What I ask instead of ‘How do you feel?’

It’s the classic therapist’s question, ‘How do you feel?’ - an intervention up there with smiling and nodding slowly- cemented in popular culture, movies and tv shows. It’s not a bad question but I wanted to share three questions that I often ask instead.

‘What are you feeling?’ This immediately places us in the ‘here and now’ of this particular moment. Rather than encouraging a general, intellectual (maybe evasive?) response- this immediately communicates to my clients that what is going on inside them is important. Sometimes, we don’t feel anything- that’s important in itself, a sign perhaps of how we are protecting ourselves from painful feelings.

‘Where are you feeling it?’ Part of the journey of therapy is getting to know ourselves better and this involves becoming fluent in our body and nervous system. We store memories in our bodies- as new situations begin to feel uncomfortably familiar it is often felt first in our throat, our chest or stomach. As we ‘map’ these sensations - we begin to know ourselves and our history better. I might follow this up by wondering how these sensations interact with each other - it might never have occurred to you that these different ‘parts’ of you are allowed to even co-exist let alone talk to each other.

‘What is happening to that feeling as we talk?’ Simply breathing into a feeling that we might have previously ignored can offer a degree of acceptance and compassion to an unheard ‘part of yourself’. Or you might notice how you move away from that feeling, maybe you ‘go into your head’, start fidgeting or find your ‘inner critic’ revving up. None of this right or wrong- this growing awareness is part of a mapping process which involves knowing yourself at a deeper level.