| Developing
presenting history
• Focus on movement and developing experience of agency and
resource
• Use therapeutic strategies
Careful use of language can have a powerful effect
on the experience a person has in the context of history taking.
Using relational externalising to
ask a person what they have 'noticed' about a symptom languages
them as active in relation to the symptom. Researching
differences, role of context
and movement through time fit with a standard history taking process.
Focusing on how the person makes use of these is less routine but
can give important information while enhancing sense of agency:
- “Have you noticed any differences in the strength of
the worry you are experiencing [about ending up on the streets]
at different times?”
- “Have you noticed if the voices you have been hearing
are more when you are on your own, busy, with others etc?”
- “How do you cope with the voices?”
- “Given that they are less when you are with others
do you find you are deciding to spend more time with others,
or choosing to be on your own?”
Using imagination as a therapeutic resource to
focus on imagined presence of desired outcomes or movement can orient
the conversation towards movement in the desired direction:
- “If the depression was starting to lift, what would
be the first sign?”
- “What difference will it make to your life when the
worry starts to lessen?”
- “Has there ever been a time when life felt worth living?”
We can engage people in thinking differently about
their experiences.
“What difference would it make if you
saw yourself as ‘struggling against the odds’, rather
than ‘I am an idiot’?”
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