Keeping Hope Instrumental in How we Practice Therapy in 2025

No matter what form of therapy you practice the most instrumental key to doing good therapy with a client will always be Hope. Without accessing a client’s hopes we have nothing to draw from to help them activate change and with this coming year we’re going to need to be even better at helping trigger this resilient hope more than ever.

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I can’t believe we’re at the end of 2024. This is literally the 52nd video that I’ve made in the SFBT Moments Series [this year]. This year started with me releasing a video on the campus of Texas Women’s University where I once attended classes talking about hope and the power of hope. And in this year, I’ve been all over the world. I’ve been to Germany, France, Slovenia, England. I’ve been to Canada. I’ve been all over the United States, New York, Los Angeles. I’ve been everywhere.

And everywhere I’ve gone, I hope I’ve brought with me the message of hope.

Hope is literally the most powerful thing that we can ever possess. It creates change, it builds resilience, it makes us the best version of ourselves. I actually think as psychotherapists, it’s more important that we have a conversation that produces hope in our client, than it is to actively engage in problem solving activities. Because once you build up hope in the conversation, once the client brings hope into their lives, then they go on to solve the problem.

So our job is more associated with having conversations that create hope than it is about anything else. And I hope that message has gotten loud and clear.

Now as we go into 2025, which I suspect as most people, it’s going to be a tumultuous year with some of the things going on in America politically, some of the things going on politically around the world, some of the wars and hostile events and environments that are happening all over the world.

I actually think the most important currency we can have going into this year and going into this phase of the world, is hope.

So that’s why I’m so all in. I started off the year talking about hope. I’m ending the year talking about hope and the importance of hope. And I will probably do that until we just have an army of people that are engaged in hope filled activities that understand the power of hope.

I’m going to continue to do that until the entire field of psychotherapy understands it’s more important that we have conversations with our clients that create hopefulness in their lives than it is that we come up with strategies to solve problems. Now, I’m not saying strategies to solve problems aren’t important, but what I’m saying is the best pathway to get there is actually by taking the route of hope.

Because once a client has hope, they become their own solver of their problems instead of coming to you, relying on you to do it. As I’ve said a thousand times, when you become the thing that the clients rely upon to solve their problems. That’s not really therapy. That’s enablement. That’s not really therapy. That’s enmeshment. That’s not really therapy. That’s dependence. But if you want to create people that have healing happening and people that are creating change and people that are autonomous, then we have to have people that have hopefulness in their lives.

And that is the goal of a psychotherapeutic conversation. And I think that’s what we need most in this world, is hope.

I was listening to a song the other day called “All We Need Is Love.” And as I thought about that song and I was like, man, if I could sing or if I could write music, I would write a song called “All We Need Is Hope.” Because I think the season of the world that we’re going in, hope is one of the most important aspects of our human nature that we could have.

It’s one of the most important things that we could have. It literally contains the ability to get through anything. And with hope, we can do anything.

So thank you so much for supporting my video series and supporting my channel. If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Follow me on social media. You can buy my awesome merch. This is actually my own hoodie, my own sweatpants. You can buy those on my website.

And I just really. I’m so appreciative that maybe you just signed up and you just subscribed and you’re just now watching one of my first videos. Thank you. Or maybe you’ve been here for the entire journey and you watched all 52 videos of 2024. Thank you. And I look forward to whatever we’re going to be doing together in 2025. But I can assure you I’m going to be talking about the power of hope and the importance that therapists create hope in their sessions and all of the ways to do that.

I think people misunderstand Solution Focused Brief Therapy. I literally was in a conversation today on social media, like going back and forth in text message with somebody saying, Solution Focused Brief Therapy is a Band-Aid, or this person is not from America, so they refer to it as a plaster. Little side note, people in Europe don’t call them Band-Aids, they call them plasters. So this woman said, you’re just putting a plaster on people’s gaping wounds.

And that’s not true. What we’re putting on it is the amazing healing solution of hope on the client’s wounds. So people misunderstand that in Solution Focused Brief Therapy, you’re not doing deep work just putting a Band-Aid or in this case, a plaster, on people’s wounds. And that’s not true. We’re putting amazing solutions of hope on their wounds. And those solutions do amazing work if you can believe in it, if you can let it happen. And that’s the message I’m going to be carrying, not just in 2025, but very likely for the rest of my career.

So once again, thanks for your support. Thanks for watching. If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, which you can do below. Or if you’re watching this video on Instagram or social media, give me a follow. I’d really appreciate it. And I promise you we’re going to make 52 more amazing videos in 2025 and you’re not going to want to miss any one of them.

Love y’all. See you.