Tutorial 14 – That First Appointment

Homeopaths will usually take lots of case notes during your appointment as shown in this image .

The information provided at the first homeopathic consultation determines the remedy prescribed. The more accurate and complete the information is, the better the results are likely to be.

For many individuals, their initial encounter with a homeopath is an eye-opening experience. The consultation lasts longer than a typical doctor’s appointment, and the inquiries delve far beyond the immediate issue at hand.

During your first consultation, the information you provide will be crucial for your homeopath to select the most suitable remedy. Hence, it is vital that your answers are as precise and comprehensive as possible – the better the information, the better the prescription, and ultimately, the better the outcome.

Your homeopath will facilitate this process by asking numerous questions and encouraging you to share your story in as much detail as possible.

Now, let’s examine what is generally covered during this first consultation, bearing in mind that the process may vary slightly among practitioners.

Contents and Links

Acute and Chronic (Constitutional) Consultations: Understanding the Difference

It is essential to recognize that not all consultations are identical; an appointment for an acute issue like an insect bite will differ from a consultation for a chronic condition such as arthritis.

Acute consultations address health concerns that are short-lived, including migraines, coughs, colds, indigestion, sprains, strains, bruises, stings, burns, diarrhea, and ear infections.

Appointments for these issues take less time than those for long-term chronic conditions.

If you suspect that your “acute” problem is merely the tip of the iceberg, it would be best to schedule a longer “constitutional” appointment to address any underlying weakness or imbalance contributing to it.

Chronic issues, such as arthritic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, infertility, asthma, and eczema, are persistent and do not resolve on their own.

From a homeopathic standpoint, these chronic complaints are interconnected, stemming from a single energetic imbalance.

Chronic issues necessitate a more extensive consultation to gather comprehensive information about this underlying imbalance. These consultations are often referred to as constitutional or chronic consultations.

If you are uncertain whether you need an acute or chronic consultation, your homeopath will advise you when scheduling an appointment.

Acute Appointments: Information Your Homeopath Requires

Although acute “case-taking” styles may vary among practitioners, your homeopath will generally cover the following aspects: Location, Sensation, Cause, Modalities, and Accompanying symptoms.

Using a headache as an example, your practitioner will need the following information to treat it homeopathically:

Location: Where does it hurt – right side, left side, top, temples, forehead, base of the skull, or elsewhere? Sensation: What does it feel like – throbbing, aching, burning, stabbing, boring, band-like, or something else? Cause: Was it triggered by anything – fever, shock, a blow, heat, grief, anxiety, a particular food, or something else? Modalities (factors that alleviate or aggravate it): heat, cold, bending, lying, sitting, moving, eating, drinking, rubbing, light, noise, or others? Accompanying symptoms: Are there any other symptoms that coincide with the headache – food cravings, changes in thirst, itchy skin, cramps, burning eyes, chilliness, or something else?

As demonstrated, a headache is not merely a headache! Your homeopath requires detailed information to make a beneficial prescription.

Constitutional or Chronic Consultations – What Your Homeopath Needs to Know

In consultations for chronic health problems, your homeopath will ask questions similar to those for acute complaints.

Remember, from the homeopathic perspective, your current complaints are just separate parts of a much larger imbalance.

Your homeopath has to gather information from all these complaints, and not just the one that led to the appointment, so that a deep-acting remedy that gets to bottom of things can be prescribed.

Physical Complaints

Your homeopath will want to know all the health problems to which you have been prone, either now or in the past.

A good way to bring these complaints to mind is to ask yourself when you have:

Visited a doctor or other healthcare practitioner
Taken medication (orthodox or complementary)
Required hospitalisation or surgery

While your homeopath will certainly help jog your memory during the consultation it is also useful to note them down beforehand (in the order they occurred) for easy recall.

It will also be helpful if you provide reports from relevant pathology tests or diagnostic investigations, along with a list of your current medications.

Your Individual Response

As your homeopath collects the symptoms that create a picture of your particular imbalance, they may ask questions about:

The strength of your thirst and appetite, the type of food you normally eat, and especially food cravings and aversions, and any foods that disagree with you.
Sleep patterns, repetitive dreams, and even the position you sleep in.
The sort of weather that does or doesn’t suit you.
Your reactions to things such as different environments, animals, music, and company – do you enjoy or avoid them?

Children – Additional Information

If the consultation is for an infant or young child, your homeopath will also be interested in the mother’s physical and emotional state before and during pregnancy; the pregnancy and birthing experience; vaccines given and possible reactions; plus the time it took for the infant to reach “milestones” such as teething, walking and talking.

Temperament and Personality

Excesses in personality traits are also symptoms of ill health. For example, being careful with money and using it wisely is a good thing but if spending creates anxiety that leads to hoarding, a problem exists.

Similarly, there is nothing wrong with being organised and neat but if these good traits are replaced by obsessive tidiness or controlling behaviour, the person is no longer operating from a place of health.

Changes in behaviour during sickness are also important. If you are normally calm and relaxed, but have become irritable and fussy in your illness, your homeopath will note these changes as symptoms.

One of the amazing things about homeopathy is that the correct treatment can put you back in control of your moods and behaviours rather than them controlling you.

Anxieties, Fears, Phobias

Fears and phobias such as: the dark; animals; heights; poverty; something happening to family members; cancer; thunderstorms; snakes; crossing bridges, and a range of other things should not be thought of as a normal of life.

They also are symptoms of imbalance that point to the needed remedy and they should resolve with treatment.

Other Things

Your homeopath may ask about your family medical history.

Tendency to diseases such as cancer, heart disease, lung problems, strokes, and mental disorders in other family members may indicate remedies that could help you.

Your homeopath will also check for things that are the cause of your health problem or acting as a barrier to healing.

A person with respiratory problems, for example, will not improve in a mouldy house. Likewise, constant exposure to harsh chemicals will not only cause dermatitis but stop it from healing even though the correct remedy may be prescribed.

In both these instances the best solution is to remove the maintaining cause.

Finally, your homeopath will refer you to your doctor for pathology or diagnostic tests should your symptoms indicate the possibility of a more serious disorder that has not yet been diagnosed.

Conclusion

A true homeopath treats the diseased person according to the symptoms they experience rather than the name of their disease.

In doing this, they focus on the person’s unique symptoms of their illness rather than the common symptoms of the disease – the symptoms that everyone with that disease would experience.

(In contrast, a conventional doctor is dependent on those common symptoms for their prescribing and the unique individualising symptoms are of little importance.)

The sufferer’s unique symptoms are then graded in importance and matched to a remedy to stimulate a curative response from the body.

This process takes time. The first consultation with a homeopath will be longer than a normal visit to a doctor but if it starts the journey back to health, it is time well spent.