Solution Focus Course Q and A

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We will answer all the questions about Solution Focus Lifestyle.

“ Our Problems Are Our Solutions.” – Stanley Siegel

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It has been our observation that regardless of the magnitude or chronicity of the problems people experience, there are situations or times when, for some reason, the problem simply does not happen. Bed-wetters have dry nights, combative couples have peaceful days, and teenagers sometimes comply with the rules without an argument, and so on. Most people, therapists included, consider these problem-free times to be disconnected from or unrelated to the problematic times and so little is done to better understand or amplify them. The exceptions to the problem offer a tremendous amount of information about what is needed to solve the problem. Solutions can be unearthed by examining the differences between times when the problem has occurred and times when it has not.

Clients often simply need to do more of what is already working until the problem no longer exists. The concept is so simple. If people want to experience more success, more happiness and less stress in their lives, let them assess what is different about the times when they are already successful, happy and stress-free.

Therein lays the solution -increasing those activities which have a track record of having achieved (even for short periods of time) the desired goal. Initially, a very interesting thing happens when we ask clients about exceptions. They often are quiet momentarily and appear to be lost in thought. The reason for this silence is that people generally cast the events in their lives in black and white terms: “You never are the one to make plans for us. I always do; or “He wets the bed all the time.” Although it is unlikely that only one partner is “always” the planner and it is impossible that any person wets the bed “all the time; this, nevertheless, is the way people perceive it. So, when we ask, “What is different about the times when your husband does make plans for you?” or, “What is different about the nights when there are dry beds?” we are asking people to report on experiences they haven’t really paid much attention to yet. All they have been noticing until now is slow social calendars, hurt feelings, wet beds, laundry, and frustration. They fail to notice or give significance to the occasional time when one spouse does ask the other out for lunch, or that morning last week when the bed was bone dry.

Another reason clients sometimes seem a bit unprepared when we ask the presuppositional question pertaining to exceptions is that they do not expect therapy to be a place where one discusses what is going right. Therapy is a place to talk about problems. After all, no TV or movie therapist ever asks about what is going right. In asking about exceptions, we are not only attempting to redirect people’s attention to what is already working but also orienting people as to what we think is important to know and talk about in therapy.

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