The anamnesis: the hour that maps out your inner blocks

Élodie expected to have to tell everything. Her childhood, her failures, her secrets. She had rehearsed her story the way you rehearse for an oral exam. Instead, she was asked precise, almost simple questions. And as the answers unfolded, something strange happened: connections appeared where she had only ever seen unrelated events.

The word comes from Greek and means "the return of memories". In brief therapy as Dalila Benfriha practises it, the anamnesis is the first step of the first session: a time of guided exploration to identify the key blocks and traumas. No need to say everything, or to phrase it well. The goal is not an exhaustive account of your life: it is to pinpoint, precisely, what is holding you back today. A good anamnesis feels less like a confession than like the work of a cartographer: noting the contours, marking the fault lines, tracing the lines of force.

A present-day block, a fear, an outsized reaction often takes root in a handful of founding experiences. The brain has stored them as permanent alerts, and it replays the same reaction whenever a situation resembles them. The anamnesis serves to find those points of origin. That is what makes it possible to work quickly and accurately afterwards: instead of clearing the whole forest, you go straight to the roots you have located. It is also what makes the approach accessible to teenagers and children: no long speeches are needed for the map to take shape.

The anamnesis is not a stand-alone session: it leads straight into the second step of that same first session, mental deprogramming, which aims to deactivate the traumas that have been identified, whenever there is no contraindication. The work is done gently, without reliving the events. It is this combination, mapping then deactivating within the same hour, that explains a striking figure: 95% of the people supported feel significant relief from the very first session. A personalised assessment is drawn up straight away to plan what comes next, if anything needs to come next at all.

Prepare nothing. Really. Come as you are, with whatever weighs on you, even if it feels vague, even if the words come out wrong. If you still want to take a first step before the appointment, simply jot down three recent situations where your reaction felt stronger than the situation deserved. Those are often excellent threads to pull.

An accurate map is worth more than years of wandering. To discover the full course of this first hour and what follows, visit the brief therapy page.

Keywords: anamnesis, first brief therapy session, therapy intake interview, identifying your blocks, personalised assessment, key traumas, how brief therapy works