Where?/Whereabouts? questions

[JamesLawley]

Recently someone posed the question:

After using Clean Language for the first time with a "non-trained" client I was asked what I meant by the "where/whereabouts" questions. All I could think of was to ask: "inside/outside of you". How do you cleanly guide them towards the intended direction for the answer?

I replied:

It's great to know that you are practising the questions. And yes, some people new to the process will ask what we mean by "where/whereabouts?". Asking "inside/outside of you?" is a neat solution I'd never thought of, so thank you for that.

There are several ways I approach this kind of situation:

1) My first response would be to pause before I respond because clients will often say something like "I don't know what you mean 'where is my future?' [pause] right in front I suppose."

2) If the client asks "What do you mean by 'where is X?', do you mean ......?" then my answer will almost always be "yes" regardless of what the "......" is. My aim being to send the meta-message that the client is always right about their own experience and I want to hear what they were going to answer.

3) Probably my most likely response would be change the question to "I mean when you ... how do you know you ..." e.g. When you feel confident, how do you know you feel confident?

This more general question will tell me what the client currently uses to distinguish this particular experience from all their other experiences. (If they are not aware of using location, then are they aware of any other attribute of this experience -- sometimes a client with very low self-awareness will not be able to answer this question at all. You can usually tell when they respond with the blank look that I interpret as: 'I understand the individual words of that question but collectively they make no sense to me")

More generally, I can recommend that:

4) At the beginning with a new client, make sure that you ask 'where?' of parts of their experience that are commonly thought of as having a location, e.g. a feeling or when they are using a clear spatial metaphor (almost everyone does eventually).

5) Also, when you ask the 'Where?' question of an element of a client's subject experience, ask it as congruently as if you were asking it of a physical object. (If you don't expect to get an answer to your question, why should the client?)

6) You note that some clients will mostly answer 'where?' questions nonverbally (touch a part of their body, point or look in a particular direction) and that's OK. Keep asking the question occasionally and taking their nonverbal as the answer.

7) After trying all the above, if a client really does need a cognitive explanation and they have little self-awareness I will say something like:

"The main way I can tell the difference between those two chairs over there [or any two similar objects] is because they are in different locations. And the same is true for our interior experiences -- our mental images, our internal dialogue and sounds, and our feelings. Many people know they are feeling something because they feel it somewhere. If you feel something under your foot or in your hand you know about those feeling partly because you feel them in different places. Similarly, most, but not all, people experience different internal feelings and emotions in different parts of their body. When people say 'It was a gut reaction' or 'My heart is bursting' they do so because usually they experience sensations in those parts of the body. You say you want to feel more confident, and when you do feel confident, where do you feel confident?"

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Does anyone else respond in other ways to clients who ask this kind of question?

James Lawley
www.cleanlanguage.co.uk

[JamesLawley]

Steve Andeas asked me:

I would be interested to know how you find the question, "Whereabouts . . " useful. The only meaning I can get out of it is a somewhat vague version of "Where?" which can be answered very specifically. Given my penchant for specificity, "whereabouts" seems totally dispensable. (27 Apr 2010)

I replied:

'Whereabouts?' might seem like a vague version of 'Where?' but in practice it can serve a different purpose. In English 'Whereabouts?' can either mean 'where generally?' or where specifically?' and because of that it is a very useful question. For example:

- When a person first describes an internal experience 'whereabouts?' can be a gentler question than 'where?'. Unless the person is used to such a question, asking 'where?' of someone's internal experience may be threatening. Apart from the fact that the question encourages them to access unfamiliar aspects of them self, many people who can't answer a question that they think they 'should' be able to run a number on themselves (as I think they say in TA) - usually negative self-talk. Not what we want when starting a modelling session. Asking 'whereabouts?' gives the client/exemplar a tad more freedom to give a general or vague answer if that's their preference.

- On the other hand, when asked of a location, 'whereabouts?' asks for a more specific information:

"It's inside."
"Whereabouts inside?"
"Deep inside?"
"Whereabouts deep inside?"
"Right at my core?"
"Whereabouts right at your core?"
"At the very center of my soul."

My experience is that if you were to ask the above questions substituting 'where?' for 'whereabouts?' many people would regard it as an interrogation and likely stonewall your questions, if not get downright annoyed, given the highly personal nature of their sense of self they are accessing.

- Because of the extra syllables it is easier to ask 'whereabouts?' with a high degree of curiosity. David Grove, perhaps because of his Maori origins, was very sensitive to rhythm. On several occasions he told me that he might well choose to ask a question because of its rhythm over a 'better' but less rhythmically 'right' question. And easing a person into "the matrix of their experience" rhythm, as you know, is a vital ingredient.

- Bilinguals who speak French as well as English rue the fact that there is no equivalent of 'Whereabouts?' in French. Apparently they have to ask 'where generally?' or 'where specifically?'. This suggests the ambiguity in English has a value.

[phil]

I agree. Also using 'where' and 'whereabouts' alternately and also in different places in the sentence can make repeated location questions sound less like an inquisition:
"It's inside."
"Whereabouts inside?"
"Deep inside?"
"Deep inside... where?"
"Right at my core?"
"Whereabouts right at your core?"
"At the very center of my soul."