Therapy means to broaden your ability to make choices
When you decide you have a choice about how you want to deal with a problem you are no longer stuck; you are no longer trapped by situations, other people or your own thoughts and emotions.
You then have the freedom to choose how you want to continue on in your life.
What is Solution Focused Therapy?
It sounds so obvious: you go into therapy to find solutions to your problem. Yet in many therapeutic approaches, a great deal of attention is paid to the problem and a lot less focus is geared towards the solution. Just think of the typical therapeutic questions like:
- How long have you been feeling bad?
- And when do you feel depressed?
- Why don't you feel good about yourself?
- What do you think about on such a bad day?
Those are all questions that certainly help to understand the problem however... it's not because you understand the problem very well, that you also have an idea on how you should go about fixing it. During our solution focused therapy sessions we look at things from a completely different perspective and focus on those things that are helpful. Let's turn the previous questions around:
- Are there moments when you feel good?
- When do you feel a little better?
- Why do you think you feel better about yourself in those moments?
- What are things that help you on bad days to feel less depressed?
When someone encounters obstacles in life, people have the natural reflex to look for solutions. When those solutions aren't working for them, they sometimes end up in therapy. Often however, there is a solid reasoning behind that initial approach and we can build on that experience. Just think of someone who drinks one glass too many in the evening after work to relax. It's a good reflex to look for ways to relax when you're experiencing a lot of stress, but maybe together we can come up with better strategies to deal with your stress (or other obstacles).
Solution focused therapy is aimed at clearly formulating your request for help (what would you like to see different?) and to look for practical tools that give you the opportunity to implement the desired changes in your life. What are you doing already that works? Who in your network can help you? What are your strengths? We are going to do more of all these great and helpful things. What doesn't work, in your life but also in the therapy sessions, we just leave behind. We will look for what is needed so that I become unnecessary and you no longer experience the need for therapy because you experience sufficient control over yourself and your life.
For more information about solution-focused therapy, please visit: What is Solution-Focused Therapy · Solution-Focused Therapy Institute (solutionfocused.net)