My Interest in David’s Inquiries

Hi all,

Thank you for asking about my project. I ‘met’ David through an email and subsequent conversations. I became curious about how he constructs his Inquiries, which are so distinctive and surprising, plus being ‘precise’, concise, and entice toward possibilities. (Enough ‘-ises’ to begin my USA summer!) I began taking a closer look at his questions/replies, sort of unpacking the pieces he puts into his sentences. This fascinates me! His constructions feel so ‘smooth’ it can easily go unnoticed (which is certainly one of his skills).

I wondered if in The Collab if we all might present some inquiries and discuss what different styles of inquiries ‘do’. In particular, I’d like to talk about the intersection between the intention… and how a person received/heard the inquiry (or might receive it). A lot of my study concerns how inquiries are heard and what in them contributes to changes (in thoughts, feelings, actions)….. Why do NT inquiries ‘do’ what they do? How does the hearer unconsciously unpack Inquiry pieces? How can Practitioners construct/pack the Inquiry with pieces that open possibilities?

I suspect practitioners ‘know’ quite a bit about making inquiries from experiencing the responses you get to your questions… I hope we can have ongoing discussions of this topic. Perhaps we could each present an Inquiry with some general background info about what led to that Inquiry, the response, and discuss more precisely how / why the Inquiry ‘worked’ (or not)? I’d view this as a great learning opportunity, to see how others formulate their questions/inquiries.

Would this interest anyone? We’d need to work out with Peggy about which Forum we could use for this. I’d hope we can do this as an ongoing series so we each can contribute our experiences about an Inquiry/Inquiries and then discuss? What do you think? Peggy, would this activity work here?

Judy

Hi Judy,
As you know, this is wildly interesting to me. I’m eager to engage with you around these ideas. Right now, I’m immersed in a week of Maggie Carey workshops – and currently at a venue with very slow connection..so I will have to wait to write more. However, I wanted to be sure others can find you here. For some strange reason, new topics on this Forum only show up when someone responds. So consider this your first response!

Welcome!
Peggy

Hi Peggy and everyone,

I’ve been thinking about how the group might identity their interests in a certain kind of inquiry while avoiding any focus on ‘naming’ them. Once again, I feel caught between the human mind’s propensity to categorize subjects under some naming convention, versus encouraging everyone to question a question even without knowing a specific name for that kind of inquiry. This ‘naming’ issue is quite interesting to me!

Perhaps it would be best, first, to ask that members here spend some time thinking about and collecting a few examples of Inquiries? Someone might want to construct examples specifically to talk about them?… or… to jot down Inquiry examples they have used and the effects they observed? Either way, members might need some time to organize what Inquiries they want to present here.

Another way we could begin is through members asking questions about an Inquiry they saw in a practitioner’s writing? For example, perhaps someone noticed a particular example in one of David’s articles that he / she would like to discuss. This might help members to easily find an example…

I also wondered if it would be helpful to discuss any differences people note in constructing an Inquiry at the beginning of a conversation, versus one constructed in a later conversation? Do some types of Inquiries get ‘reused’ in different forms throughout conversations?

Or, I could present some information to get the conversation started?

What ideas do members have?

Judy

What ideas do members have?

Valentina,

Hi Everyone.
Judy, thank you for your question “What interests you most right now about making Inquiries?”.
Hm…
Questions that would generate person’s curiosity to continue our conversation.
Questions that would generate answers that would allow persons to descover amazing and fascinating knowledges about their lives and about themselves.

Thank you.

Hello,
I worked with a young woman yesterday and she said she did not like to talk. She told me that she saw a therapist before who made her feel awkward with her questions. Ok, good information for me but a tough job to then know how to move forward. I was hoping David E would show up.
I went the direction of wanting to know more about her and trying to not make them typical stock type questions. She talked quite a bit and said that it did not feel awkward when I asked how it was going.
What she said she appreciated at the end was that I did not diagnose her with OCD but rather used her words of “Being Neat” and we looked at this from many angles. Not just an obsession kind of angle.
I’m not sure what kind of inquiry this was – yes some externalizing and some re-authoring. but I just had a heightened awareness of not wanting to ask questions that she did not want to answer. I should thank her for that as I wish I held that awareness more acutely all the time. i think I fall into sometimes thinking I can ask anything i want. I don’t really believe that! But I think I fall into it without noticing at times….
from Sarah who is sort of embarrassed to admit that

Dear Sarah,

It sounds like the woman experienced very ‘unhearing’ therapists. It’s shocking how (too) many therapists deliver questions in a mechanized, machine-gun style that leaves a client feeling hole-riddled. Conversely, when questions allow someone to describe themselves, it doesn’t create holes. The fact she “talked quite a bit” gives direct feedback that your questions allowed ways for her own descriptions to ‘fill in’ her stories without causing or adding holes.

Michael White made a comment in his 2007 Trauma conference that really struck me. A male therapist, reflecting about what he heard from Michael that day, began to describe his acute remorse about how he felt he had not done a good job with his former clients. Paraphrased, the man thought he had been duped into focusing more on insurance demands for DSM diagnoses and ‘Other’ dictated agendas rather than what his clients needed him to be. I listened very intently, curious to see how would Michael respond to a such a disclosure! Here is a snippet from Michael:

If we’re not touched with some remorse, then we’re a hazard and we should quit. ….because if we don’t experience remorse, then not only are we more hazardous, but we’ve lost our future–we have no future. In other words, our future will be areproduction of our present in terms of our practice. We won’t have questions about it, we won’t be able to think outside of what we would otherwise been originally thinking. I think that experience of remorse is to be highly valued. Really highly valued. … I get <i>excited when I hear about this because it’s a reflection of the developments of your work<i/>, that makes your work safer to people, it means there’s a future to your work. There wouldn’t be if you didn’t experience remorse.

[bold added] – From: “Trauma and narrative therapy: Video recordings of Michael White (part 3)”

Isn’t that a wonderful response, Sarah? So very reparative but acknowledging! And it certainly addresses the ‘other side’ of such an otherwise debilitating, paralyzing emotion like remorse. By contrast, I could easily imagine a traditional psychologist replying in some ‘pathologizing’ manner, such as ‘exploring’ back to why this man felt ‘so inferior’ (especially with the usual psych view that no one is less inferior than a client!).* But instead, Michael ‘turned’ remorse ‘around’ –or added the other ‘side’–through legitimizing the experience, and even more than that, through elevating the idea that remorse has a positive standing within the practice of NT. Sarah, might your feelings deserve equal ‘elevation’ because you recognize with ‘heightened awareness’ what exactly your work means for both you and your clients? Your account touched me–I could imagine hearing someone say she felt wary that you might be like ‘all the rest’ and how you’d feel you were standing on a 12-sq inch tile, afraid to move in any direction because it might make the person turn away from you… But your following questions created space –regardless of any other ‘name’ of inquiries you used, your words created space for the woman to simply talk to you. You took 12-square inches …and began enlarging where you both sat and communicated together. How wonderful! I would suspect, if I’d been there, that some of your questions also ‘turned’ the ways she commonly felt/thought about therapists and her story of “Being Neat”. When you look back on it now, would you describe some of your questions that way?

Perhaps this woman’s wariness, you evoking thoughts of David E. with a wish for his ‘presence’ with you, and your own professional experiences assisted you to do that? What do you think, Sarah? Do you think your Inquiries also created space for “Being Neat” to have more room to simply be present with you/her? Sarah, I’d love to talk to you more about ways you create and enlarge spaces… especially with very wary people! I’d also love to discuss more the role of evoking and what David referred to as ‘infusions’.

Judy
* I should say I have rather strong negative views about ‘traditional’ psychiatrists/psychologists, by which I mean professionals following typical psych-analytical methods and interventions. I hope my views don’t cause offense, but there’s just such a big difference with how NT Inquiries create positive self-worth and self-knowing.