By Peggy Gold, MS, NCC, LMHC, Narrative Therapy Topic Expert Contributor

Click here to contact Peggy and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

In my private practice, my clients are often struck by the way I react to their experience and reports of intense emotional pain. Examples of such pain include their expressions of anger, sadness, rage, sorrow, frustration, shame, guilt, or devastation. I see these expressions as entry points for the development of a new, more preferred storyline. A storyline that can be explored with my client and rooted in their own responses to pain, this type of therapeutic inquiry is known in Narrative Therapy terms as “Absent but Implicit.” What is not being said, but is being implied by what is said? Thinking within this framework, I am able to ask questions that help people access what is important to them, what they hold precious, and help them claim their own personal agency.

To explain this concept, I will draw on the analogy of the experience of physical pain.

Pain is a great communicator. It gets our attention, doesn’t let up, and helps us slow down and take stock of what might be causing the pain. Or we find ways to lessen the pain even if we don’t know why it’s there. All in all, it generally gets us to do something and take notice, even if we don’t want to deal with it.

Our experience of pain changes depending upon what we know or believe about it. Our relationship with pain directly influences how we interpret pain. For example, when we go to the gym and work out for the first time in a while, we feel pain, often in places we didn’t know we had muscle tissue. But this pain doesn’t have us calling out from work or phoning our Dr.’s office for narcotics. This pain, for most of us, is like a trophy. We chose it, we know it is doing something good for our body, and we usually go back to work out again. This behavior is adequately supported in the popular phrase, “no pain, no gain.”

What about our emotional pain? Very often, the pain we experience internally can be debilitating, stopping us in our tracks from being the person that we want to be. It can prevent us from experiencing hope and put the brakes on our ability to dream. It doesn’t need to be this way. We wouldn’t be able to experience emotional pain if we didn’t have a taste of what we want, value, or desire. A life situation in which we feel pain can be a beautiful opening for figuring out what it is that we want. `

As a therapist thinking within the framework of the absent but implicit, I help clients to use negativity, not approach it with more negativity. When I hear an expression of emotional pain, I ask a question that helps illustrate the belief or preferences for living that this pain represents. For example:

Expression: I’m so frustrated that I can’t complete my school assignments on time!

Question: Does that frustration speak to a certain way you’d like to be as a student?

Expression: I can’t stop crying whenever I think about how my Dad left our family when I was 12.

Question: What do those tears say about what matters to you?

These questions are entry points to what can be a beautiful re-authoring of a preferred story. I develop this story with my client by asking more questions about their own actions, events, and values that support what is absent but implicit in their emotional pain. In this process, clients are brought to a new place of knowing themselves which is based upon their preferred way of living, helping dissolve the negative effects of the emotional pain.

©Copyright 2009 by Peggy Gold, MS, NCC, LMHC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Peggy and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile