Healthcare Insights
From "I'm Fine"
to what actually matters
As a stoic Scot when I say, ‘I’m fine’, I can mean ‘I feel objectively terrible but we’re not going to talk about it’. Ridiculous and consequential if it’s anything other than a fleeting ailment. But ironically, chronic conditions are exactly where that habit really digs in (and it’s not just a Scottish thing).
Chronic conditions teach people to normalise a lot: discomfort, disruption, workarounds, lowered expectations. Over time, ‘fine’ becomes shorthand for ‘I’ve stopped expecting better’.
It isn’t avoidance; it’s what people learn when symptoms are constant. It’s adaptation, not dishonesty.
This creates a problem for anyone trying to understand what patients truly need: clinicians, caregivers and researchers alike. And if they rely only on direct questions, they’ll often get what’s easiest to say, not what’s actually going on.
So the question isn’t ‘How do we get patients to be more honest?’
It’s: ‘How do we ask in a way that makes space for the reality of living with symptoms?’
Why direct questions flatten real experience
When you ask someone head-on to evaluate their health: how controlled their condition is, how satisfied they feel, whether they’re coping, you’re asking for a verdict.
Verdicts are tidy. Life isn’t.
People answer those questions through filters:
- • What counts as ‘bad enough’ to mention?
- • Isn’t this just what living with the condition means?
- • Compared to last month, I suppose I’m okay…
The result is often a compressed truth that hides the trade-offs: sleep lost, plans cancelled, clothes avoided, confidence eroded.
If you want the real story, don’t ask people to ‘report’, invite them to express.
Enter projective techniques:
Projective techniques work because they shift the task from self-assessment to sense-making.
Instead of asking someone to declare how they’re doing, you give them a safe, indirect route to show you what’s going on through imagery, metaphor, story and reactions.
It’s the difference between:
- ‘How are you managing your condition?’
- ‘If your condition were a character in your life, what would it be like?’
- ‘Choose images that feel like your day-to-day.’
- ‘What would you say to someone newly diagnosed?’
When people aren’t forced to speak directly about themselves, they often reveal far more without feeling exposed.
That’s the purpose of buzzback’s projective toolkit: to uncover what gets minimised because it feels too much to unpack.
Projective techniques respect that reality. They don’t demand perfect articulation or emotional fluency. They create space for honesty to emerge naturally.
When you stop asking patients to evaluate themselves and instead invite them to react, imagine and project, you uncover motivations, frustrations and unmet needs that fundamentally change strategy.
Karen Douglas
Commerical Director,
Healthcare Europe
If you're exploring new ways to decode real-world patient behaviour, we’d love to connect!
Healthcare Europe:
Karen Douglas, Commercial Director
kdouglas@buzzback.com
Healthcare US:
Jonathan Weiser,
Healthcare Practice Lead
jweiser@buzzback.com
