What to Say to: I Don't Know

“I don’t know” is a client response that often throws beginning therapists. Some therapists feel at a loss when presented with this response to some question about how a client is feeling or thinking. If this response occurs repeatedly then there is often a sense of frustration and helplessness built up in the therapist. I need this information to understand my client but they won’t give it to me. This frustration can lead to us labelling our clients as resistant, defensive or stupid. These blanket or pejorative labels do not lead to a good psychological formulation of what is going on for the client and as a result limit our thinking and motivation to work with the client.

A place to start thinking about “I don’t know” with clients is to think about the task of the client in therapy. At a basic level there are three rules for a client coming to therapy. Firstly the client must arrive on time. Secondly the client must talk about themselves and thirdly the client must leave on time.

If the client says “I don’t know” they are in my view breaking rule number 2 i.e. they are not talking about themselves but avoiding this for some reason. Usually when a client says “I don’t know” it is response to a question about themselves, their lives or their internal states. I will accept a client saying they don’t know the capital of Italy or to some factually based question but not when it is a question about their internal state. 

People say “I don’t know” in therapy for a number of reasons.  It is possible the client genuinely does not know but this is a very interesting piece of information that requires much more exploring. If the client is not able to access cognitions or feeling states or is unable to observe their own behaviour then as a therapist we need to understand this. Failing to take time to understand this difficulty with self reflection about an aspect of the self may have a significant impact on the progress of therapy. 

As a first step we need to get the client to reflect on what is happening.

When I ask you how you feel you are not able to access what your emotional state inside is. Tell me more about this?

Follow-up options:

Is it like this all the time that you are not aware of how you are feeling or just in relation to this?

Has it always been like this?

What would other people think you were feeling/thinking in this situation?

Some clients say “I don’t know” as an almost reflexive response. Often leaving a few moments of silence allows the client to come back to the question, reflect on it and respond.  If this pattern is repetitive then it can be raised and explored.

I notice that when I ask you about your feelings you first response is always to say “I don’t know”. What do you think is going on?

For some clients “I don’t know” is a way of avoiding looking at something. The client is not saying “I don’t know” but really saying “I don’t want to go there.  When we sense this is the case we need to step back and explore the client resistance around talking about whatever the topic is. These sometimes centre on strong affect attached to the avoided area. This is often true whether you are exploring affect or cognitions. The clientcan fear loss of control or being overwhelmed by their emotions. They may feel the therapist will not be able to cope with their strong feelings or they feel the therapist will be critical or disgusted by their emotions.

The first step is to get the client to acknowledge the “I don’t know” is about avoiding something.  If there are obvious non-verbals you can comment on these.

When you said I don’t know you became quite physically tense and agitated. Is it really that you don’t know or has this touched on something for you?

Or confront it directly

Don’t know or don’t want to say?

Once the avoidance is acknowledged then the resistance can be explored

What would be your fears if we explored this?

What do we have to do to make it safe for you to explore this?

How will we know the right time to explore this?

For me “I don’t know” is a clear signal to stop and explore what is going on. It is never to be accepted at face value and just move on to the next thing. Stop and take the time to understand what is going on.

My favourite response to “I don’t know” is to say:

If you did know what it would be?

As inane as this sounds I find that 90% of the time it gets a response from the client.

Comments

[Brin Grenyer]

"I don't know" is also a defense ie. the client does know but doesn't know if they can trust the relationship with the therapist yet. So sometimes the best response to I don't know is for the therapist to accept that the client is not yet ready and that further more general alliance building is required before coming back to this issue

[Yvette Vardy]

Although there is mention of the client saying "I don't know" because they're not in touch with their feelings, sometimes "I don't know" can be an indication that the client is in touch with several competing or simultaneous feelings. "I don't know" can represent being unsure how best to describe a unified feeling state when maybe the person is feeling several emotions at once or they're feeling conflicted. It might therefore be helpful to ask whether there are several different feelings operating together, or whether the client feels a range of sensations that seem confusing. You could then try and tease them apart and try to label them together.

[Gary Fulcher]

For some clients, "I don't know" can also mean that they have confusing feelings or are so rarely in touch with their feelings that they cannot access or describe them efficiently. Affect is so important in therapy that ways of accessing & heightening it are essential. I often ask clients to be ware of how they feel in their body (e.g. buttereflies in the stomach). Then, I ask them to touch their body where the feeling is located. This step often enhances the feeling experience & allows better access to the affect, thus leading to greater possibilities of exploring it & its underlying language.

[Chris Allan]

Thanks for your comments Gary. I think this is a good point and one also raised by Yvette that clients use "I don't know "to express confusion or an inability to access spcefic or all affect. While it is not something easily described in words I often find the voice tone of the "I don't know" gives a clue to what it is about.

I think your idea of getting client to touch or point to the part of the body where they are experiencing the affect is a good one. This helps the client move from just experiencing the emotion internally to also moving to looking at themselves externally.

Chris

[Rossweisse]

Perhaps the intent is to make the question go away. Often, 'I don't know' is a verbal filler playing for time to think, whether the person who says it realizes that or not. I just wait silently but expectantly and most people respond to the initial question.

[karen]

as a patient, i say this often. it is a stall. i can't quite 'touch' what i am trying to say, or feeling perhaps conflicted reactions to a mounting tension. it is not a conscious stall, but a mental stalling while i am trying to put things together. fortunately my analyst recognizes my pattern, and encourages me that i DO know. not in an insistant parental way, more jovial and encouraging. and, with him 'staying with me'...i do go deeper.

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clients doesn't have to know about it. I think that we need to be more compressive. There are clients that they don't know because it isn't their expertive area-

[Calvin Klein]

thank you1

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negation is the first answer that people try when they are facing a problem. I know that it is hard but therapist should open those door because they try to hide everything until they have confidence with their therapist.

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and why not I can say "I don't know" is a normal responce when we face a adversal situation, for example when we are nervous or in front something that we don't know.