Why I Don't Always Ask “Why?” in Counselling: Lessons From My Abbotsford Practice

Written by Evan Vukets, RCC, Registered Clinical Counsellor in Abbotsford, BC. I support men in Abbotsford, the Fraser Valley, and online across BC. Learn more about me.

Adventuring with my kids as we come to the end of summer has made me realize just how challenging being on the receiving end of “why” can be. My two oldest kids are three and five years old right now, which means we are firmly in the stage where curiosity seems to be measured by how many questions can be asked before Dad runs out of answers.

Walking through the forest recently, it started innocently with an interesting rock:

“Why is that rock green?”

Because there is moss growing on it.

“Why is moss green?”

Well...

“What is moss?”

It is a plant...

“Why don’t we have moss on our rocks at home?”

Suddenly our quiet walk through the beautiful British Columbia forest had become an oral examination on moss that I was wildly unprepared for as I unfortunately remember very little from high school biology.

I love their curiosity, and I hope they never lose it. But being on the receiving end of that many “whys” has also made me think about how the question feels when you are the person expected to answer it. Sometimes there is a perfectly clear answer, but other times you realize the person asking assumes you understand something that you haven’t actually made sense of yourself.

Early in my career, I admit I used to overuse the word why in clinical settings. I wanted to provide value in every session, and much of my early experience and supervision came from the world of addictions, where Motivational Interviewing and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) were two of the approaches I used most often. I became pretty comfortable asking questions, looking for patterns, and trying to understand what was underneath a behaviour.

Years later, in my counselling practice in Abbotsford, I find myself approaching that question quite differently.

Because “why?” can be a surprisingly loaded question.

When You Don’t Actually Know Why

There is nothing inherently wrong with asking why. If I ask why you left your job, why you stopped drinking, or why you decided to come to counselling, you may have a perfectly reasonable answer.

The problem is that we often assume that because someone did something, they must also understand why they did it. Human beings are unfortunately not that organized.

You can know that you snapped at your partner without understanding why that particular comment got under your skin.

You can know that you spent two hours scrolling on your phone instead of going to bed without having a neat explanation for why you kept doing it.

You can know that every Sunday evening you feel anxious about Monday morning without knowing exactly what you are dreading.

You can even recognize a pattern that has been costing you for years and still have no idea why you keep repeating it. Then someone asks you why.

If someone is sitting across from us waiting for an explanation, there can be a lot of pressure to try to give them one. Maybe it is true, maybe it is partially true, and maybe it is simply the first explanation that makes enough sense to relieve the pressure of being asked.

Jumping too quickly to the “why” can get us an answer, but not necessarily insight.

I think this is especially important in counselling because there is already an unusual dynamic in the room. You are sitting across from someone whose job is, at least in part, to understand you. It is easy to assume the counsellor knows where the conversation is going and that you are somehow supposed to provide the right material to get there.

A question as simple as “why did you do that?” can unintentionally sound less like curiosity and more like a request to justify yourself.

What I Ask Instead of “Why?”

Over the years, I have become less interested in getting to the explanation as quickly as possible and more interested in understanding what actually happened.

If a man tells me he completely shut down during an argument with his partner, I could ask why he shut down. Sometimes I still will in the right context, but there are a lot of other places we can go first.

What was happening just before you shut down?

What did you notice in your body?

Run me through what was going through your mind.

What did you think would happen if you kept talking?

When else does this happen?

Are there times when you can have a difficult conversation without shutting down? What is different then?

We are still curious. We are still trying to understand the behaviour. But now we have something to explore rather than requiring an explanation from the beginning.

This is one of the things I appreciate about Socratic questioning when it is used well. The purpose isn’t to lead someone toward the answer I already decided was correct. It is to become curious together and test some of the assumptions we are making.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (or CBT) can sometimes get reduced to “changing negative thoughts,” but much of the useful work is actually learning how to notice what our brains are doing before deciding whether we believe them.

The same is true of Motivational Interviewing. The goal isn’t to convince someone why they should change. It is to understand their ambivalence and help them explore their own reasons for changing, or not changing.

That distinction became particularly important for me working in addictions, because telling someone why they should stop using a substance is usually much easier than understanding what that substance has been doing for them. But choosing the easy path is rarely more useful.

Why “I Don’t Know” Can Be a Useful Answer in Counselling

“I don’t know” comes up a lot in counselling.

Sometimes “I don’t know” does mean someone doesn’t want to talk about something, but from my experience I have learned it often means: I don’t know yet.

Maybe you’ve never been asked to put that experience into words before.

Maybe you know something feels wrong but haven’t figured out what it is.

Maybe you have spent years moving quickly enough that you haven’t had much reason to stop and examine why certain situations affect you the way they do.

If I immediately respond with another version of “why?”, I may just be asking you to produce an answer you don’t have.

I’m much more interested in slowing things down enough that we can find out what the “I don’t know” is actually telling us.

Sometimes the answer becomes obvious once we look at what happened before, during, and after an experience. Other times it takes longer.

Counselling doesn’t require you to understand yourself before you walk through the door. Figuring some of that out is part of why the room exists in the first place.

Asking Better Questions in Relationships

The same dynamic shows up outside the counselling room, particularly in relationships.

Imagine your partner does something that hurts you and you ask:

“Why would you do that?”

It is a completely understandable question. You want to understand what happened.

But there is also a good chance the person on the other side hears something closer to:

Explain yourself.

Compare that with:

“What was happening for you there?”

Those questions may eventually take you to exactly the same place, but they don’t necessarily start the conversation in the same place. One asks immediately for an explanation. The other creates some room to explore the experience first.

This doesn’t mean we excuse behaviour or avoid accountability. Understanding someone’s behaviour and holding them accountable for it are not opposites. In fact, understanding the pattern often makes meaningful accountability more possible because we finally have something more useful to work with than “I don’t know.”

This comes up frequently with the men I work with in my Abbotsford counselling practice and online across BC. Many are excellent problem solvers and have built successful lives partly because they know how to identify a problem, find the cause, and work toward a solution. Then they bring that same process into a relationship and discover that human beings are frustratingly resistant to troubleshooting.

Sometimes your partner doesn’t need you to figure out why they are upset. Sometimes they need to know that you understand that they are upset. Sometimes you don’t need to figure out why you shut down before you can begin noticing what happens when you do.

And sometimes “I don’t know” isn’t avoidance. It is simply where our work starts.

Maybe “Why?” Comes Later

I haven’t stopped asking why in counselling entirely. That would be throwing out a useful question because it can be used poorly. I think I have simply become more comfortable not needing the answer immediately.

There is often more value in spending some time with:

what happened?

When does it happen?

What did you notice?

What did this do for you?

When doesn’t this happen?

Once we understand more of the landscape, the “why” tends to become clearer anyway. The difference is that we arrived there together instead of forcing an explanation before one existed.

Maybe that is the part my kids have been reminding me of this summer. When they ask why a rock is green, they aren’t testing whether Dad knows the answer. They are trying to understand a world that is still new to them. One answer opens another question, which opens another, and eventually I am standing in a forest realizing I should probably know more about moss and the beautiful world around me.

Their curiosity is not the problem. In many ways, it is exactly what I want to preserve in my work.

The difference is learning that good curiosity doesn’t always require an immediate answer.

Sometimes you know why. Sometimes you need some time to figure it out. And sometimes a better question helps you notice something you wouldn’t have found by asking why in the first place.

Apparently, becoming a dad has given me some additional clinical supervision on the subject.

Frequently Asked Questions About Questions in Counselling

Why do counsellors ask so many questions?

Counsellors ask questions to better understand your experiences, thoughts, emotions, relationships, and patterns. Good counselling questions should help create curiosity and understanding rather than make you feel like you are being interrogated or tested. You also don’t need to have an immediate answer to every question your counsellor asks.

Why can asking “why?” make someone defensive?

“Why?” can sometimes sound like a request to explain or justify a behaviour, particularly during conflict. Even when the person asking is genuinely curious, the person receiving the question may experience it as criticism. Questions such as “What was happening for you?” or “What did you notice in that moment?” can sometimes make it easier to explore the same situation.

Is saying “I don’t know” okay in counselling?

Yes. “I don’t know” can be an important starting point in counselling. You may understand what happened without yet understanding why it happened. A counsellor can help you slow the experience down, identify patterns, and explore thoughts or emotions that may not have been obvious at the time.

What questions might a counsellor ask instead of “why?”

A counsellor might ask what was happening before an experience, what you noticed in your body, what thoughts came up, what you were worried might happen, when the pattern tends to occur, or when it doesn’t occur. These questions can provide more information before trying to determine why something happened.

What should I expect from counselling for men in Abbotsford?

My approach to men’s counselling in Abbotsford is collaborative rather than assuming there is one predetermined explanation or solution for what you are experiencing. We might explore stress, anxiety, burnout, relationships, communication, emotional disconnection, life transitions, or patterns that no longer seem to be working. The goal is to understand how the problem actually shows up in your life and develop tools that fit you rather than forcing your experience into a generic formula.

Do you offer online counselling outside Abbotsford?

Yes. In addition to in-person counselling in Abbotsford, I also offer online counselling for clients across British Columbia. Online sessions can cover the same concerns and use the same collaborative approach as sessions in the office.