Journal May 2026 Release_Full Edition - Flipbook - Page 65
64
Show me, don’t tell me
The first form orients the conversation's awareness towards how one is affected
by the dilemma/problem that is determined to be the source of suffering. The
second orients awareness towards one’s noble response (Paljakka & Carlson,
2024). These two orientations help to guide how we might structure our
questions in ways that orient the conversation towards the knowledge, skill,
hopes or moral character that are being alluded to, but remain hidden from view
due to the obscuring nature of dominating discourses (dominant ideas that shape
thinking, experience and life) that are defining of how the story is allowed to be
told.
Questions that call attention to the conditions that contribute to the suffering
someone is coming into therapy to address grant the therapy the opportunity to
re-author these conditions with the help of the therapist. But it is through the
“filter [of] the consciousness of the protagonist” that the therapy must orient to
preserve the authorial agency of the client. Below are examples of these two
question orientations based on the Lee-Marie conversation from earlier.
1. Questions that orient awareness towards the problem effects on the person:
1. Do you consider if you hadn't overcome this Problem from the past, IT
(anorexia) would have taken over your life?
2. Where do you guess IT would have taken your life to if you hadn't
overcome it?
3. You may not be aware that the Problem you overcame as a ten-year-old
would have been regarded at that time as almost impossible to
overcome.
These questions, while asked through the filter of the first-person perspective,
provide for the telling of the problem and its effects. They keep Lee-Marie in the
scene of the story being asked about. And ask her to expound on how her life
might have been affected by the influence of the problem had the problem been
permitted to dominate her day-to-day living. And they encourage her to tell of her
Animative Descriptions and Vivifying Discovery: Inviting Clients Into The Marvel Of Their Understory
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, May 2026 Release, p. 52-79.
www.journalnft.com
