Photo by Bruno Figueiredo on Unsplash
Bridging the gap between minds needs a whole new level of listening, especially when the kid’s in trauma.
It was ten past nine on a weekday in a small school. The area was one of profound social deprivation. Already, there was a boy standing on one of the desks, swearing the air blue and threatening injury to anyone who came near. Normally, Fred (not his real name) made it closer to break time before his first eruption.
Not that day.
Teachers, Teaching Assistants, kids from his class — everyone had tried talking Fred down.
He wasn’t having any of it.
A senior leader arrived to assess and assist. Having tried all the usual approaches to no avail, she clutched at one, last straw. A question, from a very special set of ‘Clean Language’ questions she’d been learning to use.
She asked: “For this day to go just the way you’d like, it would be like what?”
Fred’s response: Swearing. Laughter and rude gesturing. More swearing.
The lead teacher turned to walk to the door. Ah well, nothing ventured…
Then, before she reached the door, a shout:
“Subtractions!”
Without batting an eye, the teacher turned back and asked, in a calm, curious tone:
“What kind of subtractions?”
“15 of them,” came instantly back.
“15 subtractions… and is there anything else about those 15 subtractions?”, a third clean question…
“Yeah. On paper. Not in a book.”
The senior leader furnished Fred with a piece of paper where she’d written 15 subtractions.
He got off the desk, sat down and got stuck into his work.
This is one of the more dramatic tales I’ve encountered in the realm of Clean Language; I return to it often. For me, its teaching is profound.
The lesson?
Content-free curiosity is a powerful connector.
It may even bridge the gap to someone in trauma.
What Are Clean Questions?
Counselling psychologist, David Grove, was intrigued by the challenge of remaining truly client-centred within therapeutic exchanges. Research quickly confirmed his suspicion that, no matter how committed therapists were to client-centred approaches, no matter how open their questioning, the resulting narratives invariably echoed the therapist’s own model of the world.
Subtly, with one pivotal word here or there, the open questions used guided the client towards the therapist’s inner landscape. The client’s inner world remained largely unexplored.
This unintended steering became a fascination. Grove explored the ways in which key words within a question insert unintended information. He found that one word could contaminate the blank canvas on which the client alone would ideally be invited to paint.
An example might help:
If I ask you to picture an elephant (often the first experience in clean training), I could ask you a few open questions, but watch how each one makes assumptions of your elephant, imposing my world onto your landscape:
What colour is it? — Your elephant may not have any colour yet, but the minute I mention it, you could start to colour it in… or at best, you will have a moment of confusion as my question fails to connect with your world.
What’s it doing? — Your elephant might not have been doing anything, and whilst you might say, ‘Nothing,’ your mind is starting to head off in the direction of action…
Where does it live? — I’m assuming it’s alive. Your elephant might have been a pin-cushion or a soap-stone ornament. Again, I’m attempting to insert my world into yours.
Now, you can reject the questions that don’t hit the mark with you, and that’s fine. In everyday conversation we do this all the time.
But if I want to listen in such a way as to solely focus on you and your elephant, I need a more refined approach. To unpack the information you hold, consciously or subconsciously about your elephant, I want to remove my content completely so that I can assist ‘cleanly’ as you explore your world.
Can a Question Be Content-Free?
Answering this question became Grove’s quest. He discovered that there were indeed, a very few questions which he could consider to be content-free. At core, there are only ten.
Putting the ten questions to work, first in the therapeutic context and later in others started a body of work which continues to grow daily. Clean questions are being used in fields ranging from school leadership to horse-whispering(!), from the writing of poetry to the resolution of conflict in complex organisations.
From Contempt to Curiosity
The key to clean’s superpower is its eradication of contempt. This might sound harsh. It’s not meant that way. When we view assumptions, assertions, and judgements together, we can call them ‘contempt’, as in — bred by familiarity. They can be seen on a spectrum of contempt, from a gentle assumption at one end, all the way to the most severe or critical judgement at the other.
We make assumptions all the time. We assert. We judge. That is all perfectly appropriate in normal conversation. It’s natural to have a gap between your world and mine. As we speak, we fill in the gaps without too much concern for clarity or accuracy — the context of the conversation is generally enough of a bridge between us.
But when we are dealing with a highly traumatised child, as in our example above, any attempted assertion from our world to his will feel harsh. It will widen the gap. Significantly. The slightest assumption would have felt like contempt to Fred because of the brain state he was in (see below.) Furthermore, any attempt to talk Fred round or bring him into line with what was judged to be ‘good’ would have been repelled as manipulative coercion.
Clean Language author, practitioner and trainer, Caitlin Walker, (a treasured friend), named her book on the subject: “From Contempt to Curiosity”. No title could be more perfect.
Wherever pure curiosity is desired, clean questions shine.
But Why Did The Clean Questions Work? (For Fred…)
Enter: The Triune Brain
To really understand what happened with Fred, we will find Paul MacLean’s Triune Brain model helpful. This offers a simplified understanding of the functions of different parts of the brain and the way they interrelate. Caitlin’s training invariably incorporates this model into the clean learning mix, and for good reason.
In outline, MacLean describes three parts (tri=three) in the one brain (une=one). For simplicity’s sake (great for teaching kids) Caitlin labels the reptilian, least evolved — fight, flight, freeze — part ‘red’, the paleomammalian — rules, structure, memory, relationship — part ‘green’ and the most evolved, neomammalian — thinking, creativity, learning — part ‘blue’.
Exploring the functions of the different brain parts in the context of clean means no judgement. No criticism. No favouring one part over the other. We open our minds to key realisations:
All parts of the brain are valuable and needed (red brain is essential if we encounter a bear in the woods.)
When we judge one part as being better or worse than another we set up resistance. Villainising brain states sets us at odds against ourselves — it’s deeply counterproductive. If a child knows we judge the red brain state as bad, he thinks we judge him as bad when he’s in that state. Hence we get traumatised responses — more fight, flight or freeze. And so on.
When we’re in a less evolved brain state, we cannot access the functions of a more evolved state. There is no point in trying to learn something when we are in fight, flight or freeze. No amount of pressure will bring us into a learning state. It actually has the opposite effect.
We have best access to the adjacent state or states.
We can be triggered into changing states extremely quickly and often subconsciously.
Bridging Our Own Brain Gaps
Viewing Fred through the lens of Clean Language, alongside the Triune Brain model, we can better understand the gaps between worlds.
Whilst we can never make assumptions about another’s inner world, Fred’s initial behaviour suggests a red-brain state.
We can see how the content-free, non judgemental questioning enabled him to make his own way from red brain to green. We notice how his own solution — 15 subtractions — were a perfect green brain activity. Fred intuitively reached for a straightforward, rule-based, predictable, ‘safe’ activity he knew his brain could access. He effectively bridged the gap between his red brain state and his green.
The head teacher had simply, cleanly, ‘listened him into a more resourceful state’.
And here’s the thing: knowing about the brain states alone might have prompted green brain activity suggestions for Fred from staff and friends. But nothing would have worked as well as finding out what only his system knew about the best green brain activity and how he needed to access it.
Who’d have thought — subtractions?
We might have offered him additions… Imposed, not enquired, what are the chances they would have bounced off?
15 of them— offering 5 might have felt like an insult. 20 would likely have triggered overwhelm.
And if we’d offered the subtractions in an exercise book, well, you get the picture…
Not only did the clean questions enable Fred to identify the best bridge for his brain states in that moment, the approach also gave him some crucial control over what happened to him next.
Bridging The Gap With Others
One powerful variant on the core clean questions is invaluable in so many gap-bridging situations:
What would you like to have happen?
And when the traumatised kid on the other side of the gap says they want to kill X person or burn the school/house down — as they may well do from a red brain state — the question to ask then is:
And knowing that can’t happen, what would you like to have happen?
So often, deep listening, with the un-shock-able stance of the truly non-judgemental is all it takes to bridge the gap between minds. Even those in trauma. Because we all inherently long to connect. Curiosity in its purest form can make it safe enough for us to try.
“One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.” — Bryant H. McGill
Mind the Gap — Our Worlds Are More Different Than You’d Think
For me, as a London-bred soul, ‘Mind the Gap’ conjures images of the seriousness with which I heeded the tannoy warnings as a child… I remember my shudder, glimpsing down at the gusty chasm between footplate and platform. Nothing like the thought of a 630V shock to focus one’s attention!
Now, the metaphor reminds me to view the gap between people with the same respect. Miscommunications on a mundane level are tiresome for sure.
But when we’re trying to connect with a traumatised soul, only the deepest listening will do.