Partners for Collaborative Solutions
Client Expert Complementary Questions: Paving the Way for Co-Creating a Therapeutic Climate Ripe for Change
Often, we get referred adolescents for family counseling services with extensive treatment histories that are either forced to see us by a powerful social control agent representing a larger system like the juvenile justice system or they are being dragged in by their parents to be fixed by us. With each one of these scenarios, the parents are often feeling frustrated, angry, or stuck and the adolescent is not even a window-shopper for counseling. Furthermore, since these clients have experienced many treatment failures, they may assume we are no better than their former therapists and more than likely, are anticipating an archaeological problem excavation inquiry from their new therapists.
Complementary Questions to Break Down Key Relationship Barriers
For these therapy veteran clients, being asked client expert complementary questions early in the initial family therapy session can be quite disarming and a pleasant surprise for them. Not only do these questions inject a strong dosage of positive emotion into the parent-adolescent relationship but it produces valuable information about clients’ key strengths that can be utilized to empower them to resolve their presenting difficulties. Since the adolescents in these families often are in charge of the family mood and wield most of the power, we find it beneficial to ask them the first client expert complementary question. They are asked,
- “Let’s say while you are over at your best friend’s house, he/she asks you, ‘What are two things that you really appreciate about your mother?’ What would you tell him/her?”
Because it is their best friend who is asking this question, it is very difficult for the adolescent to resist responding. Once these two positive qualities/strengths are reported, the therapist can ask the adolescent to provide recent or past examples of the mother’s key strengths in action and what effect they have on him/her, both his/her thoughts and feelings, and how it helps their relationship. After gathering all of this valuable client information, we ask the parent the following question,
- “Let’s say as you are walking to your car after our session today, a nice woman walks up to you and asks, ‘What are two of your son’s/daughter’s top strengths?’ What would you tell her?”
Bringing Smiles to Clients’ Faces
In a similar fashion to the question posed to her son/daughter, the mother would be asked to give specific examples of her son’s/daughter’s top strengths in action and the positive effects they have on her thinking and feeling and how they benefit their relationship with her. Both the parents and adolescents alike when asked these questions tend to smile, are often pleasantly surprised by each other’s kind words, and they remind the clients of their their key individual competency areas and relationship strengths. Finally, we can explore with them in what relationship situations or contexts they should deploy their key strengths more to produce further changes.
If you are interested in exploring more into ways to cultivate changes in your client families, visit our workshops page to find out more.