Blog 4

“One study, from 2010, found that physicians use metaphors in almost two-thirds of their conversations with patients who have serious illnesses. Physicians who used more metaphors were seen as better communicators. Patients reported less trouble understanding them, and felt as though their doctor made sure they understood their conditions,” (Khullar, 2).

I support this quote, due to the fact that what it’s saying is true. There have been quite a few times where doctors have used metaphors or analogies to help me understand my condition. It is important as a patient to understand what you are being treated for and what the medication that you are being given does. You wouldn’t bring your car to the shop to be fixed and pay for it without knowing what you’re paying them to do. The metaphors that doctors use are helpful and necessary, especially when dealing with patients with serious illnesses.

“I’ve long wondered whether that word -fighter – and the other military language used to help her conceptualize her disease did more harm than good,” (Khullar, 1).

I know a lot of people who, when dealing with a serious condition or disease, have used military terms to help them either come to terms with how it will end, or help them pull through just fine. When using military terms with diagnosis’s, it is truly up to the patient how they perceive it. They can think of their journey as a fight or a battle, rather than an enemy that must be defeated.

“Metaphors are a fundamental mechanism through which our minds conceptualize the world around us, especially in the face of complexity. But evidence suggests they do more than explain similarities- they can invent them where they don’t exist, and blur the lines between the literal and the figurative,” (Khullar, 2).

Sometimes blurring the lines is needed when discussing a persons mental or physical health. Metaphors are there to help expand and broaden a persons mental capabilities when discussing issues involving mental health. I feel that blurring the lines for someone with anxiety or depression would be beneficial so that they can look at their decisions and issues from other angles.

“They’re meant to make someone realize that they’ve only been looking at one side of a thing,” (Erard, 2).

I feel that this quote shows the other ways that metaphors can contribute to mental health. When someone’s struggling with anxiety or depression they only see one side of things. They get stuck on minute details, and never look at the big picture. Using metaphors can help some to see either the big picture or another way to look at whatever is bothering them.

“But whenever we give a thing a name that belongs to something else, we give it a whole network of analogies too…. And metaphor gives us a much more vivid understanding of Juliet than if Shakespeare had literally described what she looks like,” (Geary, 2).

When I read this quote, I knew what it meant. It gave me that distinct understanding that, hopefully, can be passed on into my paper. When it says that there is a whole network of analogies, it means that it can help people make their own understanding of the metaphor. For mental health, it can help people understand their own meanings of things. It can help people with social disabilities understand what people mean when they talk to them in a figurative way, or a metaphorical way.