Merriam-Webster defines epistemology as "the study or the theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge, especially with reference to its limits and validity." Epistemology basically asks where knowledge comes from. Are you what psychologists call a Positivist? If so, what you "know" tends to be what you glean from your 5 senses—what you can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. Or, you a Relativist—meaning that you look more through the lens of individual experience to determine what's known?

How you answer that question—and what you have left to learn from the approach you don't favor—will determine your best path toward helping wellness clients achieve their goals.

You no doubt remember from school psychology Pavlov and his bell—you know, ring the bell, and the dog, conditioned to anticipate a reward, will salivate. It's classic stimulus-response stuff. So, the committed Positive, at one extreme, will view this as the way things work with humans, too. What psychologists call the Interpretivist, meanwhile, will point to a third component that lies between stimulus and response. That's the "organism," in psychologist-speak—another word for the individual reaction that may color the result. The Interpretivist agrees with the Positivist that the stimulus produces a response, but the former focuses on the specific response that results from unique factors.