Questions that get your client past: ‘I can’t get over this’

A distressed man on the phone, the birth of his baby had been for him a very difficult experience indeed. What you are about to read is a conversation that in various forms I have had with more than one man. Researchers tell us that the number of men who are reporting symptoms of PTSD following witnessing their partner giving birth is rising fast.

The story he was living in after watching her giving birth had been effecting his sleep, his relationship with the woman he loves and his work. After some time telling his story, he sobbed:

 ‘I can’t get over this, I will never be the same again’! 

Then a pause on the line, a sense of what he had said being the final word. 

Two questions came next:

‘What would happen in your life if you could ‘get over this’?

And

‘What has stopped you ‘getting over this’ until now’?

No ‘content’ was being offered, the questions just offer him a direction for his meaning/map making search.

His own deletions, distortions and generalisations, in the answering of the questions now have the potential to be uncovered and his experience of life expanded. (Please watch the short video below for further explanation of this point)

Ask yourself:

• ‘What directions are the questions pointing in’?
• ‘Do the questions imply any kind of advice or content’?
• ‘What has to be assumed by the one answering them’?

Then, having reflected upon those things, take a moment to think about the story you are living in right now. Is there a problem that you have been wrestling with until now?

Begin to get a sense of where in your own life there exists for you a can’t or shouldn’t?

Ask yourself the two questions and write down your answers.

On the MAM3 Rewind program we spend a lot of time training the students in the use of outcome focused questions, these types of questions have enormous power to support a women/man finding their own answers to what has until now been a problem to them.

The model we are using in our teaching comes from NLP.  Within the core of the model of NLP is the meta model, it was probably the very first model in NLP. The power of it is phenomenal, you have just had the briefest of introductions.

Yours,

Mark