To Master SFBT You Have to Master These 2 Things

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Mastering Solution Focused is difficult, and mostly because we study this approach the same way we study others. In others approaches you have to gain mastery of the techniques, and that’s true for SFBT as well but there is a second thing you have to master in this approach. This is often overlooked in our training but yet we need it in our practice. That’s what this video is about.

If you come to one of my events or if you have taken one of my courses or even listening to my videos, you’re going to notice that there are two themes that kind of scream out that, uh, are always present. The first one, and I want to highlight one of them in this video. The first one is the techniques of solution focused brief therapy. I’m just like anything else, solution focused. Brief therapy is a craft and we have to master the techniques and we have to master the tools and ultimately effective with this approach. But the second one is a bit more abstract. And earlier this week I did a webinar and it was really cool. Yeah. I’m a 1000, 169 people sign up, which was amazing from all over the world. And uh, it was about a 90 minute webinar and I did my thing and I took questions, all that sort of stuff.

But there was one person who was leaving comments in the comment section of the Webinar, uh, like, you know, when you’re going to start teaching. Because what I was talking about was the way you have to view clients, which is the second thing that’s really important about using solution focused brief therapy is even more important than the techniques is the way that you view clients because the way that you view clients, and in fact the way that you view the work, it’s going to have a significant impact in the way you use the tool. So it’s so important that we honor and it’s so important that we attend to the fact that if we’re going to practice solution focused brief therapy, we have to understand that we are a change agent in the client’s life. And we have to believe that they are capable of change.

We have to believe that they’re capable of handling questions. We have to believe in the process in order to be effective. So let me give you an example. Uh, earlier this week I had a mom bring her teenage daughter to come and see me. Uh, the mom, I’m the teenage daughter. She, she’s getting on well in school. She’s getting good grades, but she’s really anxious and really depressed. And the mom was very concerned about her. Now the girl tells me that she has a goal, like she wants to be a famous actress and she’s really like, that’s what she wants. She’s excelling in school, she’s doing well in the process, but she wants to be a famous actor. She wants to be a famous musician. She wants to be a singer and she wants to accomplish these things. And I’m, the mom is trying to get her to focus on academics because that’s where the mom views her future.

So she comes to the office and you know, I asked what he wrestled from our talking and the daughters really kind of reclused really kind of frustrated, really kind of sad. And I’m, the mom is waiting out in the that I asked you, what are you best so far? Talking. And she struggles to answer. But eventually she says, I’m not sure I should tell you. And I said, Oh, what is it? And she said, I really want to become a famous musician. And I really wanted to impact people and make them dance. And I want to. I want to make people happy and now every time she just told the mom the mom has gotten, she’s lectured her and told her why she shouldn’t pursue that or buy that thing has done a good thing. Uh, but now I suppose it happened. What would you notice?

And you could see her just kind of light up because it’s my job to treat her as if this is something that could actually happen. And it turns out it’s really important to her. She loves to make people happy and make people dance. Uh, two weeks later she comes back to my office, so I wasn’t, I mean, I was a couple of weeks ago, so two weeks later she comes back to my office for a followup session, which was earlier this week. And her mother says, the depression and anxiety are unnoticeable. It completely gone away. Her grades are still doing well. She’s still doing well in all other areas of her life. The biggest changes, the depression and anxiety have gone away. And when you ask the young lady, what changed? When you asked the daughter what changed to help you? Her answer was, I have hope now that I can do it because my mom is not lecturing me her.

She heard you talk to me about how this could happen and it turns out the mom thought the daughter was like pursuing this fame and fortune and thus wasn’t going to keep upper grades, but through the description and solution focused brief therapy, the mom realized that the daughter just enjoyed making people happy through music and through performance and just that hope changed everything in the daughter’s life. So can you imagine if I treated this, this young lady like I’m like, she couldn’t accomplish a goal. It would have changed the way I asked questions. Would it change the way I did the work, but it would have impacted this young lady in a way that’s not helpful for her. So it is so important that we studied the approach and the miracle question. It’s actually finding and all the stuff that’s important and all the tools related to solution focused questions, but it’s also important that we approach our work and our clients with discipline, that we have enthusiasm and optimism and we’re disciplined in that enthusiasm and optimism, optimism because sometimes clients come into your office and they give you loads of reason not to be optimistic and those reason not to be enthusiastic, but once you lose those things, um, it’s really challenging.

Be Effective but solution focused brief therapy and we can’t negate that. I know that’s more abstract than like, here’s the techniques and here’s how to learn it, but if all I do is teach you the techniques and here’s how to learn it, that I’m not doing as good a job of a teacher because I also have to teach you how to love it. After teach you how to be enthusiastic, I have to teach you how to be optimistic about the change process, how to be optimistic about people and their capabilities and how to be disciplined and hold on to that optimism no matter what. So thank you for watching this video. Please give me a life, give me a share, and I’ll see you in the next video and never forget you were always one question away from making a difference in someone’s life. See you next time.