How To Help Clients See Hope When Facing Suicidal Thoughts

I remember a time in my life where I couldn’t imagine the future because I had already decided life wasn’t going to be worth living, but before my life was cut short something entered in that changed everything. Let’s talk about how using SFBT to help others see Hope can trigger the desire to stay and live life.

I’m in my home city, Boston, Massachusetts, and every time I come here, I cannot help but think about something that’s quite morbid, which is suicidality. I grew up in such a dark place, in such an unsafe environment, that eventually I got to a point where I thought the only way that I could end that unsafety and end that darkness [would be to] take my life.

I can remember driving up and down this street. This is a very popular street in Boston, called Beacon Street. Right across Beacon street is Boston Common, which is a very common place. And I would drive by here in the car with my dad as a kid and see the legendary Cheers bar where they based the TV show off of. And if you had told that Elliott that my life would look the way that it looks now, I wouldn’t have believed you. It was just so dark and so difficult. That’s all I could see, was the darkness and the difficulty.

And now when I visit Boston, I’m so grateful that I hung on. I’m so grateful that I survived. I’m so grateful that I made it, because I get to experience this amazing life that I have now, that I once couldn’t see or envision.

Now I say that because it’s so important as we practice Solution Focused Brief Therapy, there’s so many people that ask me, “What do you do when the client is suicidal? What do you do when the client is thinking of end of their life? What do you do when the client is struggling in those ways?”

I think Solution Focused Brief Therapy is more designed for that than any other approach, because we’re overtly talking about a future wherein the client’s problem is not present. We’re talking about a future where the desired outcome is happening. We’re talking about a future where they’re living a life that is very different than their current one.

Even though they can’t see it yet, we’re forcing them to imagine it, think about it, and envision it, and dream it. And once you do that, the people have hope. And once they have hope, you can last a whole lot longer.

Eventually I was able to get hope. Eventually I was able to start thinking differently. And eventually I was able to make decisions that kept me alive so that now I’m living my life now.

So let that be an inspiration to you that Solution Focused Brief Therapy does make a difference when you’re working with clients who are struggling this way.