Attending to Metaphor in Threat Assessment Interviews: Licking the Boots of the Establishment

If you spend any time in threat assessment or behavioral intervention work, you’ve probably had a moment where you ask a straightforward question, and instead of a straightforward answer, the person across from you says something like:

• “I feel like I’m tied to the tracks and the train’s already coming.”

• “I’m just this rusted signpost no one reads anymore.”

• “It’s like there’s an earthquake and I’m the only one taking it seriously.”

Or my personal favorite: “The administration is just licking the boots of the students.” At which point your brain says, “Okay, so, uh… trains? Boots? Earthquakes?” This is where you should feel that gentle tap on the shoulder and whisper: “Hey, this is the good stuff. Don’t let it go by.”

The Power of Story (a.k.a. Why the Metaphors Matter)

Michael White and David Epston[1] in Narrative therapy and Mark Kopp[2] in Metaphor Therapy have been saying for a long time what many of us discover the hard way: people don’t just tell you facts. They tell you stories about those facts. And those stories are often wrapped in metaphors.

In a threat assessment interview, attending to these metaphors matters a lot.

When someone says, “I feel like a rusted signpost no one reads anymore,” they aren’t giving you a throwaway line. They’re handing you a compact little emotional universe:

• Rusted: worn down, neglected, damaged over time.

• Signpost: meant to give direction, to help others.

• No one reads it anymore: ignored, dismissed, invisible.

That one sentence can tell you more about their sense of worth, belonging, and grievance than ten minutes of yes/no questions. Similarly, “There’s an earthquake, and I’m the only one taking it seriously,” is not about geology. That’s about feeling like the only responsible adult in a collapsing system and being furious that nobody else sees the danger. That’s ripe territory for grievance, moral outrage, and “I’ll show them” thinking, things we absolutely care about in threat assessment. And how about this, “The administration is licking the boots of the students”? That’s not just spicy rhetoric. That’s power, hierarchy, humiliation, and perceived injustice packed into a single, memorable image.

When Your Interview Turns into a Star Trek Episode

There’s an excellent Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Darmok” (Season 5, Episode 2), where the Enterprise encounters the Tamarians, an alien species whose language has defeated the Federation’s best linguists for years. The universal translator can handle the words, but not the meaning, because the Tamarians speak almost entirely in cultural metaphors and historical allusions. Phrases like: “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra or Temba, his arms wide,  and Shaka, when the walls fell.” Each of these is a shorthand reference to a Tamarian story. Without knowing the underlying myths, it all sounds like nonsense.

That’s your interview.

If someone says, “This is my 9/11,” they usually don’t mean “This is a large-scale terrorist attack with global impact.” They’re pointing to the emotional intensity: devastating, unthinkable, world-changing.

If someone says, “It’s like JonBenét Ramsey,” they’re not giving you a true crime analysis. They’re pointing to child vulnerability, tragedy, horror, and maybe public spectacle.

In other words, metaphors are emotional shortcuts. They plug their experience into a bigger cultural story to say, “It feels like this.”

If you’re only listening for literal content, you’ll miss the point. It’s like going to a Broadway musical and only paying attention to the exit signs.

How to Ride the Metaphor Instead of Ignoring It

So, what do you do with all this as a threat assessment professional?

You don’t have to become a full-time therapist. You just have to stop stepping over the metaphors like they’re small talk and start treating them as invitations.

Let’s take the “rusted signpost” example. Instead of nodding and charging into your next checklist question, you might say:

• “That image of being a rusted signpost that no one reads anymore really stands out. When did you first start feeling that way?”

• “Who do you wish would read the sign?”

• “If we wanted to repaint that sign or move it somewhere people would see it, what would that look like in your life?”

Now you’re inside their metaphor, not just observing it from a safe distance. You’re collaborating in their story, gently nudging it from hopeless and stuck toward maybe there’s a way this could change.

Same with the earthquake metaphor:

• “If there’s an earthquake and you’re the only one taking it seriously, what are you afraid is going to happen?”

• “Who do you think should be taking it seriously?”

• “What have you already tried to get people to listen?”

This gives you crucial data about perceived injustice and grievance, targets of anger (who’s not listening?), potential leakage or warning behaviors (what have they tried so far?), and insight into the depth of desperation or hopelessness.

All from one metaphor.

The Signpost, the Brewery, and the Secret Menu of Complaints

Here’s another fun way to think about it. I was at a brewery in Maryland where the entire back of the menu was devoted to one thing: all the ways customers’ unsupervised kids had destroyed the place. The menu took up an ENTIRE page describing how parents needed to watch their kids and what the potential fines and punishments would be if they failed to do this. This listed everything from climbing on furniture, knocking things over, messing with equipment, and breaking things.

It was written with enough humor to be readable, but also enough edge that you knew: oh, this is from pain. That menu is a giant metaphorical signpost: “We’ve been burned. A lot. Please don’t be those people.”

When something is written that loudly and prominently, it’s rarely about a one-off incident; it points to a pattern and a simmering frustration underneath. Exactly like an overblown email, a ranting social media post, or a student who keeps saying variations of “No one listens until something terrible happens.”

So, when your interview subject gives you that kind of signpost, a vivid metaphor, an overstuffed analogy, a dramatic comparison, that is your menu. That’s your chance to find out how long they’ve felt this way, how often it happens, what they’ve tried already, and wow, how close they feel to “something breaking.”

Practical Tips: Using Metaphor in Threat Assessment Interviews

You don’t need to overcomplicate this. Here are some simple, practical moves: Notice it out loud. Say something like, “I’m struck by the way you described that as if you’re tied to the tracks.” This alone communicates I’m listening. I heard you. Stay curious, and don’t miss these opportunities they are handing you to dive deeper into their understanding.

Ask open questions inside their metaphor. This helps you explore the ideas that they have shared. Think about the initial metaphor as them dropping a hint or opening the door just a crack. It’s your job to follow up with:

• “Where does that track go?”

• “Who put you there?”

• “What’s the train in this situation?”

Gently test the edges. This helps you connect their metaphor to specific safety concerns without mocking or minimizing it.

• “When you say it feels like an earthquake, are you worried something really dangerous might happen? To you? To others?”

Use it collaboratively. See the metaphor or their examples as a starting place for you to explore further.

• “If we were trying to make sure people finally ‘read the signpost,’ what would you want that sign to say?”

• “What would ‘less of an earthquake’ look like for you?”

Watch for escalation in the storytelling. If metaphors are getting more violent, catastrophic, or dehumanizing over time, that’s not just colorful language; that might be movement along a pathway to violence or deepening grievance.

Why This Matters for Safety Work

Threat assessment is often framed as fact-finding: timeline, behaviors, access to means, target, triggers. All important. But people don’t live in bullet points; they live in stories.

Metaphors show you:

• How dangerous the situation feels from the inside

• Where the person sees themselves (victim, hero, avenger, invisible extra)

• Who holds power in their narrative

• Whether they see any off-ramps or only catastrophic endings

When you tune into metaphor, you’re not “being soft” or doing extra credit therapy. You’re getting higher-quality data and a clearer sense of risk, while also building rapport and lowering defensiveness.

And honestly? It makes the work a little more human and a little less like interrogating someone with a clipboard. So next time someone tells you the administration is “licking the boots” of somebody, or that they’re a rusted signpost in the middle of nowhere, don’t just move on.

Pull up a chair in that story.

Ask a few curious questions.

And see what that metaphor is trying to warn you about, before the train, the earthquake, or the angry brewery staff show up in real life.

[1] White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. W. W. Norton.

[2] Kopp, R. R. (1995). Metaphor therapy: Using client-generated metaphors in psychotherapy. Brunner/Mazel.