What are you feeling right now?
Are you sad now?
Some will say yes. Some cry. They share a powerful, intimate moment.
“Some people will tell you the tears have been there and I haven’t been able to cry them. Or I haven’t been able to access this emotion. Or … I haven’t been able to cry and I also don’t sleep very well.” Betty believes such an experience represents a gift for therapist and patient alike. “It’s an acknowledgement the patient is feeling safe,” she says, “safe enough with you to be vulnerable, to reveal themselves to you and to themselves.”
Betty often follows up with one of the most effective questions you can ask, and it isn’t even a question.
Tell me more.
That’s what got the patient we’ll call Roger to open up. Roger revealed that his marriage, which has been rocky for a few years, has gotten even worse lately. He and his wife barely talk. He had a brief affair a few months ago, but it’s over now. He wasn’t looking for someone to get involved with; it just happened. He knows he’s at a crossroads. He is sorry about the whole situation, but he finds himself lost and confused. As for the affair, he thinks maybe it happened because his marriage left him feeling isolated and unloved. Maybe he was just vulnerable and met someone who was captivated by him when his wife was not. He doesn’t know where things went wrong. He’s trying to figure it out.
Now Betty can ask:
Did you want the marriage?
Do you want to deal with it?
Have you had therapy?
She explores Roger’s level of awareness, whether he is tuned in to his own feelings and to others. She wants to know how he sees this marriage and what kind of conversation he’s had with himself.
Has your spouse been unhappy, too?
What is your picture of the marriage?
What’s your picture of yourself as a husband?
Have you said to your spouse, “I think we’re in trouble. I think we need help”?
Betty wants Roger to talk about his feelings, goals, and values.
How far out of integrity are you with your own vision of who you told yourself you were going to be as a husband?
How does that feel?
How do you talk to yourself about that?
Where do you want to be with yourself now?
Betty is following a line of inquiry she calls “accessing the internal dialogue.” She wants her patients to examine and question themselves: “I might say, it sounds like you’re having an internal conversation, argument, or dilemma with yourself. Who’s talking and what is each part saying? Do any of those voices sound like anyone else you know?” This perspective taking looks inward. It’s where her patients explore their own empathy and how they apply it to themselves and others.
Betty gets people talking—to her, to themselves, to one another. She tries to get couples face-to-face. She issues a challenge: Sit and listen for two minutes without responding or rebutting. Maintain eye contact. Try to relax. Ask questions rather than accuse. Try to understand the other person from the other person’s perspective. She calls it “slow and careful and tender work.”
“I often tell people you have everything you need and plenty to spare to solve this. And I say I will help you. I’m trying to empower them.”
Betty asks a therapist’s questions. These questions are designed to explore. They search for understanding to locate a happier, healthier person. They reflect Betty’s empathy and they encourage it in her patients.
License and Limits
Empathetic questions generate some of the most personal conversations we have. They can be tricky, though, because there is no clear end point. One person’s relieved revelation is another’s do-not-touch secret. Knowing how and when to respect zones of guarded privacy is a tough call. It’s why Betty Pristera sometimes defers to “tell me more” as she gets to know her clients. That’s why Terry Gross has subjects where she follows rather than leads.
When I interview people, I feel I have license to ask just about anything. Most of the individuals I question are public figures. They expect to be asked and are skilled at telling you when you go out of bounds. Even so, there are things I won’t ask about unless it is germane to their public lives or performance. I won’t gratuitously ask about a person’s personal life. I won’t ask about pain someone has experienced just to hear them talk about it. I ask about illness or grief only if it’s relevant or sheds light on a person’s character.
For all these reasons, empathetic questioning requires close and constant listening for words and tone and mood. As Helen Riess and Betty Pristera noted, listening empathetically involves more than your ears because people send signals in a variety of ways about how they’re feeling. They may talk freely or they may clam up, fearful of what they may discover. Reading those signals, asking openly, and listening intently is a big part of empathy itself.
CHAPTER 5
THE GENTLE INTERROGATOR
Bridging Questions
WHEN I CONDUCT AN INTERVIEW, most of the time guests show up willingly, even happily. They want to make their point, tell their story, or sell their book. They want to speak to the wider world and share their thoughts or experiences. Certainly that’s true for guests who go on Terry Gross’s show. She offers an audience in the millions. People make appointments to see Betty Pristera so she can question their inner selves and peel back their defenses. They want her help. But what about people who do not want to connect? How do you build bridges to people who are suspicious or distrustful, resentful or worse? What happens when someone you want to draw out doesn’t want to talk? Reaching out to the suspicious or wary requires a special touch, extra patience, and bridge-building questions designed to establish a relationship and build trust with someone who may not be receptive.
?
You may be looking for a specific piece of information. Why is the new guy hovering in the office? You may want an explanation from a person who would rather not share it. Is your teen planning a party when you are out of town? Your approach to the “person of interest” in these conversations can become a delicate dance. But your chances of getting someone to talk will be improved if you ask the right questions in the right way—if you build bridges. You need to know:
What’s going on?
What are they thinking?
Do we have a problem?
People have a lot of reasons to shut down. They may be hiding or ashamed of something. They may be suspicious of you because of your position or your history together. They may be hostile, aggrieved, or convinced that the world is against them. They may be secretive by nature. Or they may just be up to no good.
Bridging questions are intended to encourage people to talk when they don’t want to. They coax information, glean detail, and assess intent and capability. They are intended for the colleague, the customer, the neighbor, the parent, the child—the suspect—who shuts down, harbors a grudge, or is thinking of doing things he or she should not do.
Bridging questions are a calculated and clever way to get people to tell you things. Sometimes I have used this approach unconsciously, when I interviewed people who were glued to their talking points, suspicious of the media, or caught up in scandal or wrongdoing. All of them were on edge, defenses raised. Few were inclined to offer information willingly. So I needed to wend my way to the relevant parts. I needed to make it easier for them to speak, holding back on the central point or toughest question until we had built a certain rapport and the moment was right. If I’d understood more about this line of inquiry—and the research that’s gone into it—I might have gotten a few more scoops and stories out of those interviews.