When I tell people that I am a Counsellor, I often hear people's concerns that it must be so difficult or boring or terribly sad to sit and listen to people all day every day. But, honestly... nothing could be further from the truth. It is the most goddamn interesting thing I could imagine doing with my time. I think the idea exists that therapists sit with crying clients all day. For certain, there are tears; any and all emotional states are welcome in my office. But the depth and breadth and brilliance of the discussions I get to participate in on a daily basis are one of the parts of my work that I could never have predicted and are one of the foundational aspects of the work that keep me engaged in the very keen manner that I am.
Yesterday (originally published in Oct, 2024), I had one of those brilliant discussions—actually... I had many brilliant discussions yesterday, but I will tell you about just one of them. In one of my sessions yesterday, a client and I discussed the distinction between two simple questions: why vs why not. On first blush, it might not seem that the distinction between these two questions is not very meaningful. Let's dig in and see...
One bit of context before I start: as always with my thinking and writing, the context of this discussion is adhd. The context is adhd, because the discussion yesterday was between two people who both are neuro-deviants of the adhd variety. And for those of us who identify with the condition called adhd, why is the question that is always on the tips of our tongues. I will offer a description of those with adhd without offering the full report of how I arrived at it: those of us with adhd are obsessed/driven with understanding the reasons why things are the way that they are and why we should participate in the ways that we are asked to. This orientation to the world is true for the most expansive and existential questions and the smallest and most mundane. For those of us with adhd, why can feel like a cursed question.
What is the problem with the question why? In the context of the discussion I had yesterday, the client felt that they had to answer why questions—from the most expansive to the most banal—in the work of justifying their choices. And this is where, in part, the issue of decision paralysis shows up. If one is constantly confronted with the question why on a moment-to-moment basis, then the cognitive and emotional resources necessary to answer that rolling question can become intense. And this is compounded by the fact that those with adhd will often demand a comprehensive or robust answer that will allow them to become active in the world. And remember... those with adhd require more resources than those who are neuro-mean to become activated.
Let me give an example: let's say... I need a new wallet. I go to some online outlet that sells wallets and start my search. How can I tell which is the best wallet for me? I have some requirements and some constraints around price. But there are a lot of wallets. How to determine which is best? Why ought I to buy one over the other? This question why can become overbearing and time-consuming and ultimately completely insufferable and even maddening, because without the appropriate amount of inhibitory tone, the question why expands. And before you know it... a quest to simply find a wallet becomes a deep existential question of how I spend my money or how I participate in consumer culture and finally comes to rest on interrogating what I'm doing with my life. Ultimately, every why, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is an invitation for a reevaluation of how one has ended up in the very place where they are now.
And there's a reason why this is so: when we ask the question why, we are inquiring about the causes of things. Causes and causation and causality is a special topic about which I will be writing more in the next little while. It is my hypothesis that those of who are neuro-deviant have a special relationship with causality, and I think it has a profound effect on the way we experience our world and the way we spend our metabolic resources. But as I pointed out above with my wallet example, all whys are expansive in their scope. An amazing example of this sort of expansive why questioning comes from the cold open of the first episode of the show Lucky Louie that first aired in 2006.
Inside every person with adhd is some version of that five-year-old girl asking progressively more difficult and existentially weighty whys. So if you notice that some folks with adhd sometimes get bogged down and even paralyzed at the prospect of what seems like a very straightforward task or question, you now know at least part of the reason: any single question—including whether you would prefer chicken or fish—without the proper inhibitory tone will ultimately grow to the most expansive question available. And the final terminus point is often the least answerable most important questions that can be asked:
- what's the purpose of my life?
- why is there something instead of nothing?
The question why demands an answer to the causes of things. This has been true since the first days of Western Philosophy. Listen to a character from Plato's dialogue Phaedo, written 2600 years ago. It goes as follows,
I thought it a splendid thing to know the cause of everything; why a thing comes into being, and why it perishes, and why it exists. (Section 96)
As I mentioned, I will delve a bit deeper into this question of causality in the future, but for the time being, let's rest on this notion that the question why is always inflationary or expansionist. Just as in the opening of Lucky Louie, the five-year-old questioning girl inside of those of us with adhd is only every satisfied with an answer to the big whys.
But what about why not? Why not is, amazingly, a completely different kind of question? This is the thing that became immediately clear in the brilliant discussion I got to participate in yesterday. The person who fields the question why is tasked with answering the causal query fully. And if you are a person with adhd who constitutionally struggles with capping your energy expenditures, then any single question inquiring the causation of any single thing can open up a can of worms the size of the universe. In that sense, any single why can ask a person to account for their very being.
But why not puts the onus to answer the question not on the question asker—as with why—but to the world itself. Should I have the chicken? Why not? To ask oneself the question why not is to pose the same sort of question that gets asked during a wedding ceremony: "does anyone know of a reason why the couple should not be legally wed?" Imagine if rather than asking the conventional wedding question as above, the officiant was required to ask each and every person in attendance, "please offer a reason why these two should get married?" This is the difference between why and why not?
Why not does not put the one who poses the question on the spot to produce a robust and conclusive answer to the question. As a result, it is much less likely to be an inflationary or expansionist as why. Answering the question, should I have the chicken with why not poses the question to the room or the world. If I'm at a wedding and I ask my why not question to the table with respect to the chicken, I might hear someone say something such as, "I've been at functions with these caterers. Their chicken stinks." In this instance, I am asking a variation of the wedding question: does anyone know of any reason why I should not order the chicken? Speak now or forever hold your peace." But I now know without inquiry into the nature of my very being that... I'll get the fish.
