Acceptance metaphors, week-end reflection

The metaphor-practice log captures four daily attempts. The week-end reflection is the worksheet that pairs with it, run on Sunday or whenever the week closes. The integration usually doesn’t happen during the daily entries. It happens when the client looks back across the week and notices which metaphor turned out to be the one that actually loosened the grip.

The form is six fields: a long-text on whether anxiety dropped after any of the visualisations and what that felt like, two long-text fields on mood and behavioural changes across the week, a 0–10 helpfulness slider, a yes/no/maybe radio on whether they’ll keep using the technique, and a free-text comments box at the end.

The radio button matters more than it looks. A client choosing “no” after five days of practice is data. They’ll usually have a reason, in the comments box, that points at how the technique was being misused. The most common one: they were using the metaphors to try to make the worry stop rather than to disengage from it. That distinction is the conversation in next session, not a “you didn’t try hard enough” note.

A client who picks “yes” plus a clear favourite metaphor in the comments box is fine. The point isn’t variety. The point is a working tool. If clouds turned out to be theirs, they keep clouds and you build the next intervention around it.

In my-cbt, you assign the reflection form once, dated for the end of the week. The submission saves alongside the daily metaphor logs in the case file, so when you open the case to prep next session you can read the daily slider scores and the week-end reflection together. The pattern is usually clearer in that combined view than in either alone.