD-like behaviors, when a child battles compulsions or anger during playtime or family routines.
How It Helps: Teaches acceptance by demonstrating that ceasing the struggle with inner experiences conserves energy for positive actions, reducing escalation of distress.
Key ACT Processes Addressed:
Acceptance: Weather, Backpack, Ball in Pool, Tug-of-War
Cognitive Defusion: Mind as Sky/Clouds, Leaves on Stream
Self-as-Context: Mind as Sky/Clouds, Driver and Passengers
Committed Action: Backpack, Driver and Passengers, Garden
Values: Garden, Driver, and Passengers
Mindfulness: Clouds in Sky, Leaves on Stream
All content on A Duck’s Therapist is created and tested by a licensed professional counselor
