When providing therapy services, in my experience, it is inevitable that we will begin the session with a debrief about a distressing event. What I have found to be so compelling is the insatiable need for people (including myself) to want to know "why" something has happened. I believe this to be a function of human nature leading us to belief that if we know why something unwanted has occurred we can fix it. Scientifically, this too has been proven to be true as I work closely with parents, clinicians, and other professionals to collect ABC (antecedent, behavior, consequence) data to determine a plan to resolve the non-functional or maladaptive behavior. The antecedent (or what comes immediately before the behavior) is usually what we would consider to be the cause and indication of the function of the behavior which in layman's terms is the "why" of the behavior. The consequence is usually what motivates the behavior to keep occurring; hence, clinicians look to modify the antecedent aka the "why" and the consequence aka the reinforcement or reward to get to an adaptive behavior.
Now that we are all squared away with the clinical talk, let's get into how asking the "why" is dysfunctional when processing a distressing event. For instance, let's say you get laid off from your job after 20+ years of service. You are disgruntled because this is the only job you have known for majority of your career and you began to ask yourself "why" you were laid off after so many years of faithful service. This line of thinking leads you down a rabbit hole of all the things you did well to prove that you were a valuable employee (who should not have been let go). You may even began to compare your abilities to the abilities of those who continue to work for the company. In essence, if you truly think about this method of analysis what you are doing is asking yourself what you could have done better to prevent yourself from loosing your job. Therefore, this line of thinking is all encompassing of self-blame. The reality is there is nothing that you did to cause yourself to loose the job and there is nothing you could have done to salvage the job. Therefore, when debriefing about a stressful event, it is imperative to inquire about the "what" instead of the "why."
In looking at the aforementioned event, through the scope of exploring the "what," you make ask, "What would have caused my employer to lay me off?" or "What was the motivating factor for laying off employees?" When you ask the "what" you take the "you" out of the situation and recognize that there are factors beyond you that may have caused the distressing event in your life. You may also ask yourself, "what can I do to resolve the fact that I am no longer employed?" or "what options are available to me?" in terms of career opportunities. Now you are no longer stuck on "why" something happened to you but rather "what" you can do to resolve the true issue. Keep your eye out for a podcast episode titled "the why" on Spotify, Apple, or Google.