The ONE Question I Cannot Answer

Just like everybody else in the past year, more than a year now, we have taken all of our live events and put them online because COVID has removed our ability to get together in a safe way. And in that time I’ve had more than 100,000 people sign up for my online events, webinars podcast. I’ve been a guest on other people’s online events and other people’s podcasts.

And in doing this, I realized that there’s one question that I can’t answer. And not only can I not answer it, it’s actually become a bit of a pet peeve of mine. So I’m making this video because I want to tell you what that question is, why it’s a pet peeve. And I want to ask you not to ask it anymore.

And that question is when I’m doing a lecture, someone will almost always say, when are you going to get to the meat of this lecture? And it, it really pains me because I think the entire thing I do is meat. And it, well, the reason I’m thinking about this now is because I did another online lecture yesterday and we had hundreds of people live in attendance of this.

And one person was in the comments section being kind of rude and saying like, when are you going to get to the meat of this lecture? And I realized something profound is when they say, when you’re going to get to meat, what they’re actually saying is when are you going to tell me how to do Solution Focused Therapy? And I can’t, I can’t tell you that.

You know, in a way, of course I can. And I think I do, if you’ve been following me and you watch my videos and taking my courses, you see that I’m kind of obsessed with telling you how to practice Solution Focused Brief Therapy. But people are asking, when are you going to tell me what to do when I’m in a session using Solution Focused Brief Therapy.

And that is something that I cannot answer. People ask me all the time, like, what do you do when the client has depression? And I can’t answer that because this is not an approach based upon what we do related to the client problem or circumstance. This is an approach that we do based on the client language. So there’s no way I could know what I would do unless I could hear the client’s response to my previous questions.

So what do in Solution Focused Brief Therapy is we build our questions based on what our client is saying. Not based upon what complaints or what problems the client comes to your office with. This is an incredibly important distinction. And it’s a really, really important thing that we have to recognize nobody who’s teaching you Solution Focused Brief Therapy can tell you what to do based upon what the client brings to the office.

And people oftentimes attend these lectures. It’s really hot. So I’m sweating. People oftentimes attend these lectures and they’re thinking in their head, I want Elliott to tell me what to do based upon the client’s circumstance. But I can’t tell you that, what I can teach you and what I try very hard to teach you, and what this channel, what my content is devoted to teaching you, is how to master the language of Solution Focused Brief Therapy. So you become really skilled at taking your client responses and turning them to it, turning them into a question that is more likely to produce another response that would lead towards the client experiencing change.

So I think, you know, we have to shift the way we think about learning this stuff. No one is going to teach you like when the client has depression, do this. When the client is suicidal, do this. When the client has anxiety, do this. When couples shows up and there’s infidelity do this, that’s not the way this approach works. What we do is we take the client language and we turn it into a question that is more likely to produce a response from the client that leads towards change.

And that means the lectures that we give you are about mastering that language, not telling you what to do per the client’s circumstances. So I hope this video helps. And I’m sorry to be like, I hate this question, stop asking it, but I really don’t want you guys asking this question because it highlights you’re not thinking about learning this approach with the appropriate perspective. Now it’s super hot. So I’m going to go back in the AC. You guys can see I’m super sweaty. My little shiny bald head is so sweaty now, but anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thank you for watching. See you next time.

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