Pachyderm, the question is just a question; the cigar, a cigar! It's a straightforward, serious question, has nothing to do with past experience or perception. If the client has never been asked such a quesiton, it's guaranteed to startle and alarm, no matter how it is asked.

I think the question is used by the T to assess the seriousness of a client's intentions regarding harm or suicide but it can also be used to help teach the client to pay attention to themselves and what they're saying and how to weigh one's thoughts and feelings.

When I was first in therapy, all my speech was violent or military; one of my favorite expressions, still, is to "throw a hand grenade into my own foxhole so I can start over". It took many years to learn how I use language and how "most" people use/perceive language and my use of language, etc. and learn to modify it so I could be understood better by others and better know my own variations. I don't have to be so extreme and violent anymore because I have a lot of middle ground and range of emotions. I've learned to identify and use many smaller, more delicate "tools" to help myself. I don't have to use a hand grenade when a garden spade or dish soap and elbow grease will work better :-)

I still remember, after 9 years of therapy with this T, going to see her again and the first session at the end she asked if I thought we could work well together. My response was, "If not, I'm throwing myself off the nearest bridge" and my mind immediately went searching, trying to find which bridge that would be I had to laugh because I hadn't known I was going to say that and I didn't even know what I meant by it other than I really really wanted our work together to go well and succeed. I didn't have the words yet to express it "correctly". That's what my T and her questions and conversation helped me with, understanding myself/what I meant and expressing myself in a way that didn't make other people think I was "strange" (understatement :-)

Sometimes it takes seeming hand grenades from our T's to get us to see what we ourselves are doing and saying since we've been doing and saying things in ways that haven't seemed to work for so long.