Are your clients conditioned to labels?
Be aware that a client who presents with a condition that has already been labeled is a more difficult case than a client that has come in to just address the pain, especially if they have been made aware of all the possible symptoms.
Two of the best examples I can remember of conditioning are :-
Case 1:
A client came to me. I asked him how I may help.. he said to me, ‘It’s this old leg of mine’. I asked him what was the age difference… he looked at me in dumb silence for about a minute and then his statement was ‘Stupid hey!’ My answer was, ‘Until you can recognize that both legs were born on the same day to the same mother I will have difficulty making them the same.’ He agreed. With that I commenced the treatment to his leg which took aprox 3 minutes. ‘Just walk around there for a minute mate… they both look the same to me now, do they feel the same’ I said, to which he replied with ‘yes! they feel the same’.
Case 2:
A client presented with a hand problem. I asked how I may help. He said he had a problem with arthritis in his hands. I commented to him that we don’t treat arthritis but where is your pain. I then treated him for the pain and discomfort in his hands. At the completion of the treatment he stated the pain had gone. I then stated it mustn’t have been arthritis because I’ve been told there is no cure for arthritis… we just treat pain and discomfort. He acknowledged this fact and said that all his pain had gone.
This is the therapists’ opportunity to do a re-frame. To get their client to acknowledge change on a condition that they believe they will always have – They must be encouraged to verbalise the acceptance of the change, thereby confirming in their own ears that the change has taken place.
I found it valuable to use the third person ‘we’ instead of "I" to disassociate from the pain inflicted in the treatment, therefore when the client speaks to me, they speak to me as if I didn’t inflict it, he did.
e.g. labeling any given pain as “Arthritis”, the individual has difficulty in relinquishing the pain because he has been given ownership of a label and has no opportunity to “experience” a cure.
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