Brief Solution Focused Therapy

Question 1

What kind of people are suitable for Brief Solution Focused Therapy?

Answer 1

Bright, psychologically-minded clients with good ego strength and very little disassociation.

Question 2

When is this therapy useful?

Answer 2

When you only have a few sessions and don’t want to get too heavily into a relationship with the client or with clients who are considerably disturbed but are too fragile or fragmented to tolerate deeper, power therapy approaches.

Question 3

Goals?

Answer 3

Must be goal orientated and have well formed goals for this approach to be successful.

Question 4

SMART Goals

Answer 4

Specific
Realistic and Achievable
Involves hard work in order to achieve
Small rather than large
Is described as the presence of some beh or the start of something
Is salient to the client and to the therapist
Has contextual or situational therapites

Question 5

What is the Miracle Question?

Answer 5

Suppose a miracle happens and when you wake up all is resolved. How will you discover this miracle happened?

Have clients describe changes in simple everyday events and behaviours. Describe differences in their feelings

Ask exception questions

Ask scaling questions to assess progress, confidence, hopefulness, self-esteem and pre-session change.

Question 6

What are the major tenets of solution-focused therapy?

Answer 6

1. Focusing on the positive, solutions and the future facilitates change in the desired direction.
2. Exceptions to problems suggest solutions
3. Clients are experts in what works and what doesn’t work
4. The meaning / value of a message can be found in the response you receive

Question 7

A few more general guidelines for solution focussed therapy

Answer 7

1. Use the clients language
2. Emphasize this is a good thing, coming to therapy and it will be hard work on the clients part to accomplish the goal
3. Compliment the client both direct and indirectly.
4. Provide bridging statements for the suggestions you give clients…we agree that…..because…..since….

get out of any power struggles

Question 8

Goal Maintenance and follow up

Answer 8

1. How did you manage to do something different?
2. How was this relapse different than the previous one?
3. What have you learned about yourself?
4. What do you need to keep doing?

React with curiosity and positive statements

Question 9

Pretreatment Change

Answer 9

Ask what was better since the first session? What is better? Listen for

1. Successes and Strengths
2. Exceptions to the problem
3. Clues to solutions
4. Things already working
5. The big goal.

Question 10

Rules of Thumb

Answer 10

1. If it doesn’t work, do something different
2. Treat each session as if it is the first and the last
3. There is no failure only feedback
4. If it works do more of the same.