The Homeopathic Consultation

Essential to effective homeopathic care is the information that you provide to the practitioner.  The homeopathic interview involves extensive questioning that may cover unfamiliar ground for those who are used to a few quick questions from a busy doctor.  To better prepare you for the consultation, the kinds of information the homeopath requires are described below.

Reason for visit.  The interviewer will want you to state, in your own way, the conditions that have caused you to seek homeopathic care and describe them as fully as possible.  Your description should include everything that is truly characteristic of your problems.  Precise details are best but only if you can be definite about them.  If applicable, your account should include but not be limited to:

Location of the complaint as precisely as possible.  “Pain in the left temple” is more helpful than simply “headache”.

Character of sensation or pain.  Describe the nature of the sensation in your own words.  Is it tingling, burning, numbness, crawling or itching? Is the pain cutting, dull, aching, or cramping?  These are suggestions only.

Factors which make the feeling better or worse.  Often the most crucial information to the homeopath concerns what makes your complaint better or worse. Does your condition vary with time of day or night or season of the year?  Is it affected by your position (sitting, standing, lying, etc.) or activity (motion of any body part, walking, vigorous exercise, rest, etc.)?  How do temperature, weather, eating, and sleeping affect your condition?  Anything that clearly influences the intensity or pattern of your symptoms should be reported.

Concomitants.  Anything that regularly occurs in association with your symptoms should be mentioned.  Are you always nauseated when you have a headache?  Does your skin clear up when you get your menstrual period?

Onset of symptoms.  Do you associate the onset of you condition with an emotional upset, prolonged or pronounced stress, lack of sleep, exposure to weather, an injury, drug use, surgery, or any other factors?

General information.  In addition to information about your local symptoms, the homeopath needs to know a lot about you in general.  Essentially, the homeopath wants to know how vital and energetic you feel on the whole, and how your sense of well-being (not any particular symptom) changes as a result of environmental or emotional factors.  How are you affected, in general, by temperature, weather, time of day, activity level, eating, and sleeping?  What makes you feel better, what worse?  Remember, this may be very different from what makes a particular symptom better or worse.

Diet is also important.  Be ready to describe the kinds and approximate amounts of food you usually eat.  In addition, you’ll be asked to list the foods you crave or have strong preferences for (even if these are foods you don’t think are good for you), and foods that you strongly dislike.

Understanding your sexuality can be an important part of health awareness, and the homeopath will ask you to describe the usual level of sexual energy you feel.  You are welcome to discuss your sexuality as full or as little as you feel comfortable in doing.

Finally, the homeopath will want you to discuss your mental/emotional nature.  What are the most characteristic emotional patterns you experience?  During what activities or in which situations do you feel most happy?  What emotional patterns most limit your ability to fully express yourself or reach your full potential?  How expressive of emotional states are you, and in what ways do you express them?  What about your memory, clarity of thought, and so on?