| I think he was relieved to see that I apparently was familiar with the difficulties he presented, that I did not take him for completely mad, and that I envisaged a psychotherapy. (P1, 67) |
I tried to help him express them as well as he could. (P1,121) |
I also specifically evoked with him the question of identity. (P1, 125) |
| ... and tried to reassure him by a) showing that I knew something of these phenomena and b) telling him he was not the only person to suffer that. (P1, 122) |
I always try, during the interview, to help the patient formulate these difficulties, and to convey the idea that it is not so uncommon as they generally think. (P1, 255) |
... to help him put some things more clear in his life, his projects and his relations to others. (P1, 129) |
| I tried to reassure her by saying that these feelings of hyperreflectivity and perplexity, though generating anxiety, were shared by several other persons. (P1, 216) |
... giving the patient the opportunity to speak and to share about these phenomena lessens the suffering. (P1, 314) |
I tried to make some links with other things I knew from his family. (P1, 145) |
| I also always explicitly give back to the patients a commentary about the core phenomena. (P2, 54) |
... the ability to conceive or interpret questions and messages from the patient FIRST AND FOREMOST quite literally – at least checking it explicitly out – with an attitude of genuine interest and receptivity, is helpful. (P2, 90) |
... the goal-directed sorting out [informant’s bold formatting]. (P2, 258) |
| I think I was able to explain not too complicated what was the unreality all about. (P2, 175) |
... it is often a clinical challenge to slow down “therapeutic” responses, so that the unusual expressions can have time and space to manifest [informant’s bold formatting] clearly without interpretations. (P2, 240) |
... help to create new meaning. (P3, 97) |
| And my signaling that the experiences were known from others and the literature, and in some sense explicable. (P2, 187) |
... the “phenomenological attitudes” of an active interest, the opening wondering [informant’s bold formatting]. (P2, 255) |
... attempt to give or find meaning to this happening. (P3, 223) |
| ... to make it clear for the patient that this kind of experiences are not so unique and private as they might fear. (P2, 278) |
He is accepted as the one he is, with all the strange experiences included. (P2, 262) |
Then I often try to make the patient’s experience of anxiety, confusion, depression, or what it might be, understandable by seeing this in connection with his troublesome experience, new meaning and his history (in the latest period). (P3, 304) |
| I think sometimes patients find it relieving to know that someone at least recognizes the things they are going through, and that perhaps there is actually some knowledge that might help others understand them or even help them. (P4, 64) |
The striving to give WORDS [informant’s bold formatting] to very strange feelings, thought transformations, voice-like experiences etc. (through the hermeneutic question-and-answer cycles) is of course therapeutic. (P2, 264) |
(For example help him to see how different bodily experiences as emotions, sounds, sights are connected, appear together and belong to himself). (P3, 360) |
| At same time, some patients may feel a bruising of their narcissism, since they liked to think of themselves as unique and having very special insight. (P4, 69) |
I do respond to the patients by exploring their experiences and actively use examples to convey my understanding of what he is saying. (P3,52) |
About the use of a phenomenological focus, – this group of patients are very insecure in relation to their own experience and therefore I see it as very important (but also difficult) not to jump to conclusions based more on my understanding rather than of what he really says... (P3, 400) |
| I can remember, once or twice, when using abstract, perhaps diagnostic sounding language, seemed to make the patient recoil slightly. (P4, 81) |
I try to re-establish relational contact – intersubjectivity, that again help the patient to share, and make understandable in an intersubjective context, their feelings, thoughts – experience of their inner and outer world. (P3, 71) |
I made links between his expressions of hyperreflectivity and perplexity and situations which upset him in his life and perspective for the future. (P1, 175) |
| ... and that we would have to work, in the coming months, on how she would nevertheless progressively find her way. (P1, 220) |
The experience of being understood, re-establish (intersubjective) relational contact. (P3, 97) |
I do share my hypothesis with him as such, which, he in return recognizes as a description of his experience that makes meaning for him. (P3, 212) |
| ... that they can be understood and get help is always important. (P3, 64) |
... motivate him to go on telling about his experiences. (P3, 216) |
I try to “hold” him with words by listening carefully to his descriptions of his experiences in detail and share my understanding of what he has told me and/or constructing meaning of his experiences continually (but not fast) as he describes them. (P3, 199) |
| ... getting new hope. (P3, 98) |
I try to grasp/understand his experience that he shares with me both by words and eye/body movements. I do comment on what I see and how I see it. (P3, 275) |
I do think that by referring to the patient’s expressions (in words or body movements), focus on this observation, kind of mirroring/enlarge it, and then describe this in other words independent of the modality it in the first place was expressed in, we in a way create new meaning or at least help the patient to experience himself in a more meaningful way. (P3, 288) |
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... not treating what the patient was saying as if it were word salad or poverty of content of speech. (P4, 77) |
I try to relate these fundamental phenomena of disturbed identity (or these phenomena of disturbed fundamental identity...) to the life experience of the patient, his/her self-projection in the future, family’s history, etc. (P1, 285) |
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I, to a certain degree, manage to kind of build a “bridge” between us – or in other words experience that we create new (shared) meaning between us. (P3, 237) |
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I encouraged him to talk about these experiences. (P4, 45) |
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