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Uncovering Aspects by Turning a Client's Positive Goal Into a Negative

This simple technique takes the client's positive statement and, without changing or losing any of its meaning, inverts it, allowing it to lead to what the client experiences about the issue.

Here I present a simple technique for identifying the issue behind a client's positive request by turning his/her positive statement into a negative one.

Why should we ever want to do this? 

I had the privilege of training in therapeutic metaphor work with the inner child with David Grove, the counsellor who developed a set of techniques today known as Clean Language.  David would start a session with the question, "And what would you like to have happen?"

That wording confuses some people. It means "What would you like to happen, and it doesn't need you to do or be anything for it to happen - what would you like to happen if it just could happen all by itself?"

The question does not presuppose that the client has to make any effort, because as we know, people are resistant to making efforts at self-improvement, and if part of the client is stuck at a previous stage of development, that part might not have all the adult resources that are available to the mature self.

So we have a question that allows the client to express a wish.  You could ask that question in different ways, such as "What brings you to see me?"  I would avoid "How can I help you?" because that presupposes that all the help is going to come from the practitioner and that the client is not responsible for his/her own healing.  Our innocent words can be powerful suggestions, as any hypnotherapist knows.

If the client answers with a problem, such as "I have a phobia of spiders" then you know you have reached the presenting issue. There might be more behind it - exploring that is part of the "aspects" work of EFT which consists of getting to the parts of the problem that are most important for the client - perhaps the phobia is only of hairy spiders, or there is a feeling or memory attached to the phobia, such as getting a spider bite on holiday at the age of five.

If the client instead presents a positive wish, such as "I want to be more confident", you need to use a different tack. You could ask what situations need him/her to be more confident, and you discover that this is all about a big sales presentation happening at  9 a.m. tomorrow. You then know what to work on.

There is another way, inspired by David Grove. That is to take the client's request or wish and turn it into a negative.

Client: I want to have more confidence.

Practitioner: And when you don't have more confidence, what's that like?

Client: I hear this voice in my head telling me I'll never make it. And I just freeze and forget what I am going to say. I'm aware that my posture is bad and I don't look confident. Someone can ask me a question and I hunt around for the right words because I am afraid of sounding silly.

It's not always that easy and you can ask more questions. However, what you get is a description of the state that the client gets into but doesn't want to be in. You have some very rich tapping material there!

Even though the voice in my head tells me I'll never make it...

Even though I freeze and forget what I'm going to say...

Even though my posture is bad...

Even though I'm afraid of sounding silly...

Even though I hunt around for the right words...

When this works well, it has only taken you seconds to get all those aspects!  You have asked an open-ended question: what's that like?  that invites the client to elaborate. If the client talks for too long you might have to interrupt and say, let's just start with what you've got there. Make notes of what the client says, unless you have an excellent memory.

 If you know the EFT "short cut" method, you can combine several statements into one tapping round.

Should you need to ask more questions to clarify the client's experience, using David Grove's "clean questions" avoids putting your own thoughts and expectations into the client's head.  Examples of "clean questions" are:

Is there anything else about that?

And what happens next?

And what kind of [x] is that?  (where [x] is something the client has mentioned that you want to clarify).

And whereabouts is [x]?   (to find the physical location of a feeling)

There is a lot more to Clean Language that what is I have described, and a Clean Language session would proceed in a very different way from EFT work. However, what I have demonstrated is that certain questions taken from Clean Language can be very powerful in eliciting aspects that can be worked with using EFT. Also, using these few simple, non-threatening questions can allow the client to feel deeply listened to and understood, and so the questions are a quick way of establishing the rapport that is part of professional helping.  Rarely do we have someone fully listen to what we are saying without their own need to express what's on their mind getting in the way.

We know that in EFT, a set-up statement is more effective if it is more precise. These questions can help build more precise set-up statements. Stop questioning, take a SUD and start a round of EFT when you have got enough precision. Or take a SUD on the whole issue before you ask the questions and then again after you have done tapping rounds on several aspects revealed by the clean questions. 

This simple technique takes the client's positive statement and, without changing or losing any of its meaning, inverts it, allowing it to lead to what the client experiences about the issue.

About the author

Morris Berg is an EFT Practitioner and Meridian Psychotherapist and is the owner of this site (see the about us page for more information). 

This article is copyright Morris Berg © 2010 and must not be reproduced without written permission.

For more information on Clean Language see www.cleanlanguage.co.uk

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