A concise yet comprehensive guide to getting started with Solution Focused Brief Therapy skills. From the simple ‘Building Blocks’ through to consolidation exercises to help you perfect your SFBT techniques.
This brief, accessible and PRACTICAL guide on how to do Solution Focused Brief Therapy is written specifically for members of the helping professions. This guide is suitable for counsellors, doctors, hospital chaplains, mental health workers, psychologists, psychotherapists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, social workers, support workers, teachers and anyone working in social health and welfare.
Whether you are an experienced therapist or someone who would like to use counselling skills effectively in another setting, this guide is for you. Free postage.
An excerpt from Solution Focused Brief Therapy – A Brief Manual
Welcome to Solution Focused Brief Therapy. This manual will provide you with fresh ideas for working with others and being more creative in the process. Helping people to resolve difficulties or problems in their lives can be a demanding job. Added to that, many of us are increasingly expected to get results quickly, to work with an unmanageable case load or both.
Solution Focused approaches provide a way out of these and other dilemmas. Thinking about where we want to go and how to get there provides a wealth of ideas. Under the banner of Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), a proven method – supported by continuous development on many fronts and an accessible body of sound research – has evolved. It is effective, more empowering for the client and energising for the person in the role of helper, advisor or therapist.
It is a popular assumption that brief therapy is briefer than other, more traditional approaches. While this is generally true, it is more accurate to describe the approach as relying on an orientation, rather than a timetable.
One of the fathers of the field, Bill OʼHanlon describes it as “a new way to think about and approach therapy”. He adds: “It is a method that focuses on peopleʼs competence rather than their deficits, their strengths rather than their weaknesses, their possibilities rather than their limitations.”
Results with SFBT tend to be quicker, which keeps the number of sessions to a minimum. However, it appears that most therapy, whatever the model, tends towards fewer sessions than we might expect. In one example researchers were surprised to find that the average duration for treatment of clients attending long term psychodynamic psychotherapy was just six sessions (Miller et al. 1997).
Regardless of the duration or the context of the discussion or therapeutic interaction, SFBT, provides an approach and a set of tools and ideas which help to produce results quickly.
Professor of Social Work and SFBT researcher Wally Gingerich, says, “Solution Focused Brief Therapy is a short-term goal-focused therapeutic approach which helps clients change by constructing solutions rather than dwelling on problems. Elements of the desired solution often are already present in the client’s life, and become the basis for ongoing change. The therapist intervenes only to the extent necessary, with treatment usually lasting for less than six sessions.” (www.gingerich.net).