How to help our patients explore difficult feelings

Often in counseling, asking, talking about, describing, and processing feelings can be really difficult for some folks, especially for “non or less feeling” users.

Instead of asking them ....

How do you feel?
What’s your feeling at the moment?
Why do you feel that way?

Try...

If your feeling has a voice, what is it trying to say?
What is it trying to tell you?
What is it trying to tell others?
What is it trying to tell me?

So whenever we want to explore difficult “feelings”, try those and see if we can get more clarity and less resistance.