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C H A P T E R 5

Collaborative Inquiry An Anthropological Approach

to “Intervening” with Families

The first four chapters examined conceptual models or ways of thinking about families that position helpers as appreciative allies in the process of engagement, assessment, and contracting. These next five chapters examine clinical practices or ways of interacting with families that invite respect, connection, curiosity, and hope. This chapter begins with a brief reconsideration of the process of “intervening” and then offers an orga- nizational framework for collaborative inquiry that positions therapists as co-researchers who are working with families rather than acting on them. An extended clinical consultation illustrates this framework. Sub- sequent chapters take up different elements of this framework in more detail.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “INTERVENE”?

Family therapy has historically had a strong emphasis on intervention. Within the mental health field, family therapy represented not only a dif- ferent way of thinking about clients and problems but also a significant shift in ways of interacting with clients. It began as a radical move away from the orthodoxy of psychoanalysis and contained a shift from under- standing problems as the goal of treatment to doing something about problems in a short time (Ravella, 1994). In this way, family therapy

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became quite interventionist. Cecchin, Lane, and Ray (1994) have described an interventionist model as one in which a “therapist orga- nizes an action, suggestion or prescription for the purpose of having a predictable result” (p. 13). Many techniques in the mental health field are grounded in an assumption that we can have predictable results and get clients to see or do things in particular ways at particular times. For example, we offer an insight that we hope will have particular effects, we teach skills that we hope clients will use in particular ways, we set up enactments to achieve a particular outcome, we reframe behavior to pro- mote a particular perspective. In each of these situations, we enter with a predictable result in mind. Often, that hoped for result is informed by an implicit model of how families should function (e.g., what consti- tutes “appropriate” generational boundaries, or “differentiated” func- tioning, or “healthy” negotiation of life cycle transitions), and our efforts attempt to bring family functioning in line with normative standards.

Unfortunately, our focus on rectifying family dysfunction can pull us into an instrumental orientation in which we engage with certainty and a sense of mission. When we begin specifying how things should be in clients’ lives, we risk losing sight of client preferences. We can get out ahead of clients and end up blocking their view of desired futures. When clients lose sight of their preferred directions in life, they may submit to professional preferences and end up following someone else’s agenda, which doesn’t support long-lasting change. Alternatively, they may actively resist our efforts or become pseudo-compliant, pretending to comply and hoping we’ll go away. Hence, our attempts to achieve a pre- dictable result without explicitly negotiating it with a family may end up making our work harder.

The belief that we can get a family to see something in a particular way or bring about a particular outcome has been referred to as a belief in “instructive interaction.” A number of writers have suggested that instructive interaction is impossible and that we cannot get a family to respond to interventions in a predetermined fashion. Although we enter interactions with particular hopes and intentions, we cannot determine the specific effects of our actions on others. Our interventions may trig- ger responses, but they do not determine them. We cannot get clients to do or see things that we want when we want. The idea that instructive interaction is impossible may or may not be “true.” However, it can be a very useful idea in helping us step back from nonproductive struggles with clients and opening possibilities for alternative interactions. At the same time, it is impossible to avoid influencing others. As Cecchin et al. (1994) state:

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When people interact, they inevitably influence each other, but not always with predictable results. Intervention, when thought about in this way, is unavoidable, because to interact means to intervene in the private space of the other. No matter how much we try, influence is unavoidable. . . . Although it seems true that we do, in fact, influence one another, we cannot predict the outcomes of our efforts. (p. 15)

If we acknowledge that interventions do not have predictable results, then every interaction with clients is an intervention. Everything we say and do has an effect on clients. It is impossible to be noninterventionist. The issue is not whether we are interventionist or noninterventionist, but what stance we hold as we intervene.

Harlene Anderson and Harry Goolishian (1988, 1992) have coined the phrase “not-knowing” to suggest a particular stance in collaborative conversations. A not-knowing stance refers to an attitude and belief that a “therapist does not have access to privileged information, can never fully understand another person, always needs to be in a state of being informed by the other, and always needs to learn more about what has been said or may not have been said” (Anderson, 1997, p. 134). As Anderson (1995, pp. 34–36) emphasizes:

A not-knowing position does not mean the therapist does not know any- thing or that the therapist throws away or does not use what she or he already knows. It does not mean the therapist just sits back and does noth- ing or cannot offer an opinion. It does mean, however, that the therapist’s contributions, whether they are questions, opinions, speculations, or sug- gestions, are presented in a manner that conveys a tentative posture and portrays respect for and openness to the other and to newness.

Despite Anderson’s (1995, 1997, 2005) repeated attempts to clarify a not-knowing stance, it has often been misinterpreted as dismissing professional knowledge (perhaps an ironic example of the myth of instructive interaction). Another framing of this juxtaposition of know- ing and not-knowing that may trigger fewer misperceptions would be a juxtaposition of certainty and curiosity (Amundson, Stewart, & Valen- tine, 1993). For this discussion, I draw on the phrase “cultural curios- ity,” as introduced in Chapter 1, to refer to a continuing attempt to actively elicit a client’s particular meaning rather than assume we already know it or that it is the same as ours.

A striving for cultural curiosity begins with a conviction that clients are the experts on their experience and an attempt to fully enter into and honor that experience. It includes a willingness to question what we think we know and a commitment to continually learn more about what

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clients have to say about their experience. This attitude is reflected in a Robert Louis Stevenson quote, “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” Although we cannot arrive at a complete grasp of another culture, we can always travel hopefully toward a better understanding. Kaethe Weingarten (1995, 1997, 1998) has discussed a similar process that she refers to as “radical listening.” She characterizes radical listen- ing as the “shifting of my attention from what I think about what my cli- ents are telling me to trying to understand what my clients think about what they are telling me” (Weingarten, 1998, p. 5). This shift could also be summarized as a movement from assigning our meaning to clients’ actions to eliciting their meaning. In this regard, I have often referred to it as listening on client turf rather than on professional turf. Each of these phrases (“not-knowing,” “cultural curiosity,” “radical listening,” “listening on client turf”) captures a shared position from which to engage clients. This position does not disavow therapist knowledge or influence, but draws on it in a different way. In this position, there is an acknowledgement that it is impossible to impose meaning or get people to do or see particular things at particular times, along with a commit- ment to engaging clients in ways that enable them to generate alternative meanings through invitational interaction.

MOVING TOWARD INVITATIONAL INTERACTION

The following story sets a context for discussing the power of invita- tional interaction. A number of years ago I conducted a study on the interaction of beliefs held by patients, spouses, and physicians in situa- tions of chronic medical noncompliance (Madsen, 1992). One of the couples I interviewed consisted of Pat, a 40-year-old white woman whose hypertension escalated out of control when she drank, and Jack, her 35-year-old white boyfriend with a long history of alcohol misuse. I met with them in their home. About 5 minutes into the interview, Jack excused himself and went into the kitchen. He returned with two cans of beer, offered one to me, and when I declined, shrugged, drained the first, and started on the second. I had a number of reactions. I was shocked and angry that he was drinking. I worried that it would “bias” the results of the interview and wondered whether I would be able to use this interview in my study. At the same time, I didn’t feel comfortable asking Jack not to drink during the interview. This was the couple’s home, and they had graciously let me into it. They were not being paid for the study, and I did not have a relationship with them in which I had an authorization to instruct them on what I might consider “proper eti- quette.” I sat there in my discomfort, unsure of what to say. I decided to

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say nothing and continued the interview. Jack drank throughout the interview, polishing off a six-pack by the time we finished. In the inter- view, we focused on (among other things) the potential consequences of various decisions they might make about alcohol use (e.g., If Pat kept drinking and Jack stopped what would happen to her health and their relationship? If Jack kept drinking and Pat stopped, what would happen to her health and their relationship? What would happen if they both kept drinking? What would happen if they both stopped drinking?).

In the course of the interview, the following story emerged. Pat’s original husband had abandoned the family (for which she blamed her- self), and she was committed to establishing a two-parent family for her daughter. She believed that if she kept drinking, hypertension would end her life and her daughter would lose a mother. She also believed that if she quit drinking, it would end her relationship with Jack (whose previ- ous marriage had ended when his wife quit drinking) and her daughter would lose a father. Pat felt caught between two pulls. If she didn’t stop drinking, her daughter would lose a mother, and if she did stop drinking, her daughter would lose a father. As I asked about the effects of this dilemma on Pat, she disclosed that it made her feel like a bad mother and left her terribly depressed. She felt that she was caught in a bind that she couldn’t escape and would subsequently become hopeless and end up drinking to numb the pain. As we talked about the effects of this dilemma on their relationship and their future together, the couple became reflective and slightly sad. I left the interview feeling appreciative of the power of this dilemma and its effects on Pat and Jack.

Interestingly, in a 6-month follow-up with their physician, I found out that the couple had quit drinking the day after the interview and had maintained sobriety since. In fact, seven of the nine patients interviewed in the study were now managing their chronic medical conditions for the first time in 2 years. A number of patients and physicians attributed that change to the development of different perspectives that came out of the interview process. One informant from the study put it this way:

“I’m thinking about the difficulty I’ve had managing my medical con- dition in a whole different way. It makes sense to me now that I’ve had difficulty managing it and I’m not blaming myself for it. This shift has given me some room to go about dealing with my medical condition in a completely different way.”

Although the changes in Pat’s and Jack’s lives were dramatic, I had not been attempting to disrupt their drinking or to get Pat to better man- age her hypertension. The interview with Pat and Jack occurred in the context of a research study rather than a clinical intervention, and yet it

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had had a profound impact on the couple. Although my intention had been to gather information for a research study, I had assumed that the process of gathering that information might open new possibilities for Pat and Jack. My experience in this study was very much in line with the efforts of Lorraine Wright (1990), who developed a research interven- tion for families in which traditional family therapy had proved unsuc- cessful. In this approach, the therapist would explain that she had no further ideas for how to be helpful to the family and then offer the fam- ily an opportunity to participate in a research project that focused on helping professionals learn how families coped with chronic illnesses. Wright found that this shift was not simply an attempt to redefine family therapy, but rather one that changed the context of her clinical work from therapy to research. She explained that this shift in context had a profound effect on therapists. It reduced their usual therapeutic impulse to inform, instruct, direct, or advise family members and contributed to the development of an investment in learning from the family rather than changing the family. Families responded positively, and Wright (1990) concluded, “We facilitate the greatest change in our clinical work when we focus on learning from our clients rather than believing that they are learning from us” (p. 484).

THERAPY AS CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

The shift in emphasis described by Wright (1990) fits with an anthropo- logical metaphor for the process of interacting with clients and families. In this metaphor, we can think of clients and their families as foreign cul- tures. We can think of ourselves as cultural anthropologists or ethno- graphic researchers who have been given the opportunity to enter into the life space of clients and learn all that we can about the particularities of their culture. An example of this metaphor in action comes from the work of Marilyn O’Neill and Gaye Stockell (1991). They worked in an Australian day treatment center in which eight male consumers were dis- satisfied with the system and expressed that dissatisfaction through a variety of destructive behaviors that included abusive language, property destruction, ongoing substance abuse, and a disregard for others at the center. These behaviors had managed to alienate many of the staff, who saw excluding the men from the center as the only viable course of action. O’Neill and Stockell proposed instead to run a group for the men. They decided to view the men as experts in dealing with chronic mental illness and invited them to a group that explored the men’s expertise in managing mental illness. Drawing on an anthropological stance, they elicited the men’s experience of mental illness, the effects it had on their lives, and the ways in which they coped with it. As they

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listened to the men’s experiences of the disempowering effects of mental illness, they resisted the temptation to give advice, offer ideas, or make judgments about their situations. The aim of the group consisted of elic- iting and documenting the expertise the men had in managing chronic mental illness. The therapists’ roles consisted of asking questions to guide the process. When asked to provide a name for the group, the men initially decided to call it “The Losers’ Group.” However, halfway through the group, as the participants’ expertise in managing mental illness became more solidified, the men petitioned to change the group’s name to “The Worthy of Discussion Group.” By the end of the group, the men viewed themselves differently and had made significant improvements in their lives (including improvements in daily living skills that were never directly addressed in the group). O’Neill and Stockell (1991) summarized their learning:

We observed that changes were occurring for the men. We were also aware that these changes were not due to any teachings about problems and solu- tions but from the discovery that their special knowledge, skills, and quali- ties had enabled them to choose a preferred outcome for themselves. The men became responsible for choosing the directions that their lives should take. Our role in these groups was described succinctly by one of the partic- ipants: “You [therapists] have been asking us instead of telling us.” (p. 205)

This example characterizes a directional shift in information flow. Infor- mation is not coming from the therapist to the client. Instead, it is being jointly developed in the space between client and therapist though a questioning process. This shift could be described as a collaborative co- research project.

David Epston (1999) is perhaps the person most widely associated with the term “co-research.” He initially developed co-research as an approach to situations in which children and adolescents with life- threatening chronic illnesses were not responding to more conventional treatments. Epston became convinced that clients held alternative bodies of knowledge (consisting of abilities, skills, and wisdom) that could be profoundly useful if tapped. These varieties of knowledge were often obscured, and David engaged families in a co-research project to resur- rect them and make them more available for client use. This was not a process of going out and discovering preexisting knowledge, but rather a process of eliciting, elaborating, and bearing witness to abilities, skills, and types of knowledge that are jointly developed in the context of the interview. For example, in the Worthy of Discussion groups run by O’Neill and Stockell (1991), the wisdom offered by the men in the group was wisdom that was developed in the context of the group interviews. This idea of jointly developing shared knowledge rather

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than discovering preexisting knowledge is at the heart of collaborative inquiry. Epston began eliciting and elaborating client knowledge in inter- views and subsequently developed written collections or archives of that knowledge that could be made available to other clients. One example of this is his efforts to develop anti-anorexia archives that contain client wisdom about the ways in which anorexia as a problem has affected cli- ents and their families along with accounts of how clients and families have coped with and resisted the effects of anorexia (Maisel, Epston, & Borden, 2004). The process of making this knowledge available to oth- ers is both a gift to others and a profoundly empowering repositioning of clients from being objects on the receiving end of services to consul- tants who have something to offer others. The purpose of generating knowledge in co-research is different from the usual purpose of generat- ing research-based knowledge. Co-research makes no claim to be an objective or neutral process. It has the explicit purpose of supporting cli- ents in reflecting on their current relationship with a problem and, if that relationship does not fit with client preferences, inciting and sustaining resistance to the problem. This is activist knowledge with the explicit purpose of helping people change their lives. The different stories high- lighted here illustrate the power and possibilities of invitational interac- tion and co-research. The next section examines in more detail the pro- cess of what I’ve come to call “collaborative inquiry.”

ENGAGING IN COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY

Collaborative inquiry can be a co-research project in which therapists engage clients in a joint exploration of preferred directions in life, with an attempt to identify elements that constrain and/or sustain their pur- suit of desired lives and an examination of ways in which clients address constraining elements and draw on sustaining ones. In this process, we can view professional expertise as the ability to ask questions that elicit, elaborate, and acknowledge family abilities, skills, and know-how that have been previously obscured. I refer to this as collaborative inquiry to suggest a partnership in which we tap the resourcefulness of both clients and clinicians. The process is not a simple conveyance of professional expertise to clients, nor a simple eliciting of client ideas. Rather, it acknowledges the shared knowledge that can be developed in the con- text of therapeutic relationships.

The purpose of collaborative inquiry is to make space for the emer- gence of alternative stories that will support people in moving forward in their lives and facilitate their accessing important abilities, skills, and knowledge. Clients are offered an opportunity to reflect on the

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dominant stories that have organized their lives, the degree to which those stories fit or do not fit for them. If the stories do not fit, collabora- tive inquiry provides opportunities for people to develop and enact richer stories that open possibilities and have the potential to carry them forward in their lives. This is not a process of substituting “old, bad” stories for “new, improved” ones, but rather expanding from sparse sto- ries that are often constraining and pathologizing to broader, richer sto- ries that acknowledge difficulties and also open new possibilities.

In the process of collaborative inquiry, our questions become vitally important. Although questions are often used to gather information for our benefit as clinicians, they can also be designed for the benefit of cli- ents. As clients contemplate the questions we ask and undertake a men- tal search in responding to them, they have particular experiences of self. When such experience is different and powerful, this process can have transformative effects. Although I view this as a collaborative process, I am not suggesting that it is an egalitarian partnership. Clients are in a much more vulnerable position in this relationship, and it is important to acknowledge and be mindful of the power differential that exists. In this process, clinicians have a particular expertise in inquiry and take on a leadership role in the organization of questions, but remain account- able to clients for both the direction of the inquiry and the effects of the questioning process on clients.

There are a number of benefits to framing our work as a collabora- tive co-research project. The process holds the potential to engage clients as active agents in their lives rather than as passive objects of our efforts. This engagement has empowering effects on clients by amplifying their influence and participation in the process. And collaborative inquiry enhances therapeutic relationships. Ryan and Carr (2001) summarize a variety of family therapy process research studies suggesting that when clients perceive therapists to be collaborating and empathizing with them in addressing the difficulties in their lives, they feel a stronger ther- apeutic alliance, cooperate more, and engage in less “resistance.”

THE PLACE OF PROFESSIONAL VALUES AND KNOWLEDGE IN COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY

Engaging in the process of collaborative inquiry does not mean that we, as therapists, abdicate our own values or knowledge. I am not advocat- ing a kind of moral relativism in which we enter into family cultures uncritically and simply accept all aspects of how they operate. It is important to critically examine both our own and our clients’ beliefs, practices, and values as well as the effects they have. In this process,

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there is a focus on the particular real effects of actions on others and on fostering accountability for those effects. For example, we can shift from thinking about substance use as something that is universally evil or bad to examining the real effects of the use of particular substances at a par- ticular time in a particular situation. It would be important to examine the effects of substance use on the person, important others, and the relationships between them. Although I might not tell a mother who is using substances that she should just stop, I would engage her in a dis- cussion about her hopes for herself and her children and how she prefers to be as a person and a mother. I would then explore with her how sub- stance use supports or constrains those hopes and preferred ways of being. I would also engage her in an extended discussion of the effects of substance use on her children, with an effort to elicit her thoughts before offering my own. A preference for an invitational approach is a prag- matic as well as aesthetic decision. Simply telling people to do something often does not work, and as we’ve seen in several examples in this chap- ter, inviting people to reflect on the consequences of their actions can yield powerful results.

At the same time, it is important to keep concerns about the abuse and neglect of children at the center of our practice at all times. If, in this instance, I had a concern that a mother’s substance use put her children at risk, I would not hesitate to raise that concern with her and to notify protective services. In this response, I am aware that I may not be able to “get her to see” that this is a problem (despite my hopes). I think of my job here as not necessarily getting her to see that her actions are prob- lematic, but as taking responsibility for my response to her actions. If I hear about a child who is at risk, I have a legal obligation and ethical responsibility to respond in ways that seek to ensure the child’s safety. This is where I do adhere to a normative standard.

The values we hold profoundly influence the ways in which we interact with families, and it is important that we openly and respectfully acknowledge this with them. Rather than pretend that we come to our work value free, we can identify our values and be open about them. Values and the way in which they inform our actions can be an impor- tant topic of discussion in our work with families. Within a cross- cultural metaphor, it is important to recognize and honor the assump- tions that we bring from our own cultures into the negotiation. There are particular values that I hold strongly (e.g., anti-violence, pro-respect) that I communicate to families. However, it is important for me to acknowledge these as my values. They may or may not fit for particular families. If I try to force a fit, my attempts usually backfire. If I offer par- ticular ideas or values as a piece of my culture that clients might find

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helpful, they are more likely to consider such ideas than if I try to “con- vert” them. At the same time, I strive to consistently act in accordance with my values. For example, in a heterosexual couple in which a man is speaking abusively toward a woman, I would raise my concerns that this way of speaking could feel abusive and demeaning and ask each about their experience of it. I would attempt to focus on the way of speaking rather than the speaker as a possible problem and inquire about effects of that way of speaking on the woman, on the man, and on their rela- tionship. I might examine how those effects fit with the kind of relation- ship they would prefer to have. In asking them questions, I’d want to keep in mind the power dynamics in the room (e.g., I’d want to be mind- ful of the gender politics in the room and be sensitive not to put the woman in an overly vulnerable position nor speak on her behalf in a way that she might experience as patronizing; I’d also want to be aware of my own power position in the interaction and raise these concerns as questions rather than declarations, and try to do so in a way that the man experiences them as connected rather than judgmental). I might also ask them about their reactions to my questions and concerns. As a bottom line, I might ask the man to not speak that way while in my office, but would own that as my desire and need (e.g., “I find it too dis- tressing and distracting when you speak to her in those ways and I’d like to ask you to refrain so that I can be more helpful to the two of you”). However, it is important to acknowledge that this response comes from my values and may or may not fit with their values. The practice of transparency (described in the first chapter), through which we make visible the values, thoughts, and assumptions that organize our work, helps to build relationships in which we can discuss and negotiate differ- ent perspectives in ways that do not impose our values on families and yet does not ignore them either. Chapter 1 offered a set of guidelines that can be useful in organizing difficult conversations across value differ- ences (Roth, 1999, 2006a).

Collaborative inquiry also does not entail an abandonment of pro- fessional knowledge. Our professional experiences have exposed us to multiple ways in which other families have coped with particular prob- lems, and there may be some valuable wisdom in those experiences. For example, the distinction between intent and effect, demonstrating that our actions may have negative effects even though our intentions are positive, is one that many couples have found helpful. The distinction between “parenting to protect” and “parenting to prepare” is another useful idea (Parry & Doan, 1994). In parenting to protect, a parent’s job is to protect a child from bad things happening to him or her, whereas in parenting to prepare, a parent’s job is to prepare a child for living in a

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difficult world. Often (though not always), there is a developmental point at which parenting to prepare may be a more useful model for parenting. I have found this distinction very useful and have offered it to parents at times. However, my intention in sharing either of these dis- tinctions with clients is to offer them ideas that might be useful rather than attempt to get clients to embrace the ideas. In a sense, I’m offering a piece of my professional cultural knowledge and heritage that might enrich their lives.

I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting we avoid offering useful thoughts to families. The timing of when we offer ideas to families is crucial. My preference is to first elicit client knowledge and bring forth ideas that are jointly developed in the session. Following that, I might offer additional supplemental knowledge that comes from my own professional or personal experiences if it seems appropriate and useful. However, it is crucial that we have an invitation for such an offering and that our ideas are conveyed in ways that acknowledge the family’s idiosyncratic assump- tions and values. Families can experience the offering of our knowledge as supporting and enriching their wisdom or as invalidating and supplanting it. It is important to offer our ideas in ways that clients experience as empowering rather than inadvertently disempowering. One way to do this is to make sure that the process by which we offer our knowledge is accountable to clients for its effects on them. We can consistently and repeatedly check with clients about how the process of therapy is going for them and adjust our efforts accordingly.

DEVELOPING A CONTAINING ENVIRONMENT FOR COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY

Collaborative inquiry requires an interpersonal atmosphere contained enough to successfully invite clients into a reflective stance (i.e., being willing and able to consider questions and respond to them thoughtfully and honestly). For many clinicians working with difficult families, such containment may seem more often the exception than the rule.1 Family members can present as out of control, continually interrupting each other, and extremely reactive to each other. It can be useful for clinicians to observe the ways in which family members interact as a way to gain valuable information, but it is notably less helpful for family members to repeatedly experience themselves as out of control. The process of col- laborative inquiry both requires and contributes to a safe, contained environment.

James and Melissa Elliot Griffith (1992, 1994) have distinguished emotional postures of tranquility and mobilization and examined the

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ways in which each opens or closes possibilities for therapeutic dialogue. Postures of tranquility include states of listening, wondering, reflecting, affirming, understanding, and trusting. In emotional postures of tran- quility, attention is focused inward, vigilance to threat is low, and there is openness to new information. Emotional postures of mobiliza- tion, however, involve the physiological “fight or flight” response and include states of guardedness, hyperarousal, shaming, blaming, attack- ing, defending, justifying, controlling, distancing, and ignoring. Vigi- lance is high and attention is focused outward in an effort to predict and control others’ behavior. When people are primed to fight or flee, they are not well positioned to take in information or engage in creative problem solving.

Inviting multi-stressed families into an emotional posture of tran- quility may strike many clinicians as a kind of oxymoron. These fami- lies are often seen as crisis prone, and their suspiciousness and reactiv- ity are viewed as a family characteristic rather than an interactional process between families and helpers. Many families who have had multiple pathologizing encounters with helpers are justifiably vigilant as they interact with therapists. A clinician’s role in collaborative inquiry requires active leadership. This is not a process of just listening to people’s stories. It requires an active presence, setting a tone of respectful curiosity and providing a leadership role in how the conver- sation unfolds. The process of continually pulling for threads of com- petence, connection, and hope requires focus and agility. If our job is to open space for people to have a different experience, then our work must begin with a belief that families can have different conversations. There are a number of distinct ways in which we can structure thera- peutic meetings that contribute to a containing environment. I have often conceptualized our role as “conversational architects,” in which we collaborate with families to design conversational structures that will hold a different conversation and yield a preferred experience of self and others. I want to highlight three particular ways in which we can develop conversational structures that support collaborative inquiry. These include efforts to help clients become more deliberate in their responses, the use of communication agreements, and the devel- opment of conversational structures.2 I discuss work with a couple to highlight each of these.

Tom and Beth were a working-class Jewish couple with a long his- tory of screaming matches in which they would talk past each other, cut each other off, and continually go off on attacking tangents. These fights traumatized their 11-year-old son, who increasingly refused to come out of his room at home. Their first two therapy meetings were character- ized by the same interactions, and I found myself feeling dizzy, frus-

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trated, and lost. Before the third session, I held individual meetings with each member of the couple to gather information that would help me design and propose a structure to hold a different type of conversation.

In the individual meetings, I made a point of building a connection with each member, examined the toll the fights had taken on their rela- tionship, and elicited their hopes for a better relationship. I proposed a context shift in our work together, suggesting several sessions in which they would each agree to momentarily step away from attempts to win the argument in order to preserve their relationship from the costs of waging those arguments. In this shift, there is a movement from a “reso- lution conversation” aimed at solving the arguments or fixing the prob- lem, to a “learning conversation” aimed at developing a better under- standing of the other’s experience of the fights, with the objective of preserving their relationship and building a foundation for subsequent resolution conversations. In many ways, this is similar to the context shift previously discussed in Wright’s (1990) research intervention. Each member of the couple agreed to several meetings for this purpose and agreed to the structures and processes that were developed in collabora- tion with them, as described in the following paragraphs.

Moving to Planful Responsiveness

In the individual meetings, I asked both Tom and Beth to think about what they hoped to accomplish in learning more about the other’s per- spective and why that would be important to each of them. At the beginning of the joint meeting, I reminded them of that request and asked them each to pause for a minute and silently think about the purpose that brought them to this meeting. I then asked each to imag- ine that they were now at the end of the meeting and that purpose had been fully realized. I posed some questions for silent reflection to ground them in that experience and then asked each of them to think about how they wanted to relate to the other in this meeting (e.g., “What tendencies, ways of relating, or ways of being would you each like to bring forward and hold back in order to support the purpose that brings you here?”). They thought about this for a bit and then were asked to say a word or phrase that would capture how they each wanted to be in the meeting. Tom replied, “Standing in her shoes,” and Beth responded, “Open and curious.” I asked each of them why these ways of being would be important to them and what would help them to keep to such ways of relating in the meeting. This invitation to focus on how they each wanted to be in the meeting, rather than how they wanted the other to be in the meeting, helped them move from reactivity and attempts to change the other to reflection and

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planned responsiveness. Asking them to pause and reflect for a full minute before responding to my questions also slowed the pace of the meeting and encouraged a more reflective space.

Communication Agreements

Communication agreements, in which participants develop a set of ground rules, agreements, expectations, or shared promises to guide their speaking and listening in a session, can be extremely useful (Chasin, Roth, & Bograd, 1989; Roth & Chasin, 1994). In my individ- ual conversations with Tom and Beth, I asked a number of questions to learn how the upcoming meeting might go well or poorly for them. We discussed a number of possible communication agreements that could support a more constructive conversation, and I proposed a number of communication agreements that could help them have a constructive “learning conversation.” These were framed as agreements or shared promises that the couple were making to each other to support the kind of conversation they wanted to have and promote the kind of relation- ship they wanted to develop. I proposed several agreements, and we then together worked out a final list. The agreements, framed as shared promises in the service of their relationship, included:

“We promise to share speaking time and respond to any time limits set.”

“We promise to suspend efforts to persuade in order to seek mutual understanding.”

“We promise to speak from our own experience and not attribute intentions or motives to the other.”

“We promise to listen carefully when what is said is hard to hear and hang in and not interrupt the other.”

“We respect each other’s right to pass in response to any questions asked.”

“We authorize Bill to help hold us to these agreements.”

This last agreement is an important one. It is important that a therapist have clients’ authorization to help hold them to communication agree- ments. Having the agreements in place ahead of time and an authoriza- tion to help people hold to them allows the creation of a structure that will contain the meeting, rather than relying solely on a therapist’s facili- tation skills to contain the meeting. Having that authorization allows the clinician to remind people of the promises they’ve made in support of their purpose rather than trying to impose the clinician’s rules and get them to comply in a heated moment.

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Conversational Structures

The final element needed for developing a containing environment for a learning conversation is the use of conversational structures that sepa- rate out and clearly demarcate time and space for speaking and listening. The purpose of these structures is to support a learning conversation that will serve the purposes that bring each member to the meeting. This is not an attempt to provide a normative model of functioning for their lives, but to offer them a structure that will support the kind of learning conversation they’ve said they would like to have. This kind of structure often involves having one member speak while another listens. It is important to put clearly defined time parameters on this structure (e.g., “Tom, I’d like to ask you to speak about your concerns about X for 2 minutes while Beth listens. I’m going to hold you to 2 minutes and ask Beth to simply listen, then we’ll shift and I’ll ask Beth to speak about X for 2 minutes and ask you to listen”). Short time frames make it easier to listen (e.g., most people can listen to just about anything if it is only for 2 minutes). The time limits often feel strained and unnatural, but the point is to build a structure that will contribute to a different conversa- tion in that particular meeting. If clients find the structure useful, we can engage them in reflection on what they find useful and whether and how they would like to bring that more into their daily life.

One conversational structure involves giving each member set times to speak, and alternating speaking and listening. In another structure, one member is interviewed; the others observe and are subsequently interviewed about their reflections. As we interview one individual, it is important to pay close attention to the others’ reactions during that interview, anticipating their responses and engaging them before they become reactive. We can also repeatedly compliment other family mem- bers for continuing to listen in the face of what may be provocative statements. When people are assured of shared speaking time, it allows them to more fully listen and reflect rather than simply prepare their rebuttals. Similarly it can be useful to actively interview a listener about his or her experience in order to highlight particular aspects of that experience.

This is a brief explanation of some of the ways in which we can actively contribute to the development of a containing environment. Again, I want to emphasize that collaborative inquiry is an active pro- cess that consists of collaboratively structuring a constructive conversa- tion rather than just passively listening to a family’s story. In the next section, I highlight an organizational framework that can ground collab- orative inquiry in the four conceptual developments that form the foun- dation of this book.

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SUSAN DISABLES THE BAD-PARENT BUTTON: AN ORGANIZATIONAL FRAMEWORK

FOR COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY

We can productively organize our efforts to help clients and families around the following five broad steps:

1. Getting to know clients outside the problem’s influence. 2. Helping clients envision preferred directions in life. 3. Helping clients identify elements that may constrain and/or sus-

tain their development of preferred directions in life. 4. Helping clients address constraining elements and/or enhance

sustaining elements. 5. Helping clients develop communities to support the enactment of

preferred lives.

This section draws on an extended clinical consultation to illustrate this organizational framework. Although the example is a one-time consulta- tion, this framework also can serve as a map for our overall work with families and is applicable across many contexts. After a description of the family, I highlight each step in some detail with reference to the con- sultation interview.

Description of the Family

Susan was a poor, white, working, single mother with two children, Carol (7) and Frankie (5). Her family was referred to a home-based team to help Carol, who struggled with repeated explosive temper outbursts. These explosions had taken a significant toll on both Carol and Susan as well as on their relationship. The family was involved with protective services because of repeated physical fights between Carol and Susan. They had a long history of unsuccessful encounters with numerous help- ers. However, over the past 5 months of working with a home-based family therapist and a new after-school program, things had begun to change. Carol was more able to control the temper outbursts and Susan was more confident as a parent. However, the family therapist was con- cerned that these changes rested on a shaky foundation. Susan had an extensive history of abuse herself and little community to support her. The family therapist requested a consultation to help solidify changes in the family and support Susan in becoming a more effective parent.

The consultation interview included Susan, her home-based family therapist, a clinician from the after-school program, and me as the con- sultant. The consultation was scheduled to include Susan’s daughter, but

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she had been sick earlier in the week and Susan decided it was more important that she attend school than yet another therapy meeting. In the spirit of collaborative inquiry, this consultation was framed for Susan as a consultation we were seeking from her, rather than an inter- vention we were providing for her. We wanted to elicit, elaborate, and acknowledge her wisdom accrued from coping with a difficult situation. We thought that we as helpers could learn a lot from the consultation and also hoped that the questions in the consultation would have benefi- cial effects on Susan and her family. Susan felt touched and validated by this request and was very interested in participating.

The initial consultation included an interview with Susan and her helpers in one room with a number of team members in another room observing behind a one-way mirror (with Susan’s consent). At some point, three members of the team came into our room and offered reflec- tions that acknowledged the ways in which they had been moved by Susan’s story. Susan and the helpers sat off to the side listening and then Susan had an opportunity to respond to the reflections. The consultation was videotaped, and Susan later viewed the videotape with her therapist to further reflect on it. In addition, I sent her a follow-up letter that doc- umented her abilities, skills, and wisdom that emerged in the meeting and posed additional questions to invite further reflection on her part. Therapeutic letters can be a powerful adjunct to clinical meetings and will be examined in more detail shortly and again in Chapter 9. Finally, the videotape of the consultation was shown to other witnessing groups (again with Susan’s permission) and their reflections were captured and shared with Susan and her therapist.

Getting to Know Clients Outside the Problem’s Influence

If we view people as being in a relationship with a problem (rather than having or being a problem), we can begin our work by getting to know clients outside the problem’s influence. Getting to know people as three- dimensional human beings with multiple aspects of experience that we can respect and appreciate builds a strong foundation for a therapeutic relationship. Marcia Sheinberg (1992) points out the usefulness of elicit- ing stories of pride before stories of shame. Inquiry into what clients appreciate and value about their lives facilitates engagement and makes it easier to subsequently examine difficulties. The process of getting to know clients outside the problem’s influence was previously examined in Chapter 3.

In this clinical example, Susan arrived late for the consultation and entered angry, exasperated, and embarrassed. I asked about her morning and heard a wrenching story of Susan getting her daughter on the school bus and then noticing some forgotten homework. Susan drove to her

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daughter’s school to deliver the homework, and her daughter greeted Susan with outrage for embarrassing her rather than gratitude for the extra effort. Susan then drove to the consultation in heavy traffic, know- ing she was going to be late, anticipating criticism and judgment, and both preparing her defense and preemptively castigating herself. As she told this story, I marveled that she would put all this extra, unrewarded effort into helping her daughter out. Susan replied, “That’s what moth- erhood is all about. You don’t always get the recognition you deserve.” That reflection provided an important opening, and we moved into a conversation about her commitment to her daughter and how parenting for her was, in her words, “not just a job, but a calling.” The transition from a not uncommon story of parental frustration to an examination of Susan’s commitment to “Parenting as a Calling” carried her out of the harried pace of being late for a meeting and into a more reflective space that provided a stronger foundation for moving forward.

Helping Clients Envision Preferred Directions in Life

The process of getting to know clients outside the problem’s influence and eliciting stories of pride as a foundation for subsequent inquiry often leads naturally into the second step of developing a vision of future possibilities or preferred ways of being in the present that can serve as an agreed-upon focus for helping efforts. Chapter 4 examined the useful- ness of a proactive focus and offered a number of questions for jointly developing collaborative goals. As clients begin to concretize preferred directions in life, we can help them build a foundation of motivation, resourcefulness, and community that will more solidly anchor this vision. We can ask family members why the direction they’re describing is important to them (enhancing motivation), inquire about when they see threads of it emerging and steps they are taking to live into that vision (elaborating resourcefulness), and seek to learn about who in their lives might appreciate and stand behind their efforts to develop that life (developing a community).

In this clinical example, Susan found our initial conversation about Parenting as a Calling to be useful, and I asked a series of ques- tions to take the idea further. I asked what that phrase meant for her and how her parenting was different when she experienced it as a call- ing rather than a job. The questions tapped into her pride and passion about her parenting. She described moments of a loving, thoughtful, and connected relationship with her daughter, and I asked a number of questions to concretize that description. In an effort to build a more solid foundation for Parenting as a Calling, I asked Susan a series of questions about why this was important to her, how it was currently showing up in her life, and who in her life might appreciate it. The

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phrase “Parenting as a Calling” became an organizing focus for the consultation and allowed us to move into jointly learning more about her efforts to more consistently ground her parenting in that commitment.

Identifying Constraining and Sustaining Elements

Once we have helped clients envision preferred directions in life and learned a bit about why those directions are important to them, we can work with clients to identify elements, factors, or forces that might con- strain or sustain the development of desired lives. Chapter 2 outlined a number of examples of constraints at different levels (biological, individ- ual, familial, social network, and sociocultural) and in different realms (action and meaning). We can also identify elements, factors, or forces in life that sustain, support, or enhance the pursuit of preferred lives. These may include sustaining beliefs, actions, and interactions at various levels, as well as the intentions and purposes, values and beliefs, hopes and dreams, and commitments people bring to their lives. We can think about people as being in a relationship with constraining and sustaining elements, as shown in the figure below.

In considering this figure, we can think about the relationship between a person and constraining and/or sustaining elements as both ongoing and modifiable. Constraining and sustaining elements can be seen as having significant influence in the life of the person and the per- son can be seen as having significant influence in the life of those ele- ments. The process of addressing the relationship between people and constraining and sustaining elements is examined in significant detail in Chapters 6 and 7. Although there has typically been more focus on problems and constraining elements, we can also focus our efforts on helping people draw on and enhance their relationship with sustaining

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elements. For example, Susan’s commitment to Parenting as a Calling is sustained by her hopes for her daughter’s future. As she holds a picture of her daughter as a newborn and remembers the hopes with which she brought Carol into the world, her commitment to Parenting as a Calling becomes more tangible and real to her. In this way, helping clients enhance their relationships with sustaining elements in their lives can support their preferred direction in life.

With a map of constraining and sustaining elements in mind, we can ask clients whether they would prefer to begin by focusing on things that support their efforts to build desired lives or by focusing on the obstacles on the road to preferred futures. If clients are primarily inter- ested in sustaining elements, we can build on emerging possibilities to develop richer life stories and may not need to directly attend to the problems that initially brought them to therapy. At other times, it may be important to more directly address problems or constraining ele- ments. If so, we can work with people to anticipate potholes on the road to preferred living and help them draw on abilities, skills, and knowl- edge to address the potholes they experience in their lives. (Conceptual maps for this process are discussed in depth in Chapter 7.) The option of focusing on constraining or sustaining elements offers the flexibility to fit our efforts to client preferences along with our own judgment about directions that might prove most fruitful.

The clinical consultation with Susan focused on supporting her commitment to Parenting as a Calling. When offered a choice of focus- ing on what sustained that commitment or what pulled her away from Parenting as a Calling, she chose the latter and began talking about the many ways in which her daughter would “push her buttons.” She described her parenting at those times as “going right down the toilet.” I asked Susan if it would be okay if we shifted our focus from Carol’s pushing of buttons to the buttons that got pushed and how Susan would rather respond to “pushed buttons.” She agreed, and we talked about pushed buttons as an externalized problem, then moved into a discus- sion about what Susan called the “bad-parent button.” We explored the influence of the Bad-Parent Button on Susan’s parenting, her sense of self, and her relationship with her daughter. The following dialogue highlights some of the effects of the Bad-Parent Button on Susan’s inter- actions with her daughter, Carol.

BILL: So, this idea that it was your fault that Carol was struggling with her temper, what effect did that idea have on you?

SUSAN: It actually made me a whole lot less patient with her ’cause I’m trying to make her perfect because that means I’m perfect if she’s perfect. It just changed my whole attitude with her.

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BILL: So, when her not being perfect becomes a comment on you, would that then steal away any patience you have for her?

SUSAN: Yeah.

BILL: So, it’s not just her that you’re concerned about, but her and also what it says about you?

SUSAN: Yeah.

BILL: It’s really unfortunate, I think, the ways in which moms get blamed in that way.

SUSAN: I’d have to agree.

In examining the effects of the Bad-Parent Button, it’s important to note that this button does not stand alone in isolation. Susan is among many mothers who have been pulled into blaming themselves for their children’s misfortunes. The Bad-Parent Button in Susan’s case (and in the case of many mothers) is embedded in a broader cultural context and receives significant support from the prevalence of mother-blame in our culture. In examining the effects of particular problems on people, it is use- ful to place those effects in the context of broader taken-for-granted cul- tural assumptions and practices that contribute to those effects. Exposing and critically examining cultural assumptions and practices that support a problem helps to undermine the influence of that problem and minimize self-blame. The goal here is not to replace one set of prescriptions of how to be in life with another, but rather to make visible the taken-for-granted assumptions that organize our lives so that clients can examine those assumptions and decide how they actually fit for their lives. The rest of the consultation focused on the Bad-Parent Button as a constraint to Parenting as a Calling and helped Susan to shift her relationship to that constraint. As a result, the rest of this section focuses on constraining rather than sus- taining elements. We return to and examine the usefulness of building on sustaining elements in more depth in the next chapter.

Helping Clients Address Constraints

Once clients have identified particular constraints, we can help them reflect on their current relationship with these constraints as well as the relationship they would prefer to have. Then we can draw on our expertise in inquiry to pose questions that elicit client knowledge, abilities, and skills that can help them shift their current relationship to constraints and more deliberately develop the kinds of lives they would prefer. Again, the focus here is on eliciting client abilities, skills, and knowledge, rather than con- veying professionally derived strategies for preferred living.

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As the clinical consultation with Susan continued, she mentioned that there were times when she was able to disable the Bad-Parent But- ton. I asked a number of questions about how she did that and whether she preferred times when the Bad-Parent Button got pushed or times when she was able to disable that button. The following dialogue high- lights her response.

BILL: So, I’m sort of sitting here thinking about these times you’ve described where on the one hand (right), the Bad-Parent Button gets pushed and you’re at the end of your rope and feeling like “I just don’t want her in my life,” and on the other hand (left), you’re able to disable that button and remember that “she’s the most important thing in my life.” Does that capture the difference for you?

SUSAN: Yes.

BILL: This may seem like an odd question, but I want to make sure I’m clear about it. Which do you prefer?

SUSAN: Times when I disable the button and remember that she’s the most important thing in my life.

BILL: Why is that? It’s clear to me that this is really important to you. Why is that important to you?

SUSAN: Because she has been through so much already. I just, I don’t know, it’s . . . she’s been my world since day one and will never stop being my world, no matter how angry she makes me, how frus- trated, how sad, how happy, no matter what. She is my world.

BILL: So, no matter what buttons get pushed, she will still be your world?

SUSAN: Yeah, the fact that she is my world is why she is still with me. I have fought for my daughter from day one, very literally.

Although questions about people’s preferences may seem like rather obvious questions, they are actually very important. Questions about people’s preferences provide an occasion for them to make their values and intentions known. To voice a preference out loud is to commit one- self to a direction in life. Preference questions create a context to make such commitments. These questions invite people to clarify and elabo- rate their values. In this way, preference questions are helpful in mobiliz- ing and aligning a person’s emotional responses behind his or her pre- ferred direction in life (Tomm, 1989). As Susan talked about her daughter’s importance to her, she was stepping into a commitment to disabling buttons. The process enhanced motivation. It also provided a

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basis for further inquiry into Susan’s intentions, values, hopes, and com- mitments and made the process more meaningful and personally salient.

As Susan continued speaking about her commitment to disabling the Bad-Parent Button, her physical demeanor in the meeting shifted. She sat up and became more of a presence in the room. I asked her about the steps she took to disable buttons, and she had little to say initially. This is not unusual. When asking about events that fall out- side the dominant stories in people’s lives, it is entirely expectable that those events don’t come to mind immediately. Collaborative inquiry involves a joint search for events that fall outside the dominant story. After several forays into the search for exceptions, the following con- versation ensued.

BILL: How did you start to disable that button? What were some of the first steps you took to disable it?

SUSAN: The biggest step was to stop letting everybody else rule the way I parent my child. A lot of the times the way I reacted to Carol had nothing to do with Carol and it had nothing to do with me. It had to do with everybody else. The fears of how I was going to look to everybody else if she didn’t behave.

BILL: So, back to that thing about mothers and fear and judgment?

SUSAN: Yes! I was petrified of protective services, which played a big part in how I handled her. My fear would take over and then the anger would take over as well.

BILL: From what you’ve been saying, it sounds as though what would happen with your parenting was that there were lots of voices in your head, saying do this, do that. Would that describe it?

SUSAN: Absolutely! I had to stop and think of what every single person in my life was going to say if I didn’t do this, this, this, and this. And, I had to stop that. It didn’t matter what everybody else thought, it mattered what I think and my child thinks, and the rest of the world can just disappear.

From this exchange, we expanded the frame to examine steps that Susan took away from Pushed Buttons and Parenting out of Fear and Judgment and toward Disabled Buttons and Parenting out of Love and Commitment. Alternating between questions to develop this richer story and questions to solidify its meaning, I sought to elaborate this develop- ing story of Susan’s parenting and invite her reflection on her emerging identity within it. Susan continued speaking more confidently, and we

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moved into an examination of future possibilities that might emerge from these developments.

BILL: So, this change in your parenting, who else should get caught up on these changes? Who would be important to have learn about these changes?

SUSAN: I don’t know. The one who sees it is the only one that matters to me anyway, and that’s my daughter.

BILL: And what has she seen?

SUSAN: Mommy’s a whole lot more fun. Mommy’s not saying, “Carol, you’re wrong. Carol, go to your room.” Mommy’s not crying for hours on end because Mommy doesn’t know what to do. Mommy’s able to just sit down and read a book with Carol. Just in the past week alone, I’ve actually found enjoyment in doing homework with Carol, which is a miracle.

BILL: So, she sees this different story about your parenting. What effect do you think it has on her?

SUSAN: I think it has an awesome effect on her.

BILL: And as you continue to keep these buttons disabled, as you con- tinue to have your parenting anchored in your love and commit- ment for her, how do you think it will affect her life?

SUSAN: She’ll continue to grow, she’ll continue to see the right way to handle things, and, hopefully, eventually she will continue to see dif- ferent ways to handle her anger.

Finally, in an attempt to further ground Susan in this developing story of Disabled Buttons and Parenting out of Love and Commitment, I asked Susan what thoughts she would have for other parents looking to disable Bad-Parent Buttons. She outlined three pieces of wisdom:

• Be open to what your children have to teach you. • Let your children know they matter and are important. • Don’t let others rule your parenting and don’t parent out of fear.

We talked about how she had arrived at these realizations and how she managed to hang onto them in difficult times. Finally, by way of con- cluding the consultation, I asked her what ideas she would have for pro- fessionals trying to help parents disable Bad-Parent Buttons. Her sugges- tions for helpers were simple:

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“Don’t sit in judgment. When helpers don’t sit in judgment, the defensiveness goes away. Clients don’t feel the need to sit there and defend every little thing they just said or did. When I talk to these guys [the two helpers in the interview], I can say anything and not think, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I just said this to them. What’s gonna happen now? What are they gonna think or do?’ When I’m not caught up by that, I can be more open and they can be more helpful. That’s my only suggestion, but it’s a big one.”

Although the solicitation of her wisdom for helpers fit the frame of the consultation (to help the helpers), it was also done with the intention of repositioning Susan from being the object of professional efforts to being a more active agent in her own life.

Building a Community to Support Preferred Living

Susan was moved by this consultation and seemed to be in a different place at its end. At the same time, the interview itself was quite ephem- eral in the grand scheme of her life. To slightly alter an old African phrase, it takes a village to raise a new story. It is important to help peo- ple develop communities of support that will stand with them as an appreciative audience for the enactment of new lives.

Problems exist within networks of support (e.g., the Bad-Parent But- ton receives significant support in our culture through mother-blame). Helping clients shift their relationships to problems is significantly en- hanced through the development of a community that can support them in that process. We all live out the stories of our lives in our interactions with others, and those interactions solidify our narratives and further shape our lives. As we begin to enact a richer story, the community that witnesses that enactment takes on great significance. The development of a community to witness and support the performance of emerging stories can be a cru- cial piece of our work. There are a number of ways to support clients in further elaborating and solidifying new lives. This consultation highlights several that are further examined in subsequent chapters.

Immediately following the interview, the three members of the wit- nessing team came in and shared their reflections while Susan and the two helpers observed. Following guidelines for outsider witness groups developed by Michael White (1995, 2000), their reflections were primar- ily organized by three questions:

• What did you hear in this conversation that captured your atten- tion?

• How does that connect to events in your own life or work?

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• How have you been moved by hearing this conversation, and what from this conversation do you want to carry back into your own life or work?

The purpose of the reflections was to acknowledge the ripple effects of hearing Susan’s story rather than to offer advice or suggestions for Susan’s benefit. Reflecting practices and the use of witnessing teams are further examined in Chapter 8. Following their comments, Susan and the two helpers were asked about their responses to the team’s com- ments. Susan was visibly affected by the witnessing team and offered the following response:

“It’s amazing. I’m not alone. Someone sees the life that everyone keeps telling me I’m making up. They get it and see me as having made some progress and having something to offer others. I’m glad that what I’ve been through is useful to others. I will carry these voices around with me for some time, and my hope is they can con- tinue to grow and crowd out all those critical voices in my head.”

The next week, in a continued effort to help Susan keep alive this alternative story, her family therapist met with her to watch the video- tape of the consultation and elicit her reflections on watching it a week later. In addition, I sent a therapeutic letter to Susan with my reflections on the session. Therapeutic letters are powerful devices for sustaining emerging alternative stories and are further examined in Chapter 9. Although the experience of a particular meeting can fade with time, ther- apeutic letters help to keep that experience alive and concrete. The letter below alternates between documenting what Susan said in the meeting and raising questions to continue an internal conversation and invite fur- ther reflection on developments from the meeting.

Dear Susan,

I appreciated the opportunity to meet with you this week and learn about your commitment to “Parenting as a Calling.” In the spirit of supporting that commitment, I wanted to share back with you some of the many things that I found moving and offer some reflections.

I appreciated your obvious concern for your daughter, Carol. Her explosions sound as though they have taken quite a toll on her, on you, and on your relationship. At the same time, I was profoundly struck by your commitment to maintain your connection to her despite those explosions.

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You described some remarkable changes in Carol over the last 5 months. When I inquired about how these changes had occurred, you shared the credit among many sources and also included yourself. As you said, “A child learns what the child lives.” I was moved to hear you claim some credit for the changes in Carol’s life. It seems so often the case that mothers receive way too much blame and far too little credit. As you continue to give yourself the credit you are due, what other changes do you think will occur?

You talked about the ways in which the Bad-Parent Button could get pushed for you and how you have worked to disable that button and increasingly ground your parenting in love for and commitment to your daughter. You provided a very moving account of some of the steps you took to disable that button, which included:

• Taking ownership of your parenting and realizing that you are the primary caretaker and need to go with your gut rather than be preoccupied about others’ criticism.

• Focusing on your daughter’s importance to you and remember- ing your hopes for a different life for her.

• Taking time out and stepping out of interactions with Carol to ensure that your parenting stays anchored in the love you have for her rather than reacting to particular situations.

I would imagine these steps took a lot of hard work. I asked you how Carol might describe your parenting now, and you thought she’d say, “Mommy is more fun and not crying now.” You described that change as an awesome one. As your parenting is increasingly anchored in these important steps, how do you think your relation- ship with your children will continue to unfold?

I also asked you what of your hard-won wisdom might be useful for other parents who get pushed by the Bad-Parent Button. You men- tioned three things:

• Being open to what your children have to teach you. • Letting your children know they matter and are important. • Working to not parent out of fear.

This wisdom rings true for me, both as a father and as a helper, and I appreciate your permission to share those thoughts with other parents who I think will benefit from them. As you read these ideas, how do you think they might be useful for you?

After the three team members spoke at the end of our meeting, you said you wanted to hold their voices in your head as you continue to parent your children. I hope that appreciative voices come to crowd

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out the critical voices and that your parenting is increasingly grounded in the wisdom you’ve described. Who else might appreciate your efforts to disable the Bad-Parent Button? What do you think your efforts would tell them about you? Again, I appreciated meeting with you and wanted to thank you for the wisdom you shared.

In appreciation of all that you have to offer,

Bill Madsen

This letter had a profound effect on Susan. She read it over with her family therapist and they discussed it in great detail, further solidi- fying her emerging story in the process. In an attempt to continue to keep the appreciative voices alive and assist them in crowding out crit- ical ones, I began to use the videotape of this consultation in various training and consultation groups (with Susan’s permission). I would show participants the tape, and then have them offer reflections fol- lowing the same three questions that guided the original witnessing team immediately after the consultation. As participants spoke, I took notes and then included them in several follow-up letters to Susan. Here is a composite letter that contains some of the many things people said:

Dear Susan,

As you know, I have been using the videotape of our meeting to help mental health and social service workers draw on your wisdom in their efforts to become more helpful to other parents attempting to disable “Bad-Parent Buttons.” I recently showed the videotape of our meeting to a group of professionals and then asked for their reflec- tions, which I want to share with you. They were asked three ques- tions: What stood out for you? Why is that important to you? What do you want to take away from this?

Here are some of the things they said:

“I was really touched by Susan’s ability to find and hang onto her own voice. It is hard to step away from others’ voices when you’re dependent on professionals, when your life hangs in the balance. We get so organized by what you should and shouldn’t do, and I really appreciated her strength and resolve to listen to her own voice. It solidifies for me the importance of going with my own inner voice. Recently I made a decision, and fear gets me to not trust my decision. I can lose sight of who I am and what I know and end up running to others and bouncing off them. Watching this interview helps me get back to my commitment to trusting myself.”

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“It’s hard to hear your own voice, especially when the system is not kind to the fact that people sometimes fall down. For me, the chal- lenge is to look past the sheet of paper that is supposed to tell us about clients and to move beyond our fixed ideas about where we think people should be in their lives or what they should be doing, to where they actually are in their lives. It made me more conscious of how many people are moving through their lives chained down by fear. I think fear shuts people down, and watching this interview gives me ideas about how to be more understanding about that.”

“I was moved by Susan’s determination to not repeat abandonment. I have a connection with that. As a man who grew up without a father and is now a father, I really connect with her determination to be a different parent with her children. My fathering is sometimes criti- cized, and it was very helpful to watch Susan’s determination to hold onto her own voice. I was very moved by that. It confirms for me that it is entirely possible for human beings to turn things around and not be subject to fate or what is written on their assessment sheets. As I watched this, I became more convinced that parents have answers and abilities that we as professionals often miss. Watching this confirms that I need to look for and believe in the inner strength that parents have.”

Those are their responses. I’d be interested in whatever thoughts and reflections you might have, and I appreciate your willingness to help others learn from your experience and wisdom. As you think about the effects you are having on an ever-widening circle of helpers, what is that like for you?

With continued appreciation,

Bill Madsen

Susan was very moved by this series of letters. She often carried them with her and would make a point of rereading them when she anticipated difficult situations. As she put it, “These letters keep my head filled with the voices I want in it.” Susan felt wonderful in reading these letters. But this process is not simply about helping people feel good, it is about helping them build better lives.

Comments on This Consultation

Susan moved out of state and I no longer have contact with her. At the last report, she and her daughter were both doing better in their lives, though still encountering a number of everyday challenges. Susan had practically no community at the time of this consultation, and the letters

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