What is Solution-Focused Therapy?
As the term implies, Solution-Focused Therapy helps you identify solutions to the problems you’re facing, rather than focus on what caused your problem, how long you’ve been struggling with it, or what keeps the problem going.
Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT) helps you identify and use the strengths, resources, and abilities you already have that can help you create a better future.
With SFT you pay attention to times when you’re making progress toward your goal, rather than those times when you’re not. The times you’re succeeding rather than failing.
What’s different about those times? What are you doing differently?
SFT is a simple, direct, action-oriented process to help you make a positive move toward a better future.
How does SFT work?
Like every other therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy starts with a conversation about what’s going on in your life that you’re concerned about. It might be a relationship you want to improve, a habit that you (or someone else) thinks is getting out of control, your thoughts or emotional reactions to things that you (or someone else) realize is causing a problem.
As with every other type of therapy, SFT helps you identify a specific goal that you’d like to achieve. What do you want more of? What do you want less of?
As you get clear about what you want to be different, SFT takes a different approach to help you. With other models of counseling, the therapist develops a plan for helping you change. With SFT, we co-create a plan building on your strengths, resources, and the previous successes you have had with this challenge.
We look for exceptions – those times when the problem could have occurred, but didn’t. Most importantly, we look at what you do differently during those times to make your change happen. We work together to help you do more of what works, and make small changes today that can lead to larger changes tomorrow.
Solution-Focused Therapy can help you imagine and work toward a time in the future when your problem is no longer a problem.
Contact me today to find out how Solution-Focused Therapy can help you succeed in your most important relationships.
