Asking an open-ended question like “What comes to mind?” is perhaps the most common unblocker tool used in counseling, both secular and Christian, to deal with long periods of silence. You use it when the person seems to be stuck on answering your question, often because they are analyzing or filtering their response to give you what they think you want to hear. You can’t do anything with silence while they are blocked with analysis paralysis, so asking “What comes to mind?” invites the person to report the raw data of what is going through their head rather than a response that is colored by their interaction with you.
Separate Data Gathering from Evaluation
If they seem to be stuck in processing anyway, say something like, “Don’t worry about whether it’s true, just report what’s going through your head and we’ll check it with the Lord together.” It is your joint responsibility to discern whether the thought is useful or not. When the person keeps silent and ruminates, they take you out of that discernment process, and thus usually come to the wrong conclusion anyway.
Note that asking “What comes to mind?” is a neutral question, while asking, “What is God saying to you?” puts additional pressure on the person to ensure that what they hear is from God. That might cause the person to freeze and then your session stalls. How Do I Know I’m Hearing From God gives a strategy of how to discern which voice is talking, but it works better if you and the person participate in the discerning process rather than just the person. Asking “What comes to mind?” leaves it open for the person to report the raw data, whether it comes from God, themselves, or a deceptive spirit, and then you have to use a diagnostic tool to know what to do with that data.
Variations of “What Comes to Mind?”
“What comes to mind?” is an unblocker tool when used as a follow-up question to a blocked, initial response. However, it can also be used as a diagnostic tool when you use one of “5W” versions of it:
What comes to mind about…
- Who: <Person>
- What: <Topic>
- Where: <Location>
- When: <Era of life>
- Why: <Trigger>
The person does not even have to give a verbal response. Art therapy encourages a drawn or painted response, while play therapy re-enacts the response instead of saying it.
Sometimes the person will be reluctant to give an answer when they are in two minds of about it. Asking “What’s the first thing that comes to mind?” and then, “What is the second thing that comes to mind?” gives the person an opportunity to give move than one answer, even if they are contradictory. Those mutually-contradictory answers are a valuable clue to an underlying problem causing the tension in the person, so it is not the answer in itself that is important to an open-ended question, but what the answer indicates about the deeper processes going on in the person. Thus, you want raw answers, not filtered ones. “What comes to mind?” is a simple but effective tool to getting that unfiltered data.
Take-aways
Sometimes the simplest tools are best
The easiest way to deal with long periods of silence is to ask, “What comes to mind?”
Separate the reporting process from the evaluation process
Ask a neutral question when you want to be part of the evaluation process.
“What comes to mind?” is both an unblocker and a diagnostic tool
Open-ended questions are flexible enough to serve multiple purposes.
Listen for what is behind the answer
As a diagnostic tool, the answer to a question is not as important as the thinking and feelings behind it.
Further Reading
“What comes to mind?” is one of the unblocker tools of the Story Method; the other one is the Memory Unblocker. “What comes to mind?” elicits raw data that needs to be evaluated. How Do I Know I’m Hearing From God helps you and the person do that.