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Your reactions, feelings, and hunches
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What
Here are some types of things you could contribute to him. (You will work out your own after a while. What matters is how! If you check yourself against the five “how” points you can try these and other things. )
Your reactions, feelings, and hunches
6. Watch your person's face and body, and if you see something happening, ask about it. Nonverbal reactions are often good places to ask him to get down into his feelings.
7a. You don't need to get hung up on whether you're right or not, when you sense something. If you sense something, then there is something, but you may not be right about what it is, so ask.
You will often see on his face some of how he is reacting to whatever you are saying or doing, and ask about that, too. (Feel easy about it, if he doesn’t like how you're doing. You can change it, if you so decide, or you might be fine even if he doesn't like how you do. Let the person have room to have negative reactions
to you, and be wanting to hear what they are. ) Don't guess, ask. If you guess, make it a question, " What did you just feel? ”
7b. Don't always stay with the words the person is saying, look at and sense the person and whatever you see, hear, or sense, you can say that. Does he sound angry? Does he sound discouraged? Insistent? What way did he say what he said? Then instead of just getting with what he meant to convey, you can say, " You said such and such, but you sound angry, also. Are you? " (and if he says yes, let him tell you what that is. If he gets no further, ask him, “Can you get into what the anger is? " )
8. You can use your own felt reactions to what's going on, to lead you to sensing more clearly what is going on with the other person or with both of you. If you feel bored, annoyed, impatient,
angry, embarrassed, excited, or any way that stands out, it indicates something. See in you what it indicates. If you are bored you might find that it is because the person does not seem to be getting into anything meaningful. Then you can ask him, " Are you getting into what you really want to get into? " If you are angry, what is the person doing to make you angry? When you find that, you can say it, for instance, " Are you maybe shutting me out, like you gave up on me already? Did you? "
It helps to permit yourself to have any feelings whatever that you may have while working with someone; let them be as unlovely as they may be. That way you can be free inside to attend to what’s happening in you, and that often indicates what’s happening with the other person, or between you. This does not mean directly sharing the negative feeling with the person, but doing some work to find out what the feeling means for you and sharing that.
9. If you get a hunch as to what he is feeling, by putting together a lot of theoretical reasoning in your head, or if you get it from a long set of hints, don't take up time saying all this to the other person. Just ask him whether he is feeling the way you now think he is feeling. For example, don't say, " Because of these and these and those and those reasons, which I put together this way and which indicate this and this because of that and that, I think you must be afraid of such and such. " Just ask him, " Are you maybe afraid of such and such? "
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Example: If you conclude that his relation with a woman is " oedipal" (if you're into that theory), ask yourself, what sort of a feeling edge might he then find in himself. Then skip the oedipal theory and ask him, " Do you maybe feel small or something, as if she is the adult and you aren't quite? " Or, “Do you have something there like you could be punished, some threat or something? ”
10. You can say any hunch or idea in an asking way, sometimes you might add another possibility to ensure that he knows it's not a conclusion but an invitation for him to look how it is in him. " Is it like you're scared of so and so… or maybe ashamed? How does it feel? "
Some standard good questions which may help, especially if the person is stuck
11. The most basic questions are, " How are you feeling? ", “How is it with you? ", or " How have things been for you this week? " Getting someone focused on the present can also be good. " What are you feeling right now, here in this room? ”
Other good questions are those which check specifically about a person's life. Who does he live with and what is going on in that situation and how does he feel about it? What are his school or job issues? Particularly if people are talking around and around about what seems to be stuff in their heads, it may be good to ask about what is or isn't happening in their real lives.
It may be worthwhile to ask how the person is meeting his needs for closeness, whether physical or emotional. If no closeness is happening for that person currently, you might check out what is happening about the unmet needs. Is the person into heavy fantasy stuff or any kind of weird trip? It also may help to talk
about what is in the way of getting these needs met, how to change this. This may, of course, get you right to the heart of their big life problem.
12. If the person is unable to do something he wishes he could do or do well, ask him, " When or with what could you do this kind of thing well? ” Then ask him to use that as a model for how it might go with this thing you're working on.
13. You can ask the person, regarding any bad thing he's fighting in himself, or puzzling about, " How is this bad thing in some way good, or useful, or sensible? " This is a heavy question and you might precede it with something like this, “No bad thing that's in a person is all bad. If it's there, it has some right or useful aspect which we have to listen for. If we find what the thing is good for, then it can let go. So, give it a friendly hearing, and see what it says, why it's right. ” The point is to help him stop fighting his bad things long enough to allow them to open, so the positive striving in them can come out. (Another way to put this is that anything in someone makes sense, and he has to let the way it feels be for a few minutes, so that the sense it makes can come out. )
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Often very bad things protect the person from other bad things. If he can see what the bad thing protects him from, he can sometimes protect himself much better than this thing does for him.
Sometimes the trouble is in the very fighting and trying that a person puts against the way he feels. If he lets how he feels be, a right next step then comes out of it which he couldn't make up and force. An example would be a fat person who can't control his eating and who is very down on himself about this. If he can inquire in a friendly way what the eating and fatness does for him, he might find that this is the only way he has been able to take care of himself when he is down.
14. If the person sounds discouraged, suicidal, or very angry about his unmet needs, you can ask him, " Do you feel an assumption that you can’t ever get what you need? " (If so, let him feel his way into what that is. ) Some of people’s most frantic or seemingly destructive reactions are really a life-affirming fight against
some part in them which prohibits what they need ever coming about, and thus makes them sure they can never have it. The point then is to shift the focus to this assumption or prohibition, which has to be false in some way: what does it say, and why?
15. Sometimes it helps to ask a suicidal person, “Are you thinking about committing suicide at somebody? Whom at? ” He may know right away whom at, and the focus may shift to where it needs to, that relationship. (It may also help to say that this person probably won't understand the suicide any better than he or she understood anything else…)
16. Sometimes, if a person is angry, it pays to ask him: " Are you hurt about something? "
17. When a person is stuck, say, " Be that part of you (that anger, that stopper, that such-and-such), what does it feel like saying? Say that out loud. " Then, after a minute or two, ask him to be himself again, and to see what he feels like saying to that part.
18. If a person got down to a basic fear or bad thing (" Then I'd be all alone …”, or " Then I would be helpless…”), and if he is sitting there and nothing good is happening for him, ask him what it is that makes that seem so bad, " Why would it be so heavy if you were all alone? ", " Why does it feel so terrible to be helpless? " You are asking him to challenge the assumption that this particular thing is obviously " the worst" thing, and instead to see what's making it seem so. (You aren't implying that it isn't bad, just implying that it needn't be a dead-end obviously-totally-bad-thing that one can't go any further with. )
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