I want to start by sharing with you an “aha!” moment I had about a week ago. I’ve been doing Scott Miller and Daryl Chow’s online workshop in Deliberate Practice (DP). I was watching Daryl in a video talk about how he creates a learning project for himself using a mind map. He was drawing out an example mind map on creating an ‘effective focus’ in therapy with a client. At one point he spoke about using the principle of mobilising willingness – and then it hit me! Below are thoughts I wrote to Scott, Daryl and Nathan (my DP coach) as this moment of realisation was hitting me:

Do I need to focus on more often explicitly asking clients if they are willing to work on a particular issue or task? If they answer that they feel willing but unable or unwilling to proceed I can ask them what are the barriers for them in proceeding? For example, “so you’re not willing – what would need to change to make you feel more willing?” and “so you’re willing, but do you feel able? What’s getting in the way?”.

My doubt is strongest (and therefore my over explaining to clients also) when either the client or myself don’t feel willing to pursue a particular issue, task or topic – in these situations the doubt is overwhelming. It’s like I’m trying to make the client more willing by throwing more explanation at them, trying to steamroll the doubt. My hope is by asking a client more often how willing they are, it will help observe their own willingness, any barriers to their willingness and the associated doubt, instead of getting hooked by that doubt – we can then work with that doubt instead of against it. I noticed that when clients feel willing and able I experience a workable level of doubt; I’m not scared to give them the ball. When clients feel willing but unable I’m more likely to experience an unworkable level of doubt; I may start to feel hesitation in giving them the ball. If a client feels unwilling and unable I will be far more likely to experience doubt that can become overwhelming; over explaining at my highest and scared to give them the ball for fear they will throw it away or back at me.

Where to go with willingness?

Dictionaries define willingness as “the state of preparedness to do something necessary” or the level of “readiness to do something”. I now know this concept is a massive area for me to work on, so I’m following the possible thread that my over-explaining is strongly correlated with the level of willingness the client and myself have from moment to moment.

There are two kinds of kinds of unwillingness that comes up with clients:

1. Where there is unwillingness with a client to explore a certain topic, situation, emotion, belief or coping skill (e.g. vulnerability, guilt, trauma or trying something new).
2. Where there is unwillingness with a client to do therapy at all (e.g. a teenager that has been coerced to come in or a mandated client).

I think it would be too much to ask myself to tackle both the above situations at once as my current learning focus, so I will focus on the first client example, as I encounter this far more often than the second.

If clients appear unwilling to me – I seem to persist in trying to make therapy seem more ‘doable’ in their eyes, instead of directly addressing and exploring their unwillingness. While I realise that making the task of therapy seem more ‘doable’ can help unwillingness, there is diminishing returns, after a while I can end up looking like I’m trying to push or convince the client. In these situations of unwillingness I’d probably get more leverage out of exploring unwillingness with the client and the barriers. Essentially I’ve come to realise that there’s not much point in turning up the ‘doable’ dial in therapy if they still aren’t willing in the first place.

I’m at the stage now of looking at new information to expand my perspective. Like Motivational Interviewing , ACT, DBT, Socratic questioning and congruence. If you have any suggestions on readings please let me know – suggestions are always welcome.

I’ve already started asking clients more often “are you willing to do this?” when gauging their willingness to do homework and then asking them “does it also feel doable?”. I think that has already been useful in helping us explore and address any barriers, I’ve not felt as often like I’m trying to steer the client or pull them along.

This morning I’ve also wrote down, some other potential principles I could use in taking willingness exploration further, like a preliminary tool-kit:

• What do you need to be willing to face up to? Is it guilt? Vulnerability? Openness to try new things? To work through trauma? Creating a question to define their journey
• Getting in contact with observing doubt and willingness
• Observing the roadblocks to their willingness
• Validating unwillingness
• Defusing by agreement when a client expresses strong ambivalence towards therapy while encouraging a ‘lets see what happens’ mindset in trialling therapy
• If a client is blaming others for their presenting challenges, exploring with them the controllability of external factors
• Asking clients if they are willing to explore the question that defines their journey (as in point 1); perhaps at the end of a session.

I am willing to play around with these ideas and see what happens.

P.S. My fiancé and I are getting married at the end of the month! (Woop, Woop!), as my next post would fall on our wedding day! So I won’t be posting next until the 22nd of April.

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