“Sometimes I’m stuck with a client. Some people seem to be bubbling with questions. How can I know what to say or ask that will be helpful?”
This question is often asked by beginning counselors and therapists and also by ordinary people who want to help a friend in need.
While listening is considered to be the most basic skill, we ought not to overlook a closely related skill: curiosity. While listening makes you aware of the other, curiosity fuels your interest.
You can be focused, emotionally available and mustering your best listening tools but if you’re not sincerely interested, the other person will know it. Why is it challenging to be interested and to want to know about the person facing you?
For one thing, curiosity implies ignorance. – Why ask if you already know? So you have to admit your ignorance, first to yourself and then to the other person. To do that you have to get over the ego barrier of needing to assess and evaluate, and needing to be the ‘expert’ who ‘knows.’
Curiosity presupposes paying attention, and if you think you already know everything, you won’t pay close, careful attention and you won’t be fully present to take in all the information coming through from the other person. In such a scenario it’s very easy to make snap judgments about what you’re hearing and not realize there’s more to the story. That is, the deeper you go into the person’s meaning, the more you understand what is missing from your understanding. The more you know, the more you know that you don’t know. From a distance an impressionist painting looks clear. From up close it looks like disconnected dots.
Secondly, you have to actually be curious. And to be genuinely curious, you have to feel this person’s life has infinite, unconditional worth. You have to believe that it is worth spending time with this person, not just because you’re getting paid. It’s worth getting to know how this particular individual experiences life. You will only be that interested if you see the person as a spiritual being, and are touched by the person’s singular spiritual essence and in awe of the unique space this person has to fill in the world.
Then you will be curious, and the unspoken words taking up your thoughts will be: “I wonder. – What is the unique combination of life experience, skills, talents and one-of-a-kind character traits with which you have been endowed and which I can awesomely learn from, and even learn from your struggles? What are the strengths and capacities within you that have yet to emerge? We are on a journey; life has put us together for a reason. I am curious to see what you have to offer me for my journey and what I have to offer you.”
Another reason why it is challenging to be curious is in the delivery. The question as it’s formulated in your mind can’t be the same question you ask. It has to be tempered by considering what the effect of your question will be when it reaches their ears.
Next time we’ll talk about how to develop curiosity. Until then, be curious…