“Why did you do that? Think that? Buy that? Go there?” Have you ever noticed how many times a day you find yourself responding to the question, “Why?” Often times the question comes from someone else – but it is a question that we also ask of ourselves.

The “Why?” question has two sides – one that can be helpful and enlightening and one that can be limiting. On the dark side it can keep you from being true to who you are, interfere with your intuition, reek havoc on your self esteem and cause you to give away your power. Let’s take a look at the cause and effect of the “Why?” question.

What motivates people to constantly ask, “Why?”

People ask, “Why?” for lots of reasons – some more supportive than others.
The “good” why’s are usually prompted by a desire to expand the self:

• A desire to learn something new (e.g., “Why are penguins black and white?”) Our curiosity about the world is a wellspring of “Why?” questions.
• A desire to understand something that is not obvious or intuitive (e.g., “Why is the door shut?” “Why did that happen?”)
• A desire to understand the motivation of another person in order to get to know them better – to understand their deepest feelings, desires and motivating forces.
• A need for order in our world – we want to believe that the world is not full of random events – that cause and effect is indeed operating in our environment – and so we seek causes for the effects we observe in the “Why?” questions that we ask.

But there are also some other, not so empowering, reasons people ask us, “Why?”

• As a subtle way of accusing us of doing something wrong - as in the question “Why in the world did you do that?” - in which the real implied question is, “Why in the world did you do such a stupid thing?”
• To gain control in a situation or over a person – as in the question, “Why did you go right when it makes so much more sense to go left?”
• As a disguised attack on our personal taste or our hopes and desires: “Why are you wearing that ripped pair of jeans?” “Why do you want to visit Bosnia?”
• A need for control – for example when people use the “one-two” punch of first asking you, “Why?” about something you chose, and then quickly following it up with their suggestion of a different alternative.
• As an expression of anger – “Why can’t you stop... (doing, being, saying) that?”

When “whys” are spoken or intended in a negative way you often hear additional words ringing in your head that did not actually come out of the mouth of the person speaking, as in, “Why do you want to buy that?” – with the unspoken words being ...”that ridiculous, useless, ugly, thing”. Also, when “whys” come across in a negative way they feel very personal and accusatory – and cause us to feel hurt or to react. When a “Why?” is asked in a negative way we get the feeling that no matter what we say our response will not be judged to be satisfactory by the asker because the asker is not simply asking to gain information, they are asking as a way of making a point.