I came across the phrase “clean language” in 2015, one day when I was noodling through Amazon, my version then of doomscrolling. I’m surprised that I clicked on it, since all that “clean language” can evoke is either some kind of twelve-step manual on staying clean, or an evangelical primer on how to not say naughty words. I respect and admire twelve-step, but I didn’t have any special desire to make a study on its use of language.

 Nevertheless, I did click, and it opened me up to a new world. Clean language, it turns out, is not about cleaning up the client but cleaning up the practitioner. If I ask a client the very standard therapy question, “what do you mean by that?” I am not being clean, the clean language people tell me, because I am directing the client into the cognitive realm of meaning; if I ask, “how do you see things now?” I am also not being clean, because I am directing the client into the visual mode of how we see things, when their inner experience might have been auditory or thought-based. The idea behind all this is that the practitioner helps you, the client, develop metaphors and images without my world imposing on yours. These metaphors will develop into a more and more detailed “metaphor landscape,” which will eventually become so detailed and clear that at some point produce a spontaneous solution to your issue.  

 Here is a sampling of some of the core clean questions I most often use:

·       And what kind of (X) is that (X)?

·       Is there anything else about (X)?

·       And where is (X)?

·       And that’s (X) like what?

·       And what happens just before (X)?

·       And what do you want to have happen?

·       And can that happen?

·       And what needs to be done to make that happen?

 I know these are very simple questions, but I have found them to be very powerful, sometimes for no other reason than to make it really clear what we are talking about. My favorite is the first one, what kind of, because it helps people do that clarifying. I’m surprised at how loose our language is sometimes, and how often we interpret other people’s words instead of asking them the simple question.

 Here’s a quick example of how a metaphor landscape might be developed. Someone says, “I feel like yuck.” I say, “What kind of yuck is that?” They say, “Yuck like trying to walk through a mile of thick porridge.” I say, “And when it’s a mile of thick porridge, is there anything else about thick porridge? The person says, “Sometimes it’s so thick I can barely move my feet.” Next I ask, “What do you want to have happen with thick porridge?” “I want to walk and breathe easy,” they reply. Then I ask, “And can that happen?” “Surely it must be possible,” they answer, and then I might ask, “And what needs to happen for you to walk and breathe easy?” And the person might say something like, “I need to have a long, serious conversation with my partner, it’s been quite a while since we have done that,” or it might be, “I need to do more self-care, I used to go to the gym much more, and do yoga too.” And then we try to nail it down more: “What needs to happen for you to get started on a program of gym and yoga?”

 That is a very collapsed version of a clean language conversation. I often use it in conjunction with Internal Family Systems Therapy to develop the sense of the person’s part that we are reaching out to, and then I will revert to IFS. But other times, the clean language metaphors take over, and we never need to go into the parts language of IFS at all.

 Clean language started with a man named David Groves in New Zealand, and it has not taken the US by storm, let’s say. It also seems to have found a home more in coaching than in therapy, even though with Groves it had its origin in therapy. For me, I found that reading the books and doing some online classes centered in the UK was enough to get me going with using the method, and I’m sad that more people don’t. Grove’s book is called, Resolving Traumatic Memories, and although it’s very readable, it is a therapy book, not a do-it-yourself book. For that, go to James Lawley and Penny Tompkins and Metaphors in Mind who do a good job of laying it out, as do Wendy Sullivan and Judy Rees in Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds.