What is Solution-Focused Brief Therapy?

When it comes to therapy, there is no single solution that works for everyone. We offer Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) — a therapy model that focuses on a client’s present and future goals while only looking to the past to track progress.

SFBT was developed by Steve de Shazer, Insoo Kim Berg and their colleagues in the 1970s and 1980s. It believes that people are strongly resilient and have the strength, wisdom, and experience to effect change.

It’s a model that helps individuals find solutions that can help them achieve a future in line with their values. It begins with asking, “what is it that has brought you in here to see me today?” This elicits some form of problem description while listening for exceptions — times when the problem might have happened but didn’t.

Goals are co-constructed, which can involve asking the miracle question: “let’s imagine that tonight you go to bed and while you’re sleeping, a miracle happens. The result of this miracle is that you wake up tomorrow morning, and all the problems you’ve come here about are solved. How would you know? What would you notice happening differently?”

Underlying principles

Utilization

How existing resources, skills, motivation, behaviour, symptoms, social network, circumstances, and personal idiosyncrasies are used to lead clients to their desired outcomes.

Emphasis on mental health, not pathology

Successes, strengths, resources, and abilities are emphasized. Focuses on what works and how strengths can be built upon.

A client-determined view

The individual is viewed as an expert about their solutions. The therapist is more of an apprentice whose job is to learn about the unique ways individuals have conceptualized their complaints.

Parsimony

Solution-focused therapists prefer the most straightforward means to the desired outcome. We view symptoms as things that come and go and are interested in the times that symptoms go.

Present and future orientation

We are only interested in the past when reviewing past successes. The focus is on what the client wants to have happen in their life.

Work what works

When clients know what works, they should do more of it. If something isn’t working, do something different.

Change is not only possible but inevitable

We believe that change for the better has no lesser odds of happening than change for the worse; we are constantly looking for these changes and highlighting them to the client.

Process

Pre-session change

At the beginning of the first therapy session, SFBT therapists typically ask, “What changes have you noticed that have happened or started to happen since you called to make the appointment?”

Coping questions

We are sincerely interested in why things aren’t even worse than they are when clients first come to therapy. We use coping questions to highlight strengths, resources, and what clients are doing that is helpful.

Miracle question

The miracle question is a way to ask for a client’s goal in a way that communicates respect for the immensity of the problem, while leading the client to come up with smaller, more manageable goals.

Exceptions

SFBT practitioners feel that they have yet to come upon a problem that is “absolute.” We continue to look for exceptions — those times that the problem does not occur.

Scaling questions

Numerical language is useful in helping clients clarify vague ideas and goals. Scaling questions facilitate movement and identify successive steps:

• Progress scales give an overall sense of how the client sees things.
• Improvement scales establish small signs of change and smaller goals.
• Willingness and confidence scales help the therapist ascertain tasks that can be suggested.

Goal setting

Setting specific, concrete, and realistic goals is essential. Whenever possible, the therapist tries to elicit smaller goals rather than larger ones. Clients are encouraged to frame their goals as the presence of a solution rather than the absence of a problem.

Interventions

Compliments

Build cooperative nature of the relationship and encourage the client. We give compliments directly related to goals the client has articulated. Validating what clients are doing well encourages change while conveying that the therapist has been listening.

Task setting

Experiments are based on something the client is already doing (exceptions), thinking, or feeling that is heading them in the direction of their goal. There are active tasks that involve action and observation tasks. The client sometimes designs the homework themselves. Homework isn’t required for change.

If SFBT sounds like it might fit, book a free consult — several of our therapists are trained in it.