Ask someone what is going on and you tend to get the story. It starts years back. It has been told before, to friends and to a counselor, and it has a settled form by now. It may be accurate, and telling it again may change nothing. I can talk about it. We've covered it on the surface. We've never gotten down into it.
That is the reason the booking page gives. The story is not wrong. It may be finished, and a finished account can leave little to find.
01
A story and a scene
A story is the account: where it began, who did what, what it has come to mean.
A scene is one moment. A day, who was there, what was said, what you did next.
Saying you have always had trouble saying no is a story. Saying that on Tuesday your sister asked for the weekend and you said yes before she finished the sentence is a scene.
02
What the scene keeps
A story that has been told many times can come out tidy. The parts that didn't fit may be missing, and so may the order things happened in.
A recent scene can be gone through in order. What set it off. What you took it to mean. What you protected. What you did. That sequence is what the method works from, and it is the part a story usually leaves out.
Subtraction starts with one moment from this month, something still rough, and not your full history.
03
One example
Take the sister and the weekend.
In the story version, you are someone who can't say no. That fits a great many people and separates none of them.
In the scene version there is more to look at. You said yes before she finished. One possibility is Peace, where the fear is that someone's disappointment means you did something wrong, if the quick yes was about her being put out. Another is Needed, where the fear is that without your usefulness there is no reason for you, if it was about her managing the weekend without you. It may have been neither.
The story can't tell these apart. The scene, set beside two others, sometimes can.
04
What the story is still for
The story is not thrown out. It is where the scenes come from, and some of what it holds is simply true: a hard year, a real loss, a situation that has not changed. Those are explanations too, and they have equal standing.
One scene is also not enough. Subtraction asks for three unrelated scenes, from work, a relationship and family, and removes nothing before it has them. When the three don't agree, there may not be enough to tell yet, and that is a result.
Why the questions are about what happened and not about reasons is on Why We Don't Ask "Why".