refining our questions
When we ask a client about what they like, the client expands in front of us. They become larger. There’s more of them. And the client predictably experiences this and feels that there’s more of them to deal with whatever is troubling them.
When any of us humans is doing something we like, we naturally find ourselves in a mood of competency. If something happens when we are gardening, reading a favourite book, or lost in a movie, we deal with it - no problem.
If we help a client to discover what’s missing for them, that has the problem be a source of suffering, we can go looking with each individual person for this missing experience, behaviour, feeling or resource within their “likes” and expect to find it. If we know what we are looking for [what’s missing] and then know where to look for it [in the “likes”] we’ve got a respectful and practical process which we can confidently predict will be helpful.
It can also be so helpful to explore with each individual person what is about what they like to do that they particularly like. If someone likes travelling, when we ask about what they like about travelling, we might discover, and they may also discover, that travelling expands their experience, or get’s them away from the hum drum, or allows them to rest, of gives them time to paint, write, or dream. Finding out that someone likes travelling give us a direction to explore, and when we explore what they like about travelling, we add to the feeling of the client feels as if we are really listening to them, and adds to the therapeutic relationship.
A variation of asking what a client likes, is to ask about what they do for fun. Fun is in the same direction of liking, but is even more enlivening. It can also be useful to recognise that we can’t have a significant problem when we’re having fun. so inviting a client to have more fun, leaves less time for suffering.
When we ask a client about what problem they want to resolve, we can both be clearer about what would be useful for our work together.
It can be even more useful to explore what is it about your problem that is problematic for you. If a client has a problem with being too strict with their children, asking how come this is a problem to you, it can be transforming when the parent discovers that honouring individuality is important to them, their perspective can shift from “I’m a bad parent because I’m rigid” to “I’m a good person because individuality is important to me”. Fernando Flores disclosed that every problem is caused by the interruption of some concern [my translation], so when we articulate the concern there is a shift in perspective from being defective to being concerned.
A high school teacher in his late 50s each summer holidays for the last 10 years liked to go to some place that he’d never been to before. He liked the adventure, not having a plan, exploring and it always worked out. He had a problem. He’d reached a point in his teaching career where he didn’t know whether to just wait it out until retirement, to enrol in a business degree so he could apply for a promotion, or train to be a special school teacher. He’d never been in this situation before. After speaking about his enjoyment of the novelty of travelling, you could see the cogs turning as he made some connections, and he said that he’d be OK. His problem had disappeared.
My invitation is to play with the questions “What do you like doing?”, “What do you like about that?”, “What do you do for fun?”, “What problem do you want to resolve today?”, and “What is it about that problem that is problematic to you?”
