Clean language and symbolic modelling

Domain VI · Brief, integrative, trauma, hypnosis & coaching · David Grove, James Lawley, Penny Tompkins · 1980 · New Zealand

What it is

Clean Language is a questioning method developed by the New Zealand psychotherapist David Grove (1950–2008). He developed it from the early 1980s while working with trauma clients. He noticed that their spontaneous metaphors for symptoms faded under ordinary questioning but developed when he…

Format

• B. Symbolic Modelling Lite, a single-session format (2011):
• Mature changes as they occur. Grove sometimes spent up to a third of a session maturing.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• strong affect; see 5.3.
• the self-modelling cues in Section 2.
• new symbols that show up only in the drawing.
• the signs of transformation in Section 2. Change can arrive unbidden.
• a client still absorbed or tearful. Allow time to reorient (see 5.3).

Problems the guide addresses

• Stuck client (nothing shifts)
• "Resistance" and non-engagement with metaphor
• Overwhelm, flooding or dissociation
• Non-adherence and between-session drift
• Ruptures
• Method-specific difficulties

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.