What is Solution-Focused Brief Therapy?

Table of Contents

• What is SFBT?

• Underlying Principles

• The SFBT Process

• Interventions

• Additional Sources:

• Free 20 Minute Consultation with FP Counselling

When it comes to therapy, there is no single solution that works for everyone. We offer Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) which is a therapy model that focuses on a client’s present and future goals while only looking to the past to track progress. Find out more about SFBT below, if you have further questions about whether this well-researched approach to therapy could help you or someone you love contact us so we can help.

SFBT was developed by Steve DeShazer, Insoo Kim Berg and their colleagues in the 70s and 80s. It believes that people are strongly resilient and have the strength, wisdom, and experience to effect change. 

It’s a model that helps individuals find solutions that can help them achieve a future in line with their values. It’s focused on working from the client's understanding of their concerns/situation and what they might want different. It begins with asking, "what is it that has brought you in here to see me today," which elicits some form of problem description while listening for exceptions - times when the problem might have happened but didn't, and times when clients' lives are going the way they want them to go. 

Goals are co-constructed, which can involve asking the miracle question – "let's imagine that tonight you go to bed and while you're sleeping, a miracle happens. The result of this miracle is that you wake up tomorrow morning, and all the problems you've come here about are solved. How would you know? What would you notice happening differently?" This causes the client to think about things differently and provides a picture of what they want. 

After beginning to get an idea of what the client wants, we ask how much of what they want is already happening in their lives. We believe in looking for resilience, strengths, previous successes, resources, and protective factors.

Sessions usually end with "Anything Else?" which can give clues for what is important to note and may provide new invaluable information which can be used to understand the problem description.

Underlying Principles

Utilization: 

How existing resources, skills, motivation, behaviour, symptoms, social network, circumstances, and personal idiosyncrasies are used to lead clients to their desired outcome(s).

Emphasis on Mental Health, Not Pathology: 

Successes, strengths, resources, and abilities are emphasized. Focuses on what works and how strengths can be built upon.

A Client-Determined View: 

the individual is viewed as an expert about their solutions. The clinician is more of an apprentice whose job is to learn about the unique ways individuals have conceptualized their complaints that brought them to counselling.

Parsimony: 

Solution-focused therapists prefer the most straightforward means to the desired outcome. We view symptoms as things that come and go and are interested in the times that symptoms go or aren't present and what is different about those times. 

Present and Future Orientation: 

We are only interested in the past when reviewing past successes. The focus is on what the client wants to have happened in their life or on what is already happening. 

Working What Works: 

When clients know what works, they should do more of it. If something isn't working, do something different.

Change is Not Only Possible But Inevitable: 

We believe that change for the better has no lesser odds of happening than change for the worse; we are constantly looking for these changes toward the better and then highlighting them to the client.

Process

Pre-Session Change: 

At the beginning or early in the first therapy session, SFBT therapists typically ask, "What changes have you noticed that have happened or started to happen since you called to make the appointment for this session?" 

Coping Questions: 

We are sincerely interested in why things aren't even worse than they are when clients first come to therapy. We use coping questions to highlight strengths, resources and what clients are doing that is helpful. These inquiries can provide much-needed hope by identifying the things that they are doing right.

Miracle Question: 

Some clients have difficulty articulating any goal at all, much less a solution-focused goal. The miracle question is a way to ask for a client's goal in a way that communicates respect for the immensity of the problem, and at the same time, leads to the client's coming up with smaller, more manageable goals. It is also a way for many clients to do a "virtual rehearsal" of their preferred future.

Exceptions: 

SFBT practitioners feel that they have yet to come upon a problem that is "absolute." While the problem's relevance may be rather significant to the individual, the "times" of the problems are often in the minority. So, we continue to look for "exceptions," that is, those times that the problem does not occur. Practitioners have noted that it is often too easy to identify instances of things that don't work because they stand out, are irritating, frightening, make one feel helpless, etc. Things that work tend to be less obvious and thus need greater focus.

Scaling Questions: 

SFBT clinicians view language and conversation as the only true tools of therapy, but this is a potential problem since language can be very vague and uncertain. Numerical language is useful in helping clients clarify vague ideas and goals. Scaling questions facilitate movement and identify successive steps. Types of scales include:

Progress scales: Give an overall sense of how the client sees things and provide a benchmark from which to evaluate our progress in future sessions and move into what brought you to this level.

Improvement scales: Establish small signs of change and smaller goals in the presence of goals already in process.

Willingness and confidence scales: Help therapist ascertain tasks that can be suggested to the client and discern whether it is appropriate to ask the client to do anything at all.

Goal Setting: 

Setting specific, concrete, and realistic goals is an essential component of SFBT. Goals are co-constructed through a conversation about what clients want differently in the future. Therapy focuses on exceptions related to goals, regularly scaling how close clients are to their goals or solutions and co-constructing useful next steps to reaching their preferred futures. Whenever possible, the therapist tries to elicit smaller goals rather than larger ones. More important, clients are encouraged to frame their goals as the presence of a solution rather than the absence of a problem.

Interventions

Compliments

Build cooperative nature of the relationship between therapist and client and encourage the client in what they are doing is good for them. We give compliments directly related to goals the client has articulated. Validating what clients are doing well and what is working and acknowledging how difficult their problems are, encourages the client to change while conveying that the therapist has been listening (i.e., understands) and cares. 

Task Setting

These experiments are based on something the client is already doing (exceptions), thinking, feeling, etc., that is heading them in the direction of their goal. Both follow the basic philosophy that what emanates from the client is better than if it were to come from the therapist. Does the client see themselves as part of the solution, and are they willing to do something? If yes, the task is indicated. There are active tasks that involve action and observation tasks. The client sometimes designs the homework. This can be familiar, often involves more what has worked already or something they want to do, and thus, it is more tied to their own goals and solutions and has a greater likelihood of success. Homework is not required for change. When homework is not completed, it is assumed something realistic got in the way, the client did not find it useful, or it was not relevant during the interval between sessions.

Resources

Besenhofer, R. (n.d.). Utilizing solutions: Focused brief practice as assessment for intervention.  

Trepper, T.S., McCollum, E.E., De Jong, P. Korman, H. Gingerich, W., & Franklin, C. (2010). Solution-focused therapy treatment Manual for working with individuals research committee of the solution-focused brief therapy association. 

Turnell, A. & Hopwood, L. (1994). Solution-focused brief therapy: A first session outline. Case Studies in Brief and Family Therapy, 8(2), 39-51.