tions, questions
For example: “What’s your doctor’s name?” (a direct
question) becomes, “Do you know the name of your
doctor?”
An indirect question will often begin with “Can you
tell me”, or “Do you know”, or “I wonder if ”, and then the
word order is the same as in an a?rmative statement.
Again, this is something that can be embedded in therapy
scripts, for example, “And I wonder whether you’ll allow
yourself to relax immediately or in a little while”.
So let’s return to classic solution focused questions.
One of the best and yet often overlooked questions when
trying to get information from a client is:
“When does the problem not occur?”
This question raises the client’s consciousness to the
fact that ‘their problem’ may not always be there – which
is probably what they consciously think and may have
indicated before. It may be that they can’t think of an
occasion when it’s not there, so you need to
ask them about occasions when it is not so
bad or they feel better able to cope with it.
This leads on nicely to the questions that
show the client they aren’t simply a victim,
they do have some control, and they are
using it. Clearly making them aware of this
will help them move forward.
So the next question might be to ask,
“How are you coping now?”or, “How have
you coped up to now?” This gets them
thinking that they have been able to cope
and they will be able to cope in the future.
It’s always important to celebrate success,
so whenever a client achieves something
that they perhaps didn’t think they would
be able to do, it’s important to make a big
deal of it – treat it as a milestone on the
road to their particular destination. You can
dig deeper into their success, asking what
strengths they used or what techniques have
worked well for them.
It can often be useful to recognise their
response to a situation as being perfectly
normal or rational, and it may be worth
saying something like, “If it had been me in
that situation, I think I would have behaved
the same.” You can express your surprise
that it’s not worse and ask them, “Why isn’t
it worse?”
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