How Solution Focused Brief Therapy Saved This Woman’s Life

https://youtu.be/spysaA9f58c

With the release of the video of Sean P. Diddy Combs violently, viciously, mercilessly attacking his then girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, this was an interesting week. It was an unusual week. That video went viral and people saw domestic violence in its unfiltered, triggering form. I was triggered seeing it. It reminded me of things that I witnessed in my home that I don’t wanna witness, and I don’t want anybody to experience. I don’t want anybody to go through that.

But another thing that happened is, it also triggered a lot of people to reach out for psychotherapy. It triggered a lot of people to reach out to me for services. Lots of celebrities reached out to me because they had experienced something similar. They had grown up in a background where they had experienced something, they witnessed things like that, and they wanted to make sure they weren’t passing this down to their children. They were contacting me because they wanted to experience Solution Focused Brief Therapy to address these issues.

The reason why I wanna make this video is ’cause it also makes me want to deliver a very important message to you, my audience of clinicians.

Over the years, whenever you say that Solution Focused Brief Therapy can be effective with significant issues (things like trauma, addiction, and domestic violence), people are skeptical. They reach out to me and they say, “Can this work with [whatever problem, whatever population, whatever is going on]?” And you know, the answer is “Yes!” There’s a tremendous amount of research about Solution Focused Brief Therapy being effective. And there’s also a tremendous amount of research about Solution Focused Brief Therapy being effective with clients and families experiencing domestic violence.

The most important thing is, when you’re doing any therapy, including Solution Focused Brief Therapy, you have to be confident in what you’re doing. You have to believe in what you’re doing. You have to know what you’re doing has a high likelihood of being effective.

The reason why we are skeptical is a lot of people just don’t believe that it could work. And it’s interesting because no matter how much research I give them, no matter how much anecdotal evidence I give them, no matter how many things I share from my nearly 20 years of doing this work with couples, there are people who just, it’s hard for them to buy.

But I’m gonna tell you the story where it really hit home for me.

By the way, I don’t mean to sound critical. When I first heard about this approach, I was skeptical. It sounded, I don’t know, it sounded like, can that really be true? But I’m here to tell you it’s true.

I saw this couple, and I could tell you hundreds of stories of couples I’ve worked with where domestic violence was part of the issue in the coupleship. But this particular couple, when I saw this couple, the couple came in, husband and wife came in and I did the work that I do. And we worked together for three sessions.

And then the woman contacted me and asked me if she could schedule an individual session. So we sorted it out. She scheduled an individual session. When she got in, the first thing she said was, “My husband doesn’t know I’m here and I need you to not tell him.” So I explained to her, if you fill out your own paperwork and do these things, then you will be my client. And I can’t tell him just like I couldn’t tell him about any other client.

And she explained that he gets violent and abusive, and she needed to have a plan of safety. And her and I worked together to develop a plan of safety that would work for her and involved her siblings and several things to keep her safe. So she ended up escaping. She ended up getting out of that environment.

She called me a few months later to thank me about the way that I handled it. She said, because “If you had done some sort of assessment to identify whether or not there was domestic violence present, two things would’ve happened. He would’ve lied. And when I got home I would’ve been beaten.” She said they had gone to see therapists before and therapists think our job is to figure it out. And that’s not our job.

Our job is to help healing happen so people can create change. And this woman was able to create change, escape from this environment, protect herself and her children. And she literally thanked me for not putting her in more jeopardy.

Now that’s just one story out of hundreds, maybe even thousands of couples that I’ve worked with. With this going on in the world, Solution Focused Brief Therapy is growing. It’s exploding because so many people are now more aware of Solution Focused Brief Therapy. My work is getting out into the world through the platforms that I now have access to.

People are gonna be reaching out to you. And when things like this video goes viral, it’s gonna trigger people to contact you. And I want you to know you are practicing something that is effective, that is supported by research, and that keeps clients safe and helps them create change.

So if you ever were skeptical about Solution Focused Brief Therapy being effective with clients who experience domestic violence, I hope this video kills that.