© Helen Lesser 2010

Question:

My patient just won’t listen to my explanations – he says he wants to find the cause of his problem, but every time I mention this in any way he just talks again about his problem and how it affects him. He does this when he arrives, when he leaves and is misleading his own treatment by doing so during the session too. It gets to the point where we’re almost arguing with each other – and that’s not right. I don’t want to argue with him, I want to help him!

It happens. Sometimes it does feel that we’re butting heads with our own patients, even though we and they are all after the same result – disposing of the symptom. The only way to resolve this is