One of the more common problems in Energy Therapy (or any of the Personal Development fields) is that often the "presenting problem" isn’t the root problem, or at least isn’t the entirety of the issue.

In order to work more effectively with clients, it’s often necessary to develop skills that let us get a detailed understanding of where the client is, and where they need to go (even if they don’t know themselves).

To hone our skills in this area, we only need to look nearby at the rapidly growing "Personal Coaching" field. It has been said that "Therapy takes you from -10 to 0, and coaching takes you from 0 to 10", so adding them together should get us 10 points ahead from any direction.

Coaching comes in a lot of different flavors, depending on the coach, their background, any particular specialization they focus on, and what the client is after.

Regardless of application, however the common elements of the coaching model include:

1. Get the client to do an honest and thoughtful assessment of their current situation.
2. Get the client focused on generating real, fully-vivified goals.
3. Work with the client to document the steps between #1 and #2, and get the client’s commitment to execute the plan.
4. Revisit the plan at defined periods and hold the client accountable for what they did or did not achieve.
5. Being available to help work through crisis points.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how neatly this fits around many therapy methodologies. The coaching industry has produced a number of excellent tools for obtaining accurate and introspective client self-assessments. Most of these take the form of having the client build lists of specific items that can be examined for issues to work on and common themes. Some typical examples are:

1. Tolerations — What are the top items you are "putting up" with?
2. Shoulds — What does the client feel they "should" be doing right now?
3. Frustrations — What things are the most frustrating for you right now?
4. Desires — What do you REALLY want in your personal or business life?
5. Integrity — What are you doing that you KNOW is bad for you?

For each of these, ask the client to assemble a short list of the top five or ten items. By doing this, you tend to reduce the odds that the client will only focus on the single item foremost in their minds at the moment, and you can get an idea of the broad sweep of where the client is, and where they want to go, along with common themes and issues.