What To Say When Your Client GETS STUCK!

One of the most DREADED Responses You can get from a client is “I Don’t Know”, because it leaves you stuck wondering what to ask. After today’s video you won’t have to worry any longer, because I’m going to tell you how to respond when a client “doesn’t know”.

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Let me know if this is familiar…

So you signed up for Solution Focused Brief Therapy training, and you read the books, and you went to the events, and you watched the videos, and you did the studying. You did all the things.

Then you sit down with a client and you ask them the opening question, “What are your best hopes from our talking?” Because you understand you can’t do Solution Focused Brief Therapy unless you know what outcome the client wants to achieve from working with you. So there you go. You start the session exactly as you were taught. “What are your best hopes from our session?”

Then the client looks at you and he gives you the three word phrase that you’ve been fearing, “I don’t know.” And then you think in your head, like, “What do I say? I just asked the client the most important question. I started the session off properly. The client is supposed to tell me the outcome they want to achieve. I understand I can’t do this work unless I know the outcome. But then the client just told me, ‘I don’t know.'”

So I’m going to show you exactly how to respond to the ‘I don’t know’ response, so that this never bothers you again. And I’m going to tell you overtly, I used to be that same way, where the ‘I don’t know’ response was the dreaded one that I feared more than anything, because how do you work with a client who doesn’t know what outcome they want to achieve?

I’m going to teach you exactly how to handle this. Because now ‘I don’t know’ is literally one of my favorite responses. I’m going to tell you why.

So let’s get into it. First thing you have to understand is when the client says ‘I don’t know’, they are not saying they don’t know the answer to the question. What they’re saying is, ‘I don’t know how to respond because I haven’t thought about that before.’ What they’re saying is, ‘I’m not sure how to respond because I don’t know that I trust you with my answer just yet.’

And why don’t clients trust us? Because oftentimes when you tell someone something that you hope to achieve, when you tell somebody something that you want to become, when you tell somebody, like your biggest dreams, hopes, goals and wishes, they say something discouraging. And most of us experience that as really challenging, and as really difficult, and as really, really painful when people kind of squelch us down when we have a dream.

So people say, ‘I don’t know,’ not because they actually don’t know the answer, but because of those other reasons. It’s important you understand that because if you think the client doesn’t know the answer, then you’re going to panic, because you understand if they don’t know the answer, ‘How am I supposed to do this therapy?’ Then you panic.

But the truth is, they do know, and it’s your job to get it out of them.

The most common way is when someone says, ‘I don’t know,’ I simply respond by saying, “What do you think?” The reason why I love the ‘I don’t know’ response these days is because I have an automatic response to it. If a client gives me a long, drawn out answer, which I used to hope they would do, then I have to make real clear choices about how to use that answer. But if client says, ‘I don’t know,’ I’m simply going to say, “What do you think?” And oftentimes that challenges people to think and then they give you an answer, and they verbalize it out loud.

Now I said earlier, people don’t know how to respond to that question, not because they don’t know the answer, but because they haven’t thought about the words for that answer.

Most of the time, people come to therapy prepared to answer the question, “What brings you here today?” Because that’s the most common question that we start off therapy with, “What brings you here today?”

But if I start the session off in a different way, it confuses them. If you start a session off with “What brings you here today?” They’re gonna say, “Oh, my wife and I are arguing.”, or “I relapsed on drugs or alcohol recently.”, or “I’ve been really depressed recently.” “My anxiety problem is getting out of control.” and so on and so on.

But if I start off with “What are your best hopes for our talking?” Meaning I want to know what outcome you want to achieve. Most people say ‘I don’t know’ because that’s not what they were expecting you to say. So you have to be patient, you have to ask follow up questions. And my most common opening follow up question is, “What do you think?” And most of the time people say, “Well, I guess I’d like to be happy.” And then they give you an answer and then you can start rolling. But that’s how you get people past the ‘I don’t know’ segment.

You have to remember that it’s not that they actually don’t know and that will stop you from panicking. And then you have to ask a follow up question like, What do you think?”

The very first client I ever worked with using Solution Focused Brief Therapy did this to me. The first thing he said was, ‘I don’t know.’ And what happened was I was doing therapy at the university clinic, and I was sitting down with this client. It was first time, I was like, all right, I’m going to do a Solution Focused Brief Therapy session. Let’s see how it goes. Here we go. I felt ready. I studied and I read and I prepared and I was ready. And I sit down with this client…

Picture a 20 year old. Not super excited to be there, but not super disrespectful about that either. He sits down. I said, “What are your best hope for talking?” And the young man said, “I don’t know.” And I said, “What do you think?” He said, “I don’t know.” And I was like, oh, crap, “Who does know?” He goes, “I don’t know.” And I said, who. “Who brought you to therapy?” He said, “My mother.” And I got really excited, almost relieved. And I said, “Oh, if I go out in the lobby and ask your mom what she hopes you get from therapy, what do you think she might say?” And he said, “I don’t know.” And I said, “Well, can I go do that?” And he said, “No. She dropped me off.” I said, oh, crap, “What about your dad? What does your dad hope you get from therapy?” He said, “I don’t know.”

And I realized in that moment, like, he just doesn’t know how to answer the question. It’s not that he actually doesn’t know, so I said, “When did you know?” And he said, “I don’t know. I guess a while ago.” “If I had asked you this question back then, what would you have told me was your answer to this question?” And he said, “I don’t even know.” But I noticed the shift in the tone, right? I noticed it was like, “I don’t know, I don’t know.” And this time it’s like, “I don’t even know.” I said, “What do you think?” He said, “I probably would have told you I wanted to be happy.” And then that unlocked it. That unlocked it.

So you got to understand it’s your responsibility, to turn the ‘I don’t know’ into a meaningful response.

So you have to understand that it’s your job to accept ‘I don’t know,’ but yet challenge it. Like, I accept that’s what you’re saying. But what do you think about this? And in that particular example, I asked about the mom, and I asked about the dad, and I asked about, where’s the mom? In the lobby. And if I had asked you back when you did know, what would you have said? And that led to a really meaningful conversation.
Never treat your client like they actually don’t know. Never treat your client like they can’t answer the question. They will always reward you with a meaningful answer if you hang in there long enough.