Unreasonable Curiosity; the Problem is Not the Problem

Course Description

Clinicians are trained to meet addiction with compassion — to ask what happened to someone and what pain lies underneath. It is a real advance over moralizing, and it is also a stopping point we often mistake for a destination: it reads a client through their wounds and leaves them in the passive voice. This session practices a bolder, riskier stance — unreasonable curiosity — in two directions. First toward the client: who are they in spite of what they have survived, what do they value and protect, and what competencies did survival require? Then, more uncomfortably, toward ourselves: if the wound is focused in on as the problem, then the whole apparatus of problem-saturated conversations, reputations, and narrow possibilities follows — and the clinician is not standing outside it.

Drawing on the narrative therapy of Michael White and David Epston, the work of Marie-Nathalie Beaudoin, and a reading of addiction as a form of modern power, this experiential session uses live crowdsourcing, a small-group “interview the addiction” exercise, and structured self-inquiry to help participants widen their clinical questions — while staying honest about the ways compassionate practice can quietly reinforce stigma.

Instructor Information

Educational Goals

1. Bring a more curious, competency-oriented stance to ongoing clinical work with people affected by addiction, extending beyond deficit- and trauma-saturated framings.
2. Integrate reflexive attention to one’s own assumptions and use of power into routine practice, reducing responses that inadvertently reinforce stigma.
3. Incorporate narrative-informed questions that support client agency, meaning, and authorship across future sessions.
4. Contribute to team and program cultures that question thin, pathologizing conclusions about people in addiction.

Measurable Learning Objectives

1. Participants will be able to distinguish problem-saturated, trauma-informed questions from questions that elicit a client’s competencies, values, and knowledge.
2. Participants will be able to describe three narrative practices — externalizing, double listening, and the absent but implicit — and state one limitation or risk of each in addiction treatment.
3. Participants will be able to produce at least three “unreasonable” clinical questions that surface a client’s agency, desire, and authorship.
4. Participants will be able to identify at least two ways clinicians may unintentionally reinforce stigmatizing definitions of the “acceptable” in addiction treatment.
5. Participants will be able to apply a set of reflexive self-inquiry questions to name one’s own investments and use of power in a clinical conversation.

Outline with Main Points for Each Topic (including times)

1. 2:30–2:45 PM · A · Two kinds of curiosity (framing) — Obj 1 — 15 minutes

   • The reasonable, trauma-informed question and its hidden cost.
   • The unreasonable stance; the title’s double meaning (White; Beaudoin).

2. 2:45–3:00 PM · B · The First-Instinct Wall — Obj 1, 4 — 15 minutes

   • Spare vignette, silent write, and crowdsourcing the room’s reflexive questions.
   • Clustering the convergence; the “denial” tell as power made visible.

3. 3:00–3:15 PM · C · The turn — Obj 1, 2 — 15 minutes

   • “What does this question assume?”; double listening; the absent but implicit.
   • White on the thin conclusions of a linear trauma–distress link.

4. 3:15–3:30 PM · D · Interview the addiction (small-group exercise) — Obj 2, 3 — 15 minutes

   • In small groups, participants take turns voicing and questioning the addiction, letting the problem narrate its own power.
   • Listening for what it leaves out — competence, desire, authorship.

5. 3:30–3:50 PM · E · The second axis: curiosity about us — Obj 4, 5 — 20 minutes

   • Addiction as modern power; the externalization trap.
   • The pleasure question; reflexive self-inquiry (questions we turn on ourselves).

6. 3:50–4:00 PM · F · Debrief, integration & evaluation — Obj 5 — 10 minutes

   • Application to participants’ own caseloads.
   • Questions and course evaluation.

Total instructional time: 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 20 + 10 = 90 minutes / 60 = 1.5 CE hours

Signing in and out

• Sign in at the door between 2:15 PM and 2:30 PM.
• Sign out and complete this session’s evaluation at the door when it ends at 4:00 PM.
• Sign-in, sign-out and the evaluation are not part of the 1.5 CE hours.

References

• Beaudoin, M.-N. (2011). Respect: Where do we start? Educational Leadership, 69(1), 40–44.
• Beaudoin, M.-N., & Monk, G. (2024). Narrative practices and emotions: 40+ ways to support the emergence of flourishing identities. W. W. Norton.
• Császár, F., Erdős, M. B., Jávor, R., & Kelemen, G. (2024). Narrative means to recovery ends: Novel psychoactive substance users in early recovery. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 29(7), 755–778. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325024.2024.2319745
• Denborough, D. (2014). Retelling the stories of our lives: Everyday narrative therapy to draw inspiration and transform experience. W. W. Norton.
• Deriu, V., Altavilla, D., Adornetti, I., Chiera, A., & Ferretti, F. (2024). Narrative identity in addictive disorders: A conceptual review. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1409217. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1409217
• Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Pantheon Books. (Original work published 1975)
• White, M. (2006). Working with people who are suffering the consequences of multiple trauma: A narrative perspective. In D. Denborough (Ed.), Trauma: Narrative responses to traumatic experience (pp. 25–85). Dulwich Centre Publications.
• White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. W. W. Norton.
• White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. W. W. Norton.