I Make My Own Sandwiches

--- On a construction site in the Midwest, when the lunch whistle blew, all the workers would sit down together to eat. And with singular regularity Sam would open his lunch pail and start to complain.

"Son of a gun!" he'd cry, "not peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again. I hate peanut butter and jelly!"

Sam moaned about his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches day after day after day. Weeks passed, and the other workers were getting irritated by his behavior. Finally, another man on the work crew said, "Fer crissakes, Sam, if you hate peanut butter and jelly so much, why don't you just tell yer ol' lady to make you something different?"

"What do you mean, my ol' lady?" Sam replied, "I'm not married. I make my own sandwiches." ---

I hope that some of you might find this story of some help when working with your clients. I use this story after building a good alliance and after some discussion about how we all self-sabotage. It is usually well accepted. Some clients seem to really get a big laugh out of it and enjoy telling it to their family and friends. I will sometimes refer back to it with these clients by asking them what kind of sandwiches they are making or asking if some behavior pattern was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Thanks to all of you for your contributions to this dialauge and especially to Jeffrey Zeig and Stephen Lankton.

Dave

dhubbard@primenet.com

Replies:

Did he make enough bread?, by Stephen Lankton, 10/24/97 speaking of confusion (bread), by Jim Anderson, 10/28/97 Oddly, the world does spin!, by Stephen Lankton, 10/30/97 A way of being , by Jim Anderson, 10/31/97

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