How to Interrupt Clients During Session

Sometimes during a session, a client can talk for a while, but how long is too long, and how can we Interrupt them strategically to ensure we’re helping them as their therapist.

So we’re right in the middle of our once a year fall workshop that we call the Solution Focused Brief Therapy Diamond Fall Summit. And one of the attendees asked a really important question. And this is a really cool event. This year we had just over 3,500 people sign up, actually nearly 4,000. And it’s pretty cool.

This one guy said, “How do you work with clients, like, what do you do when they talk a lot? Do you allow them to talk or do you not? And like, how do you handle that?”

And I don’t think I’ve ever made a video about this topic, which is very important because oftentimes some clients can be really long winded. We got to figure out what to do.

And my answer sometimes surprises people, but it’s real. And when you’re doing therapy, in particularly Solution Focused Brief Therapy, you have to interrupt your client.

You only have 50 minutes and the client doesn’t understand the process of therapy. So you have to do your job. Which means sometimes I have to interrupt them because I have to do my job. I have to ask kind of questions I need to ask, have to highlight certain things going on. I have to point out certain things the client said, but I have to do my job.

Now, you got to remember that therapy is not the real world. So I wouldn’t like, interrupt a friend if we’re having dinner. I wouldn’t interrupt a friend if we’re at a coffee shop talking. But in this case, I have a particular charge. So during this 50 minute session, I’ve got to interrupt you because there are things I need to make sure happen in this session. And the way to describe it in a Solution Focused Brief Therapy way is I’m in charge of the process and the client is in charge of the content.

So I’m not necessarily telling the client what to say, how to say it, what to do and how to do it, but I am in charge of the flow of the session. Adam used a word that really, I think, landed when he talked about this process, is a Solution Focused Brief Therapist is kind of like the [orchestra] conductor, whereas the client is the one playing the music. So I have to conduct the session.

If I let the client just talk endlessly, then I’m not conducting. And then the session doesn’t have any aim. And it’s my job to give the session aim.