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Table 8 Exemplar quotations of the word pair 'overwhelmed/empowered.'

From: Developing a patient-centered outcome measure for complementary and alternative medicine therapies II: Refining content validity through cognitive interviews

Overwhelmed

Cog03

I was overwhelmed, spiritually, emotionally, physically, every one of these. I was totally through. I just didn't even want to get out of bed in the morning, sometimes.

 

Cog07

[I was] overwhelmed because all the sudden there were so many things to get done: having surgery, recovering from surgery, having chemo; before that, making a will, and making a power of attorney, and talking to my kids about what's happening; and moving, and getting a place to live. It was huge.

 

Cog15

When I was overwhelmed, it was overwhelmed with the pain, the pain controlled everything and I don't think I was able to escape from it.

Empowered

Cog01

Empowered would mean that beside, beyond energy, that I had the intellectual capacity and the ability to focus as a combination that would allow me to deal with the issues in life effectively.

 

Cog14

The whole treatment made me feel empowered when I found a choice of something that does work. Something can work.

 

Cog25

The way [my acupuncturist] talked to me was very empowering; about how things could change and about how they could be different. He didn't see it and say, "I can't solve this" and it was about solving, it was about the process of moving forward. I thought that was really powerful.

 

Cog27

I think this is one of the few long-term effects of meditation... just do something simple and get a handle on your life. That's pretty empowering, because you realize you can handle a lot of different things.