Traditional therapies focus on problems. They often require months or even years to resolve those problems.
Solution Focused Therapy focuses on solutions and usually achieves results more quickly.

If you are new to therapy, seeing a therapist is not an easy step you’re considering. Putting your most vulnerable thoughts and feelings in the hands of a stranger takes some courage and a bit of a leap of faith. Whether you’re feeling anxious or depressed, or are in a troubled marriage or relationship, or struggling with issues that have no label, you’re probably feeling stuck. Stuck is when people call a therapist. It’s after they have tried everything: waiting for things to get better, talking to friends or relatives, or reading self-help books.

 

Maybe you are wondering, “How can just telling someone my problems do any good – especially a stranger?” It’s hard to explain, but research shows therapy is helpful 80% of the time. Successful therapy results in your thinking about yourself and others and the world differently.  This is actually the job of the “stranger” you may have been nervous about.  

 

If you have had therapy before, you may want to know, “What is Solution Focused Therapy? The Solution Focused Therapy that I use is sometimes called “The Questions Approach.”  I ask questions that require you to think in new ways about yourself and your life. The first question I ask is, “What are your best hopes from our talking?” This gets you/us thinking right away about the hopes, the future you want therapy will help you achieve. (Most therapies begin with the problem focused question, “What brings you here?”) 

 

Future questions target the very specific details of times when significant aspects of that future, those Best Hopes 1) have been present in the past; 2) are even present in the present; and/or 3) might be present tomorrow if a miracle were to happen.  Questions have a way of “demanding an answer.” Having to delve into these three areas of life where your “Best Hopes” are present reminds me of what golfers are doing when they watch films of their swing. They are changing their brains and changing their abilities. Just as you will when you focus on the details of your Best Hopes.