Miracle Question Intervention

I have a strange, perhaps unusual question, a question that takes some imagination...

Suppose . . .

After we finish this session today, later tonight you do the things you usually do, perhaps you watch TV, do your usual chores, and then you go to bed and sleep . . .

And, while you are sleeping, a miracle happens . . .

And, the problem that brought you here is solved, just like that!

But, this happens while you are sleeping, so you don’t know that it has happened…

When you wake up in the morning, how do you go about discovering that this miracle has happened to you?

How will you discover that this miracle has happened to you?

Now of course, there are the very obvious things you would expect...

You would look different and perhaps feel different but what I’m really getting at are the changes that would have happened inside of you.

How would you think differently?

How would you feel differently?

How would you act differently?

How will your best friend discover that this miracle happened to you?

How will you feel the day after the miracle?

Because the more you turn your thoughts to a future where you think, feel and act the way you want to think, feel and act, the more you prepare your mind for a miracle to take place.

So imagine it happening now and while your creative mind is absorbed in imagining, your brain is busy wiring new connections and firing new emotions that represent the way you want to feel in the future.

And brain science tells us, the brain cells that fire together, wire together…

Insight

The Miracle Question (deShazer's 1988) first appeared in a book called “Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy”.  In this book, deShazer calls the miracle question an adaptation of Milton Erickson's Crystal Ball Technique.  In the Crystal Ball Technique, the client is invited to create a representation of the future in which the problem was solved and then to look backward from the future and explain how the problem had been solved.  The key skill to develop with the Miracle Question is to encourage your client to move beyond the superficial explanations and to deeply explore how the 'miracle' will positively affect the way they think, feel, act and respond to future challenges and circumstances.