Why Assumptions Don’t Belong in Therapy

I want to talk to you today about making assumptions and how that interferes with your ability to practice Solution Focused Brief Therapy successfully. I have tried to make this point for years, over and over and over and over again, and I don’t think I’ve done a really good job. But I’ve been thinking about it recently, and I think I might have a way for people to understand it.

You don’t realize it, but you’re constantly making assumptions. We’re all doing it. But when you’re practicing Solution Focused Brief Therapy, you have to try really hard to make no assumptions, because assumptions get in the way of you asking questions. Think about it. If I already think I know the answer, then why would I ask? You have to ask the question, meaning practice with assumption. Because sometimes the client needs to hear their answer, or sometimes you think you know the answer and you don’t.

Now, there’s something in my office room that gets so many emails being sent to me because people make assumptions about something and they don’t understand it. So I want to tell you a really quick story.

A lot of you know, if you’ve been following, that I do a lot of work in Hollywood and I work with people. I got a couple of TV projects in the works and all that stuff.

The way that happened is a network executive saw some of my content and was telling me that they wanted to make a TV show. This is all the way back in the summer of 2021. And after a while it happened. I went to L.A., and I started meeting with executives, and I got offered a development project, and it took a few months to negotiate it. And here we are in 2022. And then this woman named Tiffany Haddish found out that I was like the Hollywood psychotherapist or whatever, and she was like, “I want to meet him.”, and invited me to an event hosted by a comedian named Jo Koy.

It was the very first celebrity event I ever went to. And it was so cool. He had a movie coming out at the time called Easter Sunday. And this was like the launch party for Easter Sunday. And it was a really cool experience to see. I met one of the guys, a guy named Wanye Morris from Boyz II Men. I met Awkwafina, who I’m a huge fan of because she was in the movie Shang Chi. And I love Marvel. And that was the first night I met Tiffany Haddish. It was a really cool experience. And it was also the first time I got one of the gift bags you get at a Hollywood event.

Now, the thing about me is I’m incredibly sentimental. I always want to remember things. And I’m the kind of guy that, like, on my 21st birthday, my first legally ordered drink, I stole the glass from that drink. I actually still have it. I’m very sentimental.

So I got the goodie bag, and it was a lot of stuff. But one of the things in it I thought was super cool, this. This can of spam. And I put it on my shelf with other sentimental things. All of these. This is from Star Wars. I love Star Wars. And my cousin and I went to Disney, and we bought these Star wars things. This is from a movie premiere I went to. This is from the Little Rock Central High School, which is where a very serious racial issue happened in the 1950s. This is from a burger place. More Star Wars. Another Jo Koy thing.

But this gets more attention from people than anything on my shelf. People will send me nasty [messages], “What are you doing with a can of Spam?” I mean, they send these things, but it’s actually not a can of Spam. It’s a candle. And it’s a candle that smells wonderful. It smells kind of sweet, and it smells like a flower. But I kept it for two reasons.

Number one, I remember when I was a kid and my family was so poor, that Spam was a very common thing that we ate in our house.

Number two, it reminds me of that amazing night.

But the reason I’m using that as an example now, because a lot of people see this and they make the assumption, the reasonable assumption that they know what this is.

So then they send me emails saying, I love your shoes. You have a cool office, but you should get rid of that can of Spam.

But they’re wrong. They’ve made an assumption that is inaccurate. It’s actually not a can of Spam. It is a memento, and it’s a candle.

So think about how often you’re talking to a client, and you think you know the context of something they’re talking about, but it’s actually not the thing you think about.

And think about it. If you were doing therapy with me and I was sitting here and you look at my Zoom screen, one of the questions you could ask me is, “Hey, what’s that?” And then I would tell you, “Well, I had this really cool night. I went to a Jo Koy movie launch party, and I met all these cool people. It was my first time being in Hollywood, so I kept this as a memento.” You just learned that I’m a very sentimental person, and then you get to ask me, “Hey, Elliot, what other things are you sentimental about?” And maybe I’ll talk about my partner, maybe I’ll talk about my children, maybe talk about my job. Who knows? But it gives you avenues and opportunities for you to ask further questions.

It’s very, very common that people get stuck when they’re using Solution Focused Brief Therapy, and they can’t think of the next question. And part of the reason that you’re stuck, and you can’t think of the next question, has absolutely nothing to do with your questions. And it has everything to do with your thought process. As you’re going about asking the questions, you’re making assumptions that get in the way. That looks like a Spam canister. It looks exactly like a Spam canister. You make the reasonable assumption that it is Spam, but it’s actually not. And even if it were Spam, your assumption stops you from asking the next question.

So when you practice Solution Focused Brief Therapy, work really hard to not make any assumptions. It doesn’t even matter if you’re right or wrong. Any assumption stops you from asking the next question. And that’s part of what makes this approach so difficult, is you have to stop doing what your brain naturally wants to do. But once you do that, it opens up everything in this approach.