Why We Need to Ask Why

One of the first things I was taught in grad school was to guide people gently away from asking themselves “Why?” and to instead ask themselves “How?” and “What do I do now?” As an anxious, people pleasing, fledgling therapist who probably wanted to do right by my professors, I emulated this. After all, “why” was supposed to continue a maelstrom of self pity, one that we were told to avoid if we wanted to really help people. “Why” would get people stuck in the quicksand of navel gazing. We were told that the “why” wasn’t helpful to self exploration. Even more so, “Why me?” was self aggrandizing, and enlarging of a client’s importance in their own story. 

As if that’s not the point of therapy, to rewrite the story of the dear person sitting in front of us. 

So, as a young therapist, when my clients asked, “Why do I respond this way?” I would answer with, “What do you want to do instead?” When people asked, “Why did this happen to me?” I would answer with, “The ‘why’ isn’t important as much as how you are going to live your life now.”

I wasn’t wrong in my responses, but I wasn’t right. 

Over a decade later, “why” is a question I ask every single day. Multiple times in a session. Over a decade later from the classroom from which “why” was excommunicated, I’m settling on the fact that asking ourselves why is extremely important. 

Pete Scazzero in his masterful book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality writes that “Getting to your core requires following God into the unknown, into a relationship with him that turns your present spirituality upside down. God invites us to remove the false layers we wear to reveal our authentic self, to awaken the ‘seeds of true self’ he has planted within us.”

Asking ourselves “why” is crucial. Asking ourselves the why of our being, of our emotions, of our personality, of our stories, of our futures. Our persistent asking of ourselves “why” is getting to the core of who we were meant to be. 

And it is terrifying. Asking ourselves why opens a whole giant cosmic can of worms that touches at the core of our fears. Are we loved? Are we safe? Are we secure? Are we seen? Are we meaningful? Are we in control?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. 

And in our fears, we avoid. Unknowingly, to myself and my seminary professor, they instilled a fear of the why in me and I superimposed that onto my clients. What if they asked me a why question I didn’t know the answer to? What if they hated the why? Could I handle it? What if the why sent them down into a spiral of depression?

Maybe. But also there is no furthering our stories if we do not understand them to begin with. There is no changing of the script—and we all desperately need a different script.

James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

So here I sit. A therapist older and maybe a little wiser, encouraging you to ask your why so that you might engage in the beautiful and terrifying work of understanding you. To rewrite the story into one that is more true and more honoring of the dear person that you are.