Member Columnist — Quentin Dunne, MS, LMFT

"What Do You Like Most About Yourself?"
Strength-Based Questions in the Therapeutic Process

A client sits in the waiting room before her first session with a therapist whose online profile she had liked. Several days earlier, the therapist and client had spoken by phone to schedule the session and she felt the rapport had been good. Though their talk had been fairly brief, the therapist was respectful and polite, even warm. Still . . . she feels uncertain, even a bit nervous. After all, she's seeking treatment after a particularly painful and prolonged break-up, one which shook her self-confidence. "How," she ruminates, "could I have been so stupid to have missed all the red flags?" And what, she cannot help but muse, if the therapist silent asks the same question? Still, she has summoned her courage to seek help, and one of the best ways a therapist can honor this — or any client's — courage is by asking several strength-based questions during that first session, questions that help a client honestly consider his or her best personal qualities.

Of course, different clients seek treatment for different reasons, but in almost every case, the client has confronted some personal, professional, or spiritual problem that he or she feels unable to resolve alone. The stigma of seeking mental health services has faded considerably over the last several decades, but there is still the possibility that clients will feel self-conscious, perhaps even embarrassed, about seeing a therapist, especially if they feel they have directly contributed to their own distress. Given that a client might be in this vulnerable state, it can be particularly helpful for the therapist to ask, "What do you like most about yourself?"

Those seven words, asked honestly and respectfully, can accomplish several tasks in the very first session. First, they can quickly help to establish a non-pathologizing tone that conveys genuine curiosity about a client's strengths. Second, it can help guide, however temporarily, the client's viewpoint toward his or her own better qualities. In my own experience, I've found it's not uncommon for a client to answer that question with something along the lines of, "Umm… I haven't really thought about that before, but I guess I'd say…" and then identify a very tangible strength. Third, it can provide valuable clinical information that can assist the therapist in providing effective treatment. After all, it can be just as important and revealing for a therapist to understand a client's accomplishments as it to understand their struggles.

Then again, even such a well-intended question presents a risk. Let's say a client seemingly sincerely answers, "I don't know. Nothing, I guess. Given how badly I've screwed up, I really don't feel there's anything good about me." Probably not the answer any therapist is hoping to hear, but this therapist has heard it and knows it's possible to be flexible while remaining focused on eliciting self-awareness of the client's potential. Rather than replying with something like, "Oh, come on. There must be something you like about yourself. Just think about it for a moment," that could make the client feel you're not honoring the initial response and trying to impose your opinion, you can pause to indicate you've taken in the reply and then say, "Well, I really appreciate your honesty in not trying to give a feel-good answer that you don't really believe in. It's important to say what we truly feel." In this way, the therapist reframes the client's stated lack of self-worth as an indication of integrity, perhaps even courage, and begins to shape the therapeutic space as one of safety and openness. Obviously, the therapist needs to carefully observe the client's body language to see how such a reframe "lands," but in my experience it has never missed.

But then do you really want to leave the client's initial reply ("I don't know. Nothing, I guess…") dangling? For the purposes of this article, let's say no. The therapist can still help the client elicit an awareness of personal attribute from a more indirect angle, one that perhaps feel less threatening. One such example might be, "I'm curious, if I was talking to some of your friends and asked them what they liked about you, what would they tell me?" Note that it was a deliberate linguistic choice to start that question with, "I'm curious." It's a small, hopefully effective, way of communicating that I'm trying to truly get to know the person as a person, not rushing toward a deficit-based diagnostic category.

There are many different ways of helping our clients recognizing their potential for growth even when they may be feeling at their wits' end, such as asking someone who's struggling in school what class they're doing best in and/or what their professional goals are for the future. Whatever the particular question asked, though, the important underlying dynamic is that the therapist is honestly, not sentimentally, trying to uncover qualities of strength and resilience within the client and, by so doing, helping the client to uncover these qualities as well. Such an approach is not a touchy-feely technique, but rather a genuine effort to empower clients not to lose sight that, whatever stumbles and struggles they're experiencing, the therapist is taking a wide view of the totality of their being rather than exclusively focusing on their addiction or infidelity issues.

Asking about a client's favorite sports team or rock band can certainly be a good way to build rapport and I frequently do this myself. But more often than not, the client answers such questions quickly and easily. It's in answering, "What do you feel your best qualities as a parent are" or "What's something good you feel you've done in the last year," that a client, though needing to think a little longer and answering more tentatively, introduces an element of hope into the therapeutic process. However rocky the road ahead may be (and it can indeed get pretty rocky!), the genuinely asked strength-based question and the honestly answered reply provide the beginnings of a map that will lead the client over the road and toward a path of true and deep healing.

Quentin Dunne, M.S., LMFT provides nature-based therapy services in Woodland Hills and Topanga. He is a member of the Association of Nature & Forest Therapy and specializes in the areas of trauma recovery, grief and loss/pet loss, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He can be reached by phone at 818.636.8639 and through his website, www.naturetherapyheals.com.