© Helen Lesser 2003

Question:  I currently have a patient who, when I ask for things like the belief or emotions experienced, she indicates ‘yes’ for almost every question.

For example, she’ll indicate yes to just about every emotion I mention, and when I ask “Did the emotion of fear have a greater effect on you than the emotion of inadequacy at that time?” she’ll say yes, but then if I later ask the same question the other way around I also get a yes response. If I go on and ask if the emotion of fear had the greatest effect on her at that time; she just says yes again!

Any ideas what I could be doing wrong here or what I should be doing?

Answer: Without knowing how far along you are in the treatment of this patient, how she has been reacting, which techniques you have and are using or how she has responded to them, I can’t give a definite answer. However, there are SIX possibilities as to why she is reacting in this way and therefore various ways to overcome the difficulty.  These are:-