Learning to Enter Flow in Interacting with Potential Patients

In this final analysis of two interviews, I would like to examine the obstacles and mistakes that I encountered during the first interview and the improvements in the second interview by evaluating the levels of self-disclosure of each interviewee and the natures of the messages-both mine and the subjects’, as well as the quality of expressions, such as body languages.

The interviewees exhibited drastically different levels of selfвЂ"disclosure; while the first interviewee, Ms. Jun, indicated signs of societal bias, the second interviewee, Mr. Keranakis did not have much difficulty describing his illness in great details and was able to express his feelings. For instance, Ms. Jun dodged revealing her complex feelings by giving a series of very short answers to most of the questions regarding her family and personal life. After the interview, she revealed to me that in her upbringing in a strict, “old school” Asian family, self-disclosure is considered as lack of emotional control and personal weakness: “There is a societal bias against self-disclosure. It isn’t considered вЂ?nice’ to talk about yourself too much, or to discuss your feelings or needs outside a narrow family circle”(Messages, 25) In contrast, the second interviewee, Mr. Keranakis, gave lengthy, detailed answers to the most questions. More notably, he openly expressed a wide spectrum of emotions such as doubt (“My son told me to try it [Eastern medicine treatment] anyways” The second interview, 2), anger (“That was a mess. I think they made me worse” The second interview, 2; “I am all fed up now” 5), gratitude and love (“Meri can’t stand the pain I am going through though, she gets hurt by it. She doesn’t sleep either. She takes very good care of me” 5) and even a sense of humor (“Then again, I was a surgeon, we never got along with internal medicine anyway, haha” 7).

Although the interviewees have shown different levels of self-disclosure, I felt that both interviewees gave earnest answers, free of noticeable contaminated messages. However, the conciseness of the answers of Ms. Jun can be viewed as a sanitization of her messages regarding her personal life, such as her romantic life and wedding plan. At the end of the interview, she revealed that “there are a lot of things that cause stress in my life right now. Like I don’t know what direction to take in my career. I am very distant from my family. I haven’t talked to my parents in a while because we don’t agree a lot of things and obviously planning the wedding is a lot of stress” (The first interview, 3) I feel that she avoided delving into those topics by providing short, terse responses in the beginning of the interview. Moreover, her response to the question about the diet serves as an example of a “double message”: “Is it part of the diet to feel a lack of energy? No, you are supposed to have MORE energy. I really don’t think the diet is an issue” (The first interview, 5). Her negation that her diet is a potential source of her symptoms seemed to suggest that she had been previously asked this question many times, which caused her much frustration. In other words, Ms. Jun gave a seemingly clear, direct answer to my question about the diet (“I really don’t think the diet is an issue.”) but deterred from discussing the sources that she herself detected as the origin of her problems--personal issues such as her estranged family and upcoming wedding plansвЂ"which she mentioned only at the very end of the interview. In other words, by suggesting that more physical, visible factors, such as diet and exercise are not the crux of her issues, she alluded that her symptoms stemmed from the personal life that she would rather not discuss. It was difficult for me to find a proper way to steer the interview at this point, without reacting adversely to the interviewee’s double message. In introspect, I believe that my own acquaintance with her fiancÐ"© was a principal impediment for her self-disclosure. If I face a similar obstacle in an interview in the future, I would counter the double message with a direct, honest and supportive acknowledgment of her difficulty in discussing particular subject: is this topic something she would like to chat about? I believe that this approach would have provided her with an option to unveil her difficulty without a double message and an opportunity to discuss the issue at heart, which are both more informative and conducive in this type of interview. As I have noticed that Ms. Jun became uneasy with personal questions in the first interview, during the second interview with Mr. Keranakis, I have focused generating questions that are seemingly more general, but require more specific, personal responses, such as his symptoms, prior treatments and his profession as a surgeon, which resulted in overall more informative and colorful responses.

Though more subtle, the body languages of the subjects also revealed a great deal about their states of mind during the interviews: “Understanding body languages is essential because over 50% of a message’s impact comes from body movements” and “often more believable than verbal communication” (Messages, 53) . The first subject, Ms. Jun, did not exhibit much body language. In fact, eye contact was minimal throughout the interview. She stared at her lap most of the time. I tried to make her feel comfortable, but she often avoided eye contacts and seemed to be embarrassed on the topic of exercise, which in turn changed the dynamic of our conversation greatly. One instance of a direct eye contact and stern tone of voice was a manifestation of her clear dislike or disagreement of the topic: when I attempted to redirect the conversation into the dietary aspect of health, she lifted her head and looked at me in the eyes and said, “I really don’t think the diet is an issue.” At the time, this sudden change in her body languages made me fumble and blocked me from delving into that particular line of questioning or analysis. After reviewing both interviews, however, I realized that the significant change in her body language illustrated the fact that she was undoubtedly trying to communicate that her problem derived from almost opposite source from what I was suggesting. With the exception of this incident, Ms. Jun was soft-spoken and did not use any hand gestures and made very little movement. In short, her lack of body movements reflected the lack of self-disclosure.

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