Join Live ChatToday, I’m going to answer a question that came in from somebody named J S Hill who watched one of my previous videos and then had a question come up, which is, “Can you use SFBT on yourself?”
This is an interesting question. A fascinating question. I know a lot of you people out there have it. So here’s the answer. The answer is a definitive yes. And a definitive no. And I’m going to start with the no first actually. So the reason why you can’t use Solution Focused Brief Therapy on yourself is because oftentimes the questions that we ask our clients are slightly out of reach and your clients have to become uncomfortable. They have to stretch a little to answer them. This is the exact same reason that we need personal trainers because your a personal trainer can set a goal or a task slightly outside of your reach so that you have to become uncomfortable and work very hard to achieve that.
Oftentimes our questions in Solution Focused Brief Therapy, the client has to work very hard to reach the question. They have to stretch themselves, to be able to reach the new question. And it’s really hard to ask yourself questions that would make you that uncomfortable and allow you to stretch. So oftentimes the reason that we need another person to ask us these questions is because they can set the question just outside of our reach so that we can develop an answer and work hard enough to develop an answer to achieve it. And then they said another question just outside of our reach.
A Solution Focused conversation it’s just that, it’s a conversation, where the there’s a back and forth. There’s a give and take between the question recipient and the question asker. And we sometimes need the question to asker because they can set the questions just outside of our reach. So that’s why it’s really hard to do Solution Focused Brief Therapy on yourself because you often need someone to ask you questions so that you can just be in the role of question answerer and work very hard to answer the questions. So that’s the reason why I say no.
Now the reason why I say yes is because when you do this work, it tends to have an impact on the way you live your life. And quite frankly, the way that you see the world. So when I talk to clients about possibilities and strengths and resources, it kind of helps me be able to see myself in a strength focused, possibility, optimistic way. It kind of helps me to be able to view myself as someone who can get through anything.
You know, there’s this thing in our field called secondary trauma. And that is when, as a helping professional, I sit with a client who is experiencing a trauma for long enough that like I experienced some of the symptoms of trauma as well. Well, I would say that I’ve experienced secondary resiliency where I have gone through seeing so many clients for the past two decades, that I’m actually a stronger person because I’ve seen people overcome and get through amazingly challenging situations that I can’t help, but realize everything is overcomeable.
And if they can do it, I can do it. And I hope people hear me and think if he can do it, I can do it. And I think that that’s why just by doing Solution Focused Brief Therapy, you are doing Solution Focused Brief Therapy on yourself. So that’s why I would say the answer is yes.
So J S hill. Thank you so much for that question. I hope all of you guys benefited from that question. If you have a question for me, text me, send me an email, leave a response to this video, and I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope this was beneficial to you and I’ll see you in the next video.
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