Ep 141: Balancing Case Histories with Open Questions: Redefining First Meetings

Ever find yourself trapped in a tedious history-taking session when all you needed was a quick fix?  I once endured a 90-minute case history for a simple foot injury, and it sparked a larger conversation about the efficacy of extensive histories versus a more open approach.  Join me for a spirited session that challenges conventional practices in therapy and professional consultations - and personal meetings as well.  Discover why sometimes less is much more, and how to strike the perfect balance between questioning and listening.

This episode is a must-listen for therapists, consultants, recruiters, and anyone who regularly interacts with new people for whatever reason!  We'll unpack the complexities of initial encounters and the art of fostering connections without falling into the trap of unnecessary or manipulative practices. My own experience with a Chinese medicine practitioner serves as a cautionary tale, prompting a lively debate on the pros and cons of case histories. Tune in for an insightful exchange that promises to redefine how we approach new relationships for the better.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence brought to you by BeingSpace with Catherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, episode 141. I've got a bit of a bugbear about case histories. An anecdotal example of this Some years back I came home from running a dance workshop and I was very excited, slightly high off the experience of the whole thing, and I decided that it would be a really good idea to run outside and go behind the garage where there was a big pile of blocks of wood that needed to be thrown into the next door recreation ground. And this was because I was about to move home and I'd arranged with the village that they would come and pick up these logs from the recreation ground, but I had to chuck them in there. So I ran in there, started grabbing these logs, started chucking them through the doorway into the recreation ground, not noticing that underfoot was a very unstable pile of long pieces of wood. And what happened? Not surprisingly, I ended up hurting the bottom of my foot. It was very painful, it was like stabbing electric hot poker agony in the bottom of my foot. And it was all my, entirely my own fault. So I thought well, what shall I do? I tried to massage it, I did some Reiki on it. I tried to get some sleep, drank lots of water and it wasn't healing. So I said okay, I will go to my go to type of practitioner. I'm going to go and see a Chinese medicine practitioner, will probably get some acupuncture, some Chinese massage and that will sort me out.

Speaker 1: 2:07

Now, unfortunately, I was living in an area where I had not really sorted out a really good connection with a good local practitioner, and the guy I used to go to for years and years and years and years was several hours drive away. So I looked around, found somebody, went to see him so far, so good, walked in. I've hurt the bottom of my foot. I can no longer spread my little toe out to the side and it's painful and it's not right. He said okay, we'll just take a case history. He then proceeded to take a case history for the next 90 minutes, which, unfortunately, because I was enjoying the attention, I allowed myself to get completely sucked in and perhaps overshared. In response, and when he finished the case history, I said okay, we've done that now. Can you have a look at my foot now? So he looked at my foot and said oh, yes, I can see what you've done If you just keep stretching that little toe and keep massaging it, that will just sort itself out in time.

Speaker 1: 3:19

I didn't feel completely happy. I felt something wasn't quite right at this point. So I thanked him, paid him and left and thought hold on, I have just wasted 90 minutes of my life that I'm never going to get back. And he could have given me that piece of feedback in the first five minutes and I would have paid for that, because he knew what he was talking about. And I don't have a problem with the plumber who shows up and bangs the pipe in the right place and charges you 50 quid although it'd be more than 50 quid these days because he knows where to bang the pipe. I have no problem with that.

Speaker 1: 3:56

But I thought about it afterwards and thought what's going on here? I was overly willing to have my time wasted I mean literally wasted and I was overly willing to let him insist on his case history when I knew that this wasn't about a case history situation. This was about somebody having a look at my foot, somebody maybe asking how I did it and telling me what they thought. And I found afterwards that this chap had decided to. He'd recently trained as a coach on top of his Chinese medicine qualifications and he was trying to incorporate coaching into all of his sessions and he decided the best way to do that was to do these long case histories. So I thought about it some more and thought, yeah, case histories do have a place, I think, but equally there are times when they're just really not helpful and in fact, can end up being manipulative.

Speaker 1: 5:05

So this conversation today is really for anybody who is encountering new people on a regular basis and wanting to get into some sort of useful, fruitful relationship with that person. So, whether that's a therapist, a consultant, a recruiter, an employer, whoever it is, you're meeting people. You want to get into a good, useful relationship with them and in order to do that, obviously you want to try to understand that person well enough in the ways that are relevant to the endeavor that you want to be embarking upon with them, which, when you first meet them, you might not know what that endeavor is, or even if there's going to be an endeavor together, but still you want to find out enough so you can at least proceed to the next stage of exploration with that person, even if you don't, in the first meeting, come to a conclusion as to whether or not something's going to flourish and blossom between you, whether it's personal, professional or whatever. It might be no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 6:13

The idea of the case history, I think, came from the medical world originally. Well, the idea was this person you're talking to is a patient or a potential patient. They know what they're suffering, but they don't know why they're suffering it. They don't understand their own body, they don't understand their own health and they don't know what to do. So therefore, I, as the medical practitioner, have to take responsibility for all of that and find out enough information from this person, about this person, so that I can decide what needs to be done and I can then advise the person.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Now, granted, there are situations where the person asking the questions needs to take on that sort of paternalistic, authoritarian position. I think there are cases like that, in which case it's entirely appropriate that they take over and that they do their case history as much or as little as they see fit. But I actually think these days, so many of us are much better educated. We're informed. We can find out all sorts of stuff on the internet. If we don't know about something, we have a friend who does, who's just an email away or a WhatsApp message away or a video call away. That these days, it's very rare.

Speaker 1: 7:40

I think that what we really need is for the other person to take over in this initial conversation. More commonly, what we really need is somebody who openly says to us something along the lines of all right, there's few things I need to understand about you and about your situation before I know which aspects of myself to bring to bear in this relationship or what suggestions to make in this relationship. Now, that's a very sort of businessy way of saying it, but one can say it in a lot more casual ways than that Hi, who are you? How are you today? What's going on? I'd love to hear about you. I'd love to hear about you to see where there might be some sort of a fit between us. It can be done in much more subtle ways than that as well.

Speaker 1: 8:36

For most of us, we can actually respond to a question like that. For most of us, we can respond and say let's say it's a first date. Have you ever been on a first date where you get a question like that? Have you ever been on a first date where you get virtually interrogated by the other person? It's very, very weird. Can you find yourself answering questions and thinking I just want to get out of here? And also, is this person actually looking for someone with the mind of their own, or are they just looking for somebody who can just be fitted into a box and then just managed into position and slotted into place in this person's life? Because if so, that's not me, it's not going to happen. So and equally, I have also made the error, when meeting a new person whether it's in that sort of awkward situation or in a work situation or anything like that of suddenly realizing I'm asking you far too many questions, my mind has run away with itself, my mouth has run away with itself, just asking question after question after question. I'm trapped, I can't get out of it. So I think this is a pattern that any of us can fall into the pattern of asking too many questions, imposing the case, history, experience on somebody when it's really not necessary and, in fact, when it can be damaging, or getting sucked into the being interrogated scenario and finding it impossible to put our hand up and say, excuse me, hello, this is a bit much. Can I just tell you what I think I'd like to tell you about myself or about my situation.

Speaker 1: 10:25

I remember when I used to do the executive coaching and organizational consultancy years ago, I started off by asking lots and lots and lots of questions and then I found particularly after I went under my own banner, of course, at that point I could really experiment with doing things more in an overall way felt intuitively the right thing to do. I would just start a conversation by saying great, so why did you decide to meet with me today? Bang, and very often somebody would then just open their mouth and just tell me they just tell me why they thought I might be able to help them, what was going on, what the situation was, what they'd already tried, what they were considering trying, who else they had on the case, etc. Which would enable me to sit back, maybe make some notes, take it all in and then come back with questions that were actually relevant, as opposed to a whole series of questions I'd made up in my own head before going in, which could have been completely irrelevant and also entirely annoying to the other person, who would then decide I was totally inexperienced and not the person they wanted.

Speaker 1: 11:43

So yeah, we can laugh about this, but there is a kind of shadow side to it that I feel it's important to name, and this is the ego arrogance of believing that we can discern the truth of someone else's life if we just get enough information. And some people believe it's possible to get enough information about another human being in order to understand everything about them and understand everything about their life and everything about what they should do and shouldn't do with their life. And I have been on the other side of conversations with people like that or people who are in that mode, because I think that's a mode that any of us can potentially slip into. Some of us are more at risk of that than others and it's incredibly difficult on the other side of that. It's a very uncomfortable experience. It's an experience of having one's autonomy and sovereignty completely discounted and it's also an experience of feeling diminished, because the notion that at any point in time we are a certain way and that's never going to change is not only flawed, it's also psychologically incredibly disempowering. So whenever we believe that we can discern the truth of someone else's life or what they ought to do, etc. We are completely forgetting the fact that, even if we had some insight into that person now, in five minutes time or a days time, or a weeks time or a month's time, it will have changed, and then we'll be wrong, wronger than we are now.

Speaker 1: 13:37

So instead of using if anyone who's listened to this, who habitually uses case histories or that kind of method of approach to a new person, in whatever context that may be, my invitation to you is to play around with the idea of just asking people something along the lines of you know, why are you here in this conversation with me? What is the truth for you in the particular thing we're here to talk about? Because this can save a great deal of time and it can avoid a great deal of resistance, resentment and conflict. And also, if there comes a point in the conversation where you do need to then field some of your pre-prepared questions, you've got a context for that. You can say to the person okay, thank you so much for what you've done me so far.

Speaker 1: 14:34

I think I need to understand in a bit more specific terms some of the things you've been talking about. Do you mind if I now pull out my normal case history thing that I use and just go through sections B and Q? Right, because those are relevant and what a relief for the other person. So, yeah, when we're approaching, connecting and creating a relationship with a new person, let's drop the idea that if we can only get enough information, we'll know everything about that person and how we ought to relate to them and what they ought to be doing, and let's get more familiar and comfortable with the idea that it's okay to just ask them what they want, why they're here, what do they need, what do they think? What's their truth? So thank you for listening and have a wonderful week. I will see you next time.