Clients often frame their experience in terms they perceive to be acceptable to those in authority or those with whom they are needing to form a relationship. In previous research I found that the region a client came from affected or shaped their narrative because they would adopt the narrative of the practitioners in their region. This can be misleading as it means that clients will readily talk about some aspects of their experience but consider other aspects of their experience irrelevant or unacceptable.
Some examples include: ... source from PhD.
Practitioner's will need to address these variations in the way clients make sense of their illness as these variations are usually not constructive. It is not appropriate to simply say to the client that their interpretation of their illness is wrong as this causes blame, shame and undermines their very fragile ability to communicate their illness (or communicate at all). The clients perspective must be respected whilst also offering alternatives as equally legitimate for the client to check against their own experience, eg. using Resonating.
Ultimately we want clients to develop an understanding of their illness that is as true as possible to their own individual experience - not that of my model or the illness or of anyone else. This is not only important for the client it will also be important for the treatment programme over time - as it will need to evolve to continue to meet the needs of sufferers. Ongoing research will also require that client's interpretations of their experiences be accurately recorded.