Question 1

Name a story about your past that you have told many times. When you notice what the telling does not include, what is there? *(Listening for: the edited parts. The smoothed-over places. Most polished stories have a specific thing they work around.)*

Question 2

Where in your body do you carry the past that your narrative has not yet been able to release? Name the location, not the emotion. *(Listening for: somatic encoding. The jaw. The shoulders. The chest. The place that tightens at a particular kind of comment or silence.)*

Question 3

Is there an event in your past that you are still, on some level, requiring to be different than it was? What would it cost you to stop requiring that? *(Listening for: the ongoing litigation, and the cost of keeping it open. The question of cost often surfaces something the person had not named before.)*

Question 4

What part of your present life has been made smaller by the size of what the past is still claiming from you? *(Listening for: the specific present-tense loss. The relationship that cannot fully open. The risk that cannot be taken. The joy that is conditional on the past resolving.)* ---