so recently i heard the advice to not ask clients questions during coaching / therapy and i've been chewing on it
Conversation
the stated reason was that questions can send clients into their heads / into analysis, which takes them out of their bodies / feelings
which matches my experience w/ both myself and others; i've already mostly been avoiding questions and this is further motivation to do that
1
8
i'm thinking about it because - okay, so people keep assuming i must have done a lot of IFS / parts work because i keep talking about it but really i've done very little (until recently), and part of why is i didn't get much out of asking them questions
1
7
many of my parts seem wary of trick questions, rhetorical questions, loaded questions - any kind of question that isn't really a question but is a disguised attack
1
15
questions where the questioner thinks one answer is "right" and the others are "wrong" and is waiting for you to say the "right" one or else punish you for saying the "wrong" ones
1
12
currently one typical way i start sessions with a new client is to first have them describe to me what they want to work on and then, with that context loaded up, try saying out loud
"i feel sad"
"i feel angry"
"i feel afraid"
(the emotions from the bio-emotive framework)
Replying to
this is different from asking "how are you feeling about this?" because sometimes people hear that question and start thinking
doing this instead involves zero thinking or analysis; all i ask the client to do is notice how it feels to say the words (sometimes over and over)
1
7
we move on to more complex feelings-words from there, and then if either of us gets the sense that something is getting in the way of them feeling something, i ask them to try to locate that feeling of resistance in their body if possible
then i ask them to say "hello" to it
1
6
1
2
then we wait patiently for a response (from the resisting part) to "hello" and maybe work with whatever comes up; words, images, thoughts, memories, etc.
then i ask them to say (not necessarily these exact words) "thank you for everything you do for me"
1
3
just "hello" and "thank you" can already do some powerful stuff, i've done this with 2 clients so far and it was the highlight of the session both times
neither of these is a question!
1
8
this gets at some of 's non-naive trust dancing stuff too; questions require a certain level of trust that they're in good faith and not attacks, that may not be there! if not, you have to start somewhere else
Quote Tweet
My stoa video about my NNTD framework is now live! I think the presentation was a solid "okay", but the Q&A was stellar on all counts (as I would expect from the stoa!)
Check it out here 
(Q&A starts 27mins in if you already know the gist of NNTD)
youtube.com/watch?v=JAxq96
(Q&A starts 27mins in if you already know the gist of NNTD)
youtube.com/watch?v=JAxq962
5
and saying thank you (*if you can actually mean it*) is not a bad place to start building trust
1
4
another thread to pull in: the extended massive orgasm book (which is exactly what it sounds like) has a really interesting piece of advice for communicating during sex: "ask only questions whose yes-or-no answers won't cause either partner to 'lose'"
amazon.com/Extended-Massi
1
10
very applicable to coaching / therapy i think. ime it hurts the momentum of a session for clients to feel like they've "failed" in any way - any sense that i've set them a task and they didn't do it right
fortunately the only task i ever really set is "notice how this feels"
1
14
and there's a way in which it's kind of impossible to fail at "notice how this feels"
whatever your experience is is automatically a valid answer to that question; including if the experience is "idk i can't tell" or "idk numb i guess" or "idk blank i guess"
12