How is the Solution Focused Approach Different?

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During this conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, several people asked me what makes the Solution Focused Approach different from problem focused therapies. I spent the days of this event thinking of my response, and that’s what this video is about.

So I just got done doing a multiple days of workshops and lectures and my keynote presentation here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And um, I’ve gotta be honest, like it’s been a really inspiring few days. In fact, if you go back to last week I was in London has been a really inspiring few weeks and during these talks I showed some video and I did some lecture and did some demonstrations and a common question kept coming up like so solution focused brief therapy is so different than traditional psychotherapy. Are we doing the same thing in the session? So in essence, if the problem focused therapist is trying to solve a problem, what is the solution focus therapists trying to do? And I was thinking about that, like this entire three day event, I lectured every single day of this three day event and the whole time ever since somebody asked me that question, I’ve been thinking about that.

If the problem focused therapist is trying to solve the client problem, what is the solution focused Brief therapist’s trying to do is, I certainly don’t think it’s trying to find solutions. And the more I thought about it and the more I thought about it, the more I thought about it, the more I started to think. I think what we’re trying to do is inspire the human heart because when you ask someone about their desired outcome and you really listened to what that outcome is, then you are much more likely to inspire them and an inspired person is capable of doing anything. An inspired person… Those are the people that leave the therapy session and make it stick towards change, like thinking about the big tasks that you want to accomplish in your life, whether it’s you want to lose weight or you want to save money.

If you can do those things with inspiration and enthusiasm, you are significantly more likely to have those changes stick and the experience of profound results. And I really think more and more that when we ask clients these solution focused questions, part of what we’d like to do is inspire them. We want to motivate them, we want to engage them. Like, I would love to say that I have these conversations and because of the conversation the client leaves and makes changes. And most of the people that I lectured here today, they’re not solution focused therapists. In fact, they haven’t even heard of this approach. But what they got is like, wow, this really does impact people. And it’s like, so how come the change happened so quickly that all we say to people like think about it, like watching this video, really think about this.

How many times have you been like going through life rocking along, maybe even heading in a difficult, bad or wrong direction and then an isolated incident happened that that redirected and change your entire life. And I guess what I would advocate for is maybe therapy can be that for people and that’s why the change happens quickly. Maybe you can be the hopeful believe in person that someone could meet and their lives never be the same because of what unfolded in the conversation they had with someone who touched them. Maybe that’s the point. So thank you for watching this video. Please give me a like, give me a share. Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear what you think about what it is that you think contributes to why solution focused brief therapy is effective. And I will see you in the next video.