Elliott Connie
Founder/PresidentElliott Connie, MA, LPC is a Psychotherapist that practices in Arlington, Texas. He has worked with thousands of individuals, couples, and families applying the solution...
The two questions I receive most often in my trainings and lectures are, “How do you do SFBT with a person who has _______?” and, “How do you combine SFBT with ___________ approach?”
I’m here to tell you… you’re thinking about it completely wrong! Here’s what you should be focusing on instead.
Okay. So I’m sitting at my desk and I just got done doing a coaching call for people in our certification program. One of the members of the program asked the question that I think is very important. And what they asked was, “How do I treat a client using Solution Focused Brief Therapy when I want them to be doing exposure? So how do I combine exposure and Solution Focused Brief Therapy?”
And we get a version of this question literally dozens of times per day with people saying, “How do I treat X kind of client with Solution Focused Brief Therapy blended with this other thing?” And my answer is always the exact same. The exact same.
You can’t.
And you can’t for two reasons.
Number one, we have to stop thinking of people based upon the category that we think they belong to. Like, not because of their problem. Like, oh, this is a depressed client, so I got to figure out how to do this. Or this is an anxious client, I got to figure out how to do this. Or this is a couple, so I got to do _____.
We got to stop thinking of people as categories and start thinking of people as individuals.
And the second reason is Solution Focused Brief Therapy works very different than a problem focused approach. And you have to think differently from the onset of meeting your clients.
So that begs the question, “What should we be thinking about?” And I’m going to tell you, the thing that we should be thinking about is “What is that person’s lever of change?”
Now, you probably know that the first thing we do when we work with clients is we ask them about what we call their desired outcome. Meaning, what is the outcome you are hoping to achieve from coming to therapy? What is the thing you want in your life to improve as a result of being in therapy. And we have a very hard time teaching this because it’s so different than what other people ask when they start therapy.
Most people when they initiate therapy, they ask, “What brings you into therapy?” But we ask, “What is the outcome you will achieve to let you know that you no longer need therapy.” Right. Very different question.
So how do you know when you have a good desired outcome? When you have something that the client wants, but it also has to have a lever of change connected to it. And every person has a different lever of change, which is exactly why you cannot treat people based on the category that they belong to. Because every individual human being, there are different things in their lives that they would be willing to make significant changes for.
So when we say things like, “What are your best hopes from our talking?”, we’re asking “What is the change you’d like to achieve in your life?” But we’re also asking, “What are the things that matter enough to you that you’d be willing to make that change?”
So an example of what I mean by this is… I was working with a woman very recently, and this woman was unhappy with some of her children’s choices, one child in particular. So “What are your best hopes from our talking?” “Well, I need to repair the relationship with my daughter.” And she explained the scenario between her and her daughter. And I said, “What difference would it make for you to have this relationship repaired?” And she talked about how she always wanted to be a really good mom to this daughter. This daughter didn’t have a super easy childhood because the dad was abusive, and the woman was like, “I wanted to be a really good mom to this daughter. And we’re like best friends, and I want to stay that way.”
Well, now I know the lever of change. You want an improved relationship with your daughter. But the lever of change is “I’ve always wanted to be a good mom to this daughter.” So then my question becomes, “Suppose you woke up tomorrow and you were continuing to be a good mom for this daughter, even though it’s hard because you don’t fully agree with these daughter’s choices. How would you notice it?” And the mom started saying, “Well, I would be focused on, ‘Doesn’t matter where the choices are. She’s still my daughter and I love her and I need to show her that.'” “How would you do that?” And then we started to have that conversation.
Now, you don’t get that kind of information if I treat every single category of client and as if they’re the same, because they’re not.
What mattered to this mom is she really wanted to be a great mom for her daughter because she thought her daughter deserved that, in fact needed that, because her father had created such difficult circumstances for her. So that became her lever of change.
So when you’re using Solution Focused Brief Therapy, I need you to be thinking about what is the outcome my client wants to achieve, and what is the lever of change in their life that they would be willing to make those changes for.
Elliott Connie, MA, LPC is a Psychotherapist that practices in Arlington, Texas. He has worked with thousands of individuals, couples, and families applying the solution focused approach to help them move their lives from the current problems towards their desired futures. As well as being the Founder and President of The Solution Focused Universe, he is recognized around the world speaking at national and international conferences and events throughout the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, South Africa, Russia, Switzerland, England, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, Holland, Canada, and Asia training practitioners to apply solution focused questions and techniques in their work. He has authored or co-authored 4 books including “The Art of Solution Focused Therapy”, ‘Solution Building in Couples Therapy”, ‘The Solution Focused Marriage’, and ‘Solution-Focused Brief Therapy with Clients Managing Trauma’.
