The Therapist's Notebook on Strengths and Solution-Based Therapies

Homework, Handouts, and Activities

Bob Bertolino, Michael Kiener, Ryan Patterson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781135848484
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Therapist's Notebook on Strengths and Solution-Based Therapies offers multiple pathways for those in helping relationships to employ strengths and solution-based (SSB) principles and practices as a vehicle for promoting positive change with individuals, couples, and families. The 100 exercises in this book are based on a series of core principles that are not only central to solution-based therapies; they have been demonstrated through research as essential to successful outcome. Readers will learn about processes and practices that are supported by research and are collaborative, competency-based, culturally sensitive, client-driven, outcome-informed, and change-oriented. The text is categorized into seven parts, each formatted similarly to ensure easy accessibility. Practitioners will find their therapy enhanced, with a greater ability to improve their clients' well-being, relationships, and social roles.

Section II

Getting Focused

Exploring Strengths and Solutions in Information Gathering

II.1 It Is Your Life: Creating Space for the Client’s Story

Therapist’s Overview

Purpose of the Exercise

Therapy involves careful attention to clients’ experiences, situations, concerns, and hopes for desired change. The primary doorways into clients’ lives are their stories. It is therefore essential that therapists create “listening space”—contexts in which clients feel comfortable about the details associated with their coming to therapy. The unfolding of clients’ stories or narratives is not only essential for therapists, but it will also be the most important part of therapy for some clients. In creating listening space, therapists let clients dictate the direction of opening conversations. Clients are invited to speak openly about only what they feel most comfortable. This allows clients to engage in dialogues that highlight both what they would like to talk about and how they would like to go about talking about it. The purpose of this exercise is to explore questions that invite clients to share their stories, particularly in the opening moments of therapy.

Suggestions for Use

1. This exercise is primarily for therapists as a way of exploring opening questions and continuing to reexamine them.
2. This exercise can be modified for use with clients. For example, clients could be asked to make a list of questions that they would consider respectful and helpful during opening and subsequent interactions.

Exercise

Many therapy approaches involve the use of opening questions aimed at steering therapy in a particular direction. This is a concern with both problem- and solution-focused approaches. Examples include the following: “What problem are you facing?” “What would you like to see change?” and “What has been going well in your life?” A concern with these types of questions is that they privilege the therapist’s model and do not allow clients to start where they want and talk about what they want to talk about. A strengths-based approach is founded on the idea that clients ought to have the space to begin where they feel most comfortable. This creates a context in which clients can convey their stories in ways that are right for them. This, in turn, can strengthen the therapeutic relationship. To complete this exercise, please answer the questions below and write your answers in the spaces provided.

A strengths and solution-based (SSB) approach offers flexibility to therapists in terms of opening questions. Consider the following possibilities:

• Where would you like to start?
• What would you like to talk about?
• What is most important for me to know about you and your situation or concern?
• Are there certain things that you want to be sure we talk about?
• What do you want to be sure that we discuss during our time together?
• What ideas do you have about how therapy and coming to see me might be helpful?
• In what ways do you see me as being helpful to you in reaching your goals or achieving the change you desire?
• What do you feel or think you need from me right now?
• How can I be helpful to you right now?
• What do you see as my role in helping you with your concern?
• What, in your estimation, do therapists who are helpful do with their clients?

1. What did you notice about the questions listed?

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

2. What do they have in common?

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

3. Which questions resonate most with you? Why?

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

4. Generate a list of new questions that you might use in therapy.

1. ________________________________________

2. ________________________________________

3. ________________________________________

4. ________________________________________

5. ________________________________________

Consider that clients will need the space to start where they want in subsequent sessions as well. By creating listening space, we are conveying to clients that their preferences instead of therapists’ theories are most important.

Next, consider implementing any of the questions listed in this exercise as part of your therapeutic work or in practice interactions.

II.2 Hello, My Name Is: Meeting Yourself Again

Therapist’s Overview

Purpose of the Exercise

Change requires a reexamination of self and a new understanding of the changes made. This reexamination of the self and the change process can lead to ambivalence and ambiguity. Perhaps, for the fist time, clients are truly getting to know themselves. Working with your clients on this ambivalence and ambiguity and ultimately on their new self will go a long way to sustaining change.

The purpose of this exercise is for clients to relearn who they are and get a better understanding of their possible ambivalence and ambiguity centering on their change process. Many times clients have discussed with me their disappointment in their life because they are at a certain age and not where they believe they should be (for example, I am 42 years old and living at home again). A secondary aim of this exercise is to have clients value themselves for the stage of life they are in and not compare themselves to external factors of self-worth. One way to accomplish this task is to work with your clients on valuing their abilities and reducing their emphasis on past concerns.

Suggestions for Use

1. This exercise could be useful early on in the counseling process as a means to identify client strengths.
2. This exercise can be used as a tool to identify and capitalize on behavior used to meet client goals.
3. It can be used to allow for an opportunity to explore affect and emotion of your client’s new self.
4. This exercise can be used in conjunction with Exercise II.18, “Embracing Your State: A Race with Yourself” and Exercise VI.6, “Giving Credit to Yourself: A New Look in the Mirror.”

Exercise

Conceivably, you can begin this exercise during your first meeting when gathering background information. Discussing client resources is a useful conversation that will direct the conversation toward assets and strengths and away from negativity or deficits.

The following questions can be asked to facilitate change in a client’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral understanding of self.

1. What is the number one quality that you like most about yourself?

________________________________________

________________________________________

2. How could you use that quality to improve your situation just a little bit?

________________________________________

________________________________________

3. What quality do you have that you would like to develop?

________________________________________

________________________________________

4. What would (insert an important person) see in you that would let him or her know you are developing that quality?

________________________________________

________________________________________

5. What needs to happen for you to increase the qualities you like most about yourself?

___________________________...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Section I: Becoming Strengths and Solution-Based: Creating a Context for Change
• Section II: Getting Focused: Exploring Strengths and Solutions in Information Gathering
• Section III: Reconnection to Self: Experience, Affect, and Emotion
• Section IV: Exploring new worlds of Possibility: Changing Perspectives and Perceptions
• Section V: Lives in Motion: Changing Patterns of Action and Interaction
• Section VI: Narratives of Transformation: Change, Progress, Transitions, and Endings
• Section VII: Creating a Culture of Care and Respect: Consultation, Supervision, and Development
• Index