In difficult times, it’s easy to feel at the mercy of big forces, but we’re more resourceful than we think
“What brings you here?” is the question, according to cliche, with which therapists always begin a first session with a client (or did, anyway, until sessions all moved on to Zoom). But in the 1970s, a therapist based in Milwaukee, Steve de Shazer, began to experiment with another approach. Instead of the standard question – which is pretty much destined to get clients detailing their problems – he started asking what not having problems would look like. Over time, one version of this inquiry became codified as the Miracle Question, which runs as follows: “Suppose that one night, while you were asleep, there was a miracle, and this problem was solved. How would you know? What would be different?”
To be honest, this sort of thing raises my hackles. It smacks of magical thinking, and positive visualisation, and somehow catapulting yourself out of the real circumstances of your life (including your rung on the economic ladder) into a realm of unalloyed bliss. But that wasn’t what happened. More often than not, Shazer’s clients came up with strikingly modest visions. In their imagined miracle worlds, one client might wake up and realise she looked forward to the day, instead of dreading it. Another would find that when she talked to her children, they responded; another might find herself standing up to a workplace bully.
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