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This past few weeks have been crazy for me. I have been all over the place talking about the Solution Focused Approach. Throughout all of those places here was one theme that kept coming up, that’s what this video is about.
in the past week or so, I’ve been teaching solution focused brief therapy in four cities in three different countries on two different continents. And the one idea that keeps coming up over and over and over again, it comes up in the questions that the audience members are asking. It comes up in the teaching that I’d like to share. It comes up from the examples in the videos of therapy that I’m shown. It shows up in the live examples and it shows up in the exercises that we’re doing. And the what shows up is this idea that the way that we view our work and the client matters like so incredibly much. And when I was in Copenhagen, Denmark, I was teaching there for a woman named Anne-Marie Wulf and one of the participants a guy by the name of Michael, he talked to me about a book written by somebody named Buckingham called the one thing you must know, and in this book the author author talked about how it’s important to like over estimate your client as opposed to underestimate their skills, how it’s important to over estimate their capabilities as opposed to underestimating their capabilities.
Because there is like no risk in thinking people can do more because then it causes you to like raise your expectations, it causes you to raise the bar and it allows that person to do amazing things and achieve things that you or they didn’t think was possible. In this book, He makes the argument that we actually underestimate people because we study problems and this is not a solution focused therapist as far as I know, not even a psychologist, but we study problems and we think in order to understand excellence, problem is the opposite of excellence. So we study problem thinking. If we can learn about that and just invert that knowledge, then we then know about excellence, but the truth is this is a discipline on how we think about the people we’re working with and the work that we’re actually doing and that thought will impact so significantly what you do, you know in the solution focused approach, the questions that we’re asking, people matter.
They’re important, the miracle question, and exception finding and scaling and best hopes, questions and all of those things, they matter. It’s really important we cannot do this work without asking those questions, but I would make the argument that the way you think about your client is even more important because that’s going to guide the questions that you ask. For example, in order for me to ask a client, what are your best hopes from this therapy, which is our most important question in the therapy process because it establishes the desired outcome. The client is in therapy, in pursuit of, I have to believe two really important things. First thing you have to believe is that you do in fact have hope for a new or different future. I have to believe that no matter what the problem is that brought you into therapy, no matter what it was that caused you to need to come into the services, whether it’s anxiety, depression, grief and loss, addiction, whatever, that you do in fact have hope for a new or different future and sometimes you have to have that belief when the client is outwardly saying that I’m not motivated, I don’t want to be here and they’re saying these things, I have to hold the belief that you do have hope for a new or different future.
If I lose contact with that hope, then I no longer can ask you about your best hopes. I no longer can ask you about your desired outcome. If I allow you to convince me that you don’t have hope, then it makes my first and primary task of solution focused brief therapy, no longer possible. The second belief that I have to have in order to make this, in order to make this work effective in order to do this job is I have to believe that you have the capacity and capabilities to create that new poked for future. Because that’s what’s gonna allow me to ask you questions about said future. That’s what’s gonna allow me to ask you questions about said differences. That’s just gonna allow me to ask you questions about change. If I don’t have those things, then I cannot do this job effectively.
If I do have those things then the solution focused library of questions becomes profoundly impactful, become profoundly important and is then able to make a difference in your life. So I thought that this sort of video was going to be very, very important because I have now been in four cities, three countries, two continents, and this is the theme. Like people are really smart, right? I mean the people who come to these people are really smart. They can learn the library of solution focused questions. But what people struggle with is the application of solution focused questions. And I want you to really know that that is connected to the way you think about the work and the way you think about your client. And if you can master this, then you can master the solution focused approach. Thank you so much for watching this video. Hey, do me a favor, give me a like, give me a share on your networks. Um, subscribe to my youtube channel below and ring the bell so you get notifications when I post new videos and content. If you haven’t already done so, head on over to elliottconnie.com and sign up to receive my free pdf download and watch all the other videos and all the other content I have on that website. And until next time I will see you fist bump.
