Partners for Collaborative Solutions
SEVEN FEEDBACK QUESTIONS TO ASK THERAPY CLIENTS
In my therapeutic work with clients, I strive to be totally transparent with sharing my hunches, ideas, and feelings with them. I also regularly invite their feedback about any recommended adjustments I need to make to help them feel more satisfied with our work together. That said, we all have had certain challenging clients in our careers where we were feeling stuck, they could not give us any clear or constructive feedback on what we needed to do differently with them, or we deliberately held back from sharing with them how frustrated we were feeling with their coming late or not showing up for their appointments out of fear that they would be offended and would drop out of therapy. I am sure many of you can think of stuck and frustrating client situations like this where you are saying to yourself, “Uh…they are already twenty minutes late…maybe they won’t come or they dropped out of therapy.”
The Infinity of the Un-said
Back in 1986, I had invited Harry Goolishian and Harlene Anderson to Chicago to provide a three-day intensive training for a small group of experienced therapists. This incredible training experience provided all of us with many important takeaways that continue to resonate with my colleagues and me to this very day.
Some of these valuable words of wisdom were: “Knowledge is always on the way.” “Always honor the client’s story and avoid being a narrative editor.” “Clients are the experts on their stories.” “’Problems are linguistic constructions and reside in language.” We learned about some of the key philosophers that theoretically informed their Collaborative Language Systems Therapy approach, such as Hans Lipps’s “circle of the unexpressed” and Hans Gadamer’s the “infinity of the unsaid.” Goolishian and Anderson refer to these unspoken client thoughts and feelings as the “not yet said.”
The client “not yet said” can take the form of courageously sharing a family secret, sharing a strong desire or wish with a family member for the first time, and so forth. Finally, I remember Harry saying, “If we expect our clients to share their most meaningful chapters of their problem stories with us and change, we too have to be willing to listen generously and change as well.”
Seven Questions to Ask Your Clients
To help unstick the treatment process, we have developed an effective strategy that we call inviting the clients to speculate about the therapist’s “not yet said.” We ask the clients the following questions:
“What questions do you think I have avoided asking you about your situation that are really meaningful to you and important for me to ask?”
“Do any of you have any hunches about why you think I have held back from asking those questions?”
“What courageous steps do you think I have held back from taking with you in our sessions together that would make you feel that we were more on the same page with meeting your expectations and give you more faith in my ability to help you in the best way possible?”
“What unhelpful thoughts or uneasy feelings do you think I am reacting to that have prevented me from taking those steps with you?”
“What do you think I am missing or did not hear you say that is really important that we need to revisit and do something about that could make a big difference with your situation?”
“I would like you to pretend here. Let’s say you were my family therapy supervisor observing us work together. What unproductive thoughts or ways of interacting with you would you have me abandon? What new ways of viewing your situation and new directions would you encourage me to pursue that would be much more productive in helping a couple like you?”
“What else would you encourage me to ask them or try with them that you think could really make a big difference?”
Feedback Liberates Clients and Therapists
We have found over the years that clients will not hesitate when given the opportunity to share their expertise with us about what our constraints might be and what we need to do differently with them. This strategy also can have a liberating effect on the therapist and free him or her up to take more risks, which will pave the way for co-creating workable realities with our most challenging clients. Finally, if you really want to empower your most challenging clients it is not about coming up with the Grand Solution to offer them but instead, it is what you enable them to tell you that is transformative.