First published on cleanlanguage.co.uk 20 May 2022
Finding Words in a Spiral Galaxy
James Lawley & Penny Tompkins
The client's responses and our questions were translated by
Anna Stativka and
Dr. Vladislav Matrenitsky.
This transcript is illustrative of a number of features:
- The client presents with a potentially serious physical symptom and so we start by clarifying the scope of our agreement and our expertise.
- Since the client does not know how to find the words she needs to help a mother tell her son his father has been killed in the war, we cannot develop her desired outcome directly. Instead we work adjacently – to maintain attention in the vicinity of the relevant experiences (see J13, J21 and J45) – until a resource metaphor emerges which will enable the client to find the words to support the family.