hi guys welcome back to my channel and if you're new welcome to my channel my name is stephanie yates i am building i'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and in today's video we're going to be talking all about solution focus therapy if you're curious stay tuned [Music] all right guys so i have heard you okay so many requests for solution focused therapy so today we are finally doing that video when i say solution focused therapy right now i'm going to be pretty much mixing solution focused and solution oriented i'll talk more about the difference between those two but in today's video there are so many similarities it makes more sense to talk about them as a unit so the buzzwords for solution focus therapy are interventions like the miracle question scaling questions problem talk and the roles of visitor complainant and customer so if you see any of those phrases on your exam more than likely they are referring to solution focused therapy in this video i'm going to explain what those terms mean we're going to talk about those key words we're going to talk about the interventions how solution-focused therapists view the problem and the goals for resolving the problem let's jump right in so solution-focused therapy is a post-modern model we talk about the difference between post-modern models and traditional models more in depth in my very first model review which was structural family therapy the main difference is that post-modern models they take into consideration the social constructivist perspective which is essentially our realities are constructed by our own experiences where we lie within society what we've seen whereas in the modern or traditional models like structural family therapy strategic family therapy in those models that were the original marriage and family therapy models there was definitely a view of health as objective right the therapist was viewed as the objective person in the room who could determine what health and dysfunction looked like whereas with the post-modern models there's more of an understanding that it's not that clear you've got to take into consideration culture socioeconomic status race gender so many different perspectives that impact our view of reality and essentially we cannot say there's only one view of what's true what's not true and only one view of what's healthy versus what's dysfunctional right so that is a very important aspect of solution focused therapy being a postmodern model another important thing is that solution focused therapy as so many of the models are is heavily influenced by the work of milton erickson and that is evident even in the fact that this is a brief therapy whenever you see models that are designed to be very quick and brief as we saw with strategic therapy a lot of times they are based in the principles of milton erickson if you'd like a separate video talking all about milton erickson and his work i'd be happy to do that the reason i haven't done that yet is because he's not a self-identified marriage and family therapist he's just one of the leaders of i would say systemic thinking even indirectly so we could talk more about them if you want to let me know the major contributors or creators of solution focused therapy are steve de chazar and insu kimberg and for solution oriented therapy the primary contributor is bill o'hanlon the beauty of this model is that it's so simple and one of the reasons why i think this model has persisted is because of its simplicity it is one of the go-to models for grad students especially because it's a lot easier to talk about and to practice than some of the other more complex models now that's not to say that it's ineffective or that it's lazy or that it's only for beginners solution focused therapy is actually one of the models that has more research supporting it than some of the other models that are a bit more theoretical because solution focused has a good theoretical anchor as well as good technical or practical anchor meaning like we have interventions and things we can do and know that that is solution focused sometimes the models can become so theoretical that you're like okay i love the the theory of this but how do i actually practice it solution focus does not have that problem so the key concepts of solution-focused therapy is really that just like it sounds it focuses on solutions there is this idea of focusing on solution talk instead of problem talk so when we think about therapy traditionally we're a lot of times envisioning the person laying on a couch with the therapist sitting in a chair and they're going through all the problems of their childhood sometimes we might imagine them unpacking dreams and things like that and solution focus holds a place for that but the main focus is let's talk about what you want to do next let's not focus on everything that went wrong in the past so that's what it means when it says focusing on solution talk instead of problem talk because with some of the models you can get caught in that chat trap where the client just gets into the habit of just venting venting venting and it can almost be viewed as unproductive because we're not really making plans for how to address the problems that they are venting about there's a major focus within solution focused therapy on language and there is a belief that language is what shapes our experiences so when we focus so much on negative language or problem language then what we're doing a lot of times is shaping our experience or perspective of the life happening around us and within us and so by focusing on solutions the belief is that that language can help actually shape your experiences in a different way here is the really the main difference between solution focused therapy and solution oriented therapy when we talk about that problem talk solution oriented therapy allows for a little bit more history gathering and a little bit more problem talk to get a better understanding of the problem the belief in solution oriented therapy is more that we kind of need to understand the problems in order to create effective solutions whereas in solution focus therapy there's almost this view of okay you've done enough talking about the problem let's talk about what are your options to fix it so these models are very similar in their approach the main difference is that solution oriented therapy is oriented towards solutions but does still allow for a bit more of that problem talk essentially that solution talk is going to build a sense of hopefulness so the view of the problem and solution focused and solution-oriented therapy is that you become stuck in viewing this problem and using ineffective solutions to address it so you end up talking about the problem so much without actually having any effective plans to fix those problems so what are the therapy goals then to help families help people identify their strengths identify their resources and implement them instead of sitting in a position of feeling hopeless and feeling that you have no options for addressing these problems recognizing your agency and being able to implement that agency to create and promote change there is a major focus in the solution focused and oriented models on small attainable goals a lot of times you meet a client they might come to you and say they're depressed and you say okay what are your treatment goals they say to not be depressed right so to not be depressed is not really a treatment goal but we want to say okay well what would not being depressed look like and we'll get more into this in the interventions but just so you get an idea of what i mean when i say small attainable goals you say okay well i could see myself being less depressed if i were working out every day okay so working out every day might be a really big goal but what if we set a goal for you to work out tomorrow you let me know how that goes or what if we set a goal for you to work out as soon as you leave from here just 15 minutes 15 jumping jacks right just be thinking of very small attainable goals to build a sense of accomplishment and start building that motivation and belief that change is possible the therapist's relationship to the client so the main things that keep in mind when you're practicing solution focused therapy is that it is intended to be brief solution focused therapy is typically planned to last for only five to ten sessions and really is very similar to strategic it's kind of like a post-modern approach in my opinion to the strategic model which we talked about in another video let's talk about those three roles i mentioned at the beginning as buzzwords so we've got the visitor the customer and the complainant and these are three different roles that you need to assess when you first start working with the client or a family okay you need to assess how ready are they for change why are they here are they motivated and these three roles will give you more insight into how to determine that so a visitor in solution focused therapy is a person who comes into therapy usually at the request of someone else i see this all the time with couples you got the person who's coming into therapy because their spouse wants them to be there but really they don't believe that they have any problems so there's no motivation to change because they're like there's nothing wrong i'm just here to appease you so that's a visitor they're just here visiting us in our therapy sessions today the next role is the complainant they can complain all day about there being problems and probably going to point the finger at the other person a lot of times but they do not care to at this point work to change those problems and lastly we have the golden customer role that relationship with the therapist or with therapy is beautiful because that person not only sees a problem but they recognize their role in the problem and are willing to work on it they want to know what can i do and they're willing to try those things those are the clients where typically if you give them homework okay i want you to go home and write down five xyz and share that with your closest friend they come to therapy the next session sharing about that experience of the thing that they did when you have a client that is in that role of being the customer therapy works beautifully and that's where you really can see brief therapy happening because you're able to work with someone who is working with you too so those are the three different roles within solution focused therapy there are some techniques or different ways you can work with those three different types of roles so that the therapy can be more effective with the visitor you're probably going to want to give them a lot of compliments again i'm getting this straight from my aatvs book i always talk about that and i have the link for it in my description box if you're looking for a study tool for your exam but when you're working with a visitor you kind of want to give them compliments because that makes them feel more engaged and more connected to the therapist and to therapy when you're working with the complainant you know you want to give them small tasks so they can see the opportunity for change if they were willing to make some sort of change and when you've got a customer that's when you can get very directive you can give them homework you guys can do like the meat of the therapy work so that therapy can be as quick as possible so one of the biggest differences between post-modern models and the traditional classic models is the therapist relationship to the client so in solution focused therapy even though they're they're visiting a therapist the relationship is collaborative it's like peer-to-peer and really the client or the family sometimes or couple they're viewed as the expert why because they have had 20 plus years or however many years they've been alive of dealing with these problems they know best what solutions will work best for them and the therapist is just there to guide them and lead them through questions so that they can really come up with their own answers so there are three common types of questions that a therapist will ask in solution-focused therapy and these are some of the buzzwords that i brought up earlier as well so we'll start with the miracle question the miracle question is a great way for you to move a client from problem talk to solution talk they might be talking to you about how they're so depressed how they didn't get out of bed and really just sharing with you their experience and why they're in therapy in the first place and to help the client move from viewing their life from this very problem written standpoint you can simply ask if all of your problems were to be resolved tomorrow to go away and you woke up how would you know what would your day look like if all of your problems were to be resolved this is why we call it the miracle day because most of the time clients are more focused on the fact that they will never be able to get out of these situations or it feels impossible but they never allow themselves the opportunity to think about well if these problems were somehow resolved what would my life look like and you ask them to get specific because clients will want to describe their miracle day with negative language which really is counterproductive so for example i ask a depressed client what would your miracle day look like they're like well i wouldn't be depressed right okay you wouldn't be depressed but what would you be right so i want to know from a behavioral standpoint what are you doing how are you feeling start me out you wake up in the morning what time is it when you look at your clock okay so it's 6 a.m so you're waking up at 6 00 a.m on your miracle day what do you do first thing okay so on your miracle day the first thing you do would be you know to go ahead and work out all right that's something that you're not doing right now what else would you do what time would you finish working out and we literally list out that entire day the miracle day can take an entire session to come up with it can be multiple sessions it could be five minutes right it really depends on how specific your client is able to get which is really a great estimation of how much hope they already have if they can get really specific there's a chance they've already been thinking about these things or they're really really buying into this intervention that you're bringing up in session so the miracle day is a great way to get a client talking about solutions because as soon as they say for example i'm going to work out first thing in the morning then i can start saying so what's getting in your way of working out in the morning right now and start building solutions so that's how the miracle question works the next question that we'll talk about are exception questions a lot of times clients are so in the headspace that everything's a problem everyone's a problem they've got to cut everybody off or they hate everything you have to start asking questions about when certain things are not a problem if they're saying like oh if it's a couple it's like they're always cursing me out she speaks down on me then i can say are there any times where she's spoken positively about you so that i can understand like what you like to hear and that way they can start giving me examples because most of the times things are not absolute and the fact that we can view things in an absolute way it's actually a defense mechanism or cognitive distortion i have videos on both of those things if you're curious about the defense mechanisms or cognitive distortions that we see most often in therapy but nothing happens all the time so exception questions are really important to help people have a more balanced perspective i recognize these problems actually don't happen 100 of the time so whatever percentage that they're not happening how can we expand that it gives you room to recognize the spaces people opportunities where the person doesn't feel this way so that we can do more of that then lastly scaling questions scaling questions are very very simple and they can be used in so many different ways this is one of those things where whether you're practicing solution focused or not you're probably going to ask a scaling question and the same for the miracle question or the same for the exception questions too but scaling questions especially because they hope you put a number to things right they make things measurable and that's really what you want to focus on in solution focused therapy is like i said those small measurable attainable goals so i can ask the client on a scale of one to ten how depressed do you feel today 10 being your worst bout of depression that you've ever experienced one being you're completely happy have no issues and if the client might be like um i'm at an eight and then i say okay what can we do to get you to a seven and a half or a seven you know what small change do you think would help in that regard and they might be able to say well if i'm actually able to take a shower tomorrow that might be able you know i seem to be a little bit happier on days where i can take a shower right and then you say okay well why don't we make a goal for you to take a shower even tonight or tomorrow morning write about it and let me know how that helped you and that way you can start those little practices that can help increase their quality of life you're able to do that or if the couple is arguing you say on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad was this argument 10 being you know you're in a space where you're thinking about divorce one being oh this is nothing in the next five minutes i forgot about it that way you can also see discrepancies because you might have one person that ranks it a nine another person who ranks it a three so now we can understand values wise what are the main differences between how you two view this problem and why is it so much more significant to the other partner right and so that's more of the solution oriented thinking right because we're dabbling into that problem talk a little bit more all right so now let's talk about the process of therapy there is a certain structure to solution focused therapy in the beginning you're doing all these interventions asking those questions we talked about right you're gathering information about what's happened and in the end the therapist is complimenting the family and validating their efforts to improve their life whether they work with the individual couple or family the therapy session always ends with some form of homework for the family or client to complete before the next session the task that a therapist will typically give at the end of the first session is what they call the first session formula task and this is where you ask the family client couple to identify some things that they want to continue after therapy what are some things that they like about their current life that they don't want to change this kind of reminds me of the paradoxical interventions that we talked about in the strategic model because in a way it's a slick way of asking an exception question right like your entire life or your entire relationship is not completely messed up right there are some things that you don't want to change so why don't we focus on that in between sessions and you let me know the things that you want to persist throughout therapy and after therapy a formula task can also be known as a skeleton key and that just basically means you can use this intervention to a variety of different scenarios and therapy that's another buzzword skeleton keys but you don't really see it that often so you know just keep in mind if you see skeleton keys it's definitely in reference to solution focused therapy and in those next sessions the next question that you're going to be asked is what's better since the last time i saw you again starting the session out with an expectation that things have improved this is how we keep our client talking about solutions talking positively instead of focusing on problems and speaking negatively and this can be very contrary to traditional models of therapy where you're gonna ask okay you know what are some stressors that you want to talk about today what's really been getting in your way how what can i help you with today all of those things really invite more problem talk and those things can be effective as well but in solution-focused therapy that focuses on what is improving and therapy is over when everybody agrees that those goals their problems that they originally came in have been met so if i have a client that's coming in they tell me they hate their life they hate their job they hate their city and through our time together they you know maybe get into a healthy relationship they get a new job they move to a new city i say okay so everything that you originally came into therapy for has been resolved what are your thoughts on ending therapy is that something you're interested in so hopefully hearing these interventions you can see how simple it can be to practice from a solution-focused or solution oriented perspective it's really about relying on those three types of questions and allowing your clients or the family or couple you're working with to figure out on their own how to fix these problems and providing them support and holding them accountable in the goals that you guys set together so that is the overview of solution focus and solution oriented therapy i hope that you found this useful if this is a model that you would consider using or have some experience using let me know your experiences down below or your thoughts i really enjoy engaging with you guys i thank you so much for watching this video and being patient with me i know it's been a while since i've uploaded something but i am paying very close attention to your recommendations and requests so feel free in this video to also comment letting me know what videos you'd like to see from me next again my name is stephanie it's a wheeler stephania for short i truly appreciate you for watching this video all the way until the end that really helps me with the youtube algorithm and everything i ask that you subscribe to my channel and like this video share with a friend if you find anybody who might find this valuable thank you thank you thank you [Applause] [Music]