I caught a bit of an interview with Teddy Swims on Channel 4’s ‘Sunday Brunch’ the other day. He was talking about his new album ‘I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1)’, and he made a comment along the lines of “I think therapy is a wonderful thing that everyone can benefit from… I probably will do it one day, but so far I’ve just been, like most people, fearful about opening up and exploring my past traumas”.
I found myself saying out loud, “Oh Teddy! It really doesn’t have to be like that!”
To be fair, most therapists probably do regard ‘opening up’ and talking about things that are uncomfortable to talk about as an important part of the process of engaging with therapy in a way that’ll make it effective, in which case Teddy’s fear is well grounded. That doesn’t apply to Solution Focused therapy at all though, and frankly it pains me that people don’t know that, particularly if it means people are bypassing the opportunity to benefit from something that they could find profoundly useful simply because they don’t realise how different therapy can be to what they are fearful of.
Regular readers will know that my favourite book about Solution Focused practice at the moment is ‘The Solution Focused Brief Therapy Diamond: A New Approach to SFBT That Will Empower Both Practitioner and Client to Achieve the Best Outcomes’ by Elliott Connie and Adam Froerer. Right at the start of chapter one, they urge readers aspiring to master the Solution Focused approach; ‘we need you to stop thinking like a therapist… You can’t learn this approach by thinking in the old way. It’s too different from other methods that define therapists as people whose job it is to change their clients… [this] is a therapeutic approach that is focused on where the client would like to end up, rather than focusing on problem(s) and problem development… This outcome-focused approach was a paradigm shift at its founding and still challenges the status quo of psychotherapy today.’
To some extent, this perhaps begs the question of whether Solution Focused practice should even be called ‘therapy’. Should we in the Solution Focused community distance ourselves from an activity with the same label that some people avoid because of its reputation, or stick with the ‘therapy’ label and strive to redefine what it refers to? Generally, most Solution Focused therapists are leaning more towards the latter. There is also a noticeable growth in the popularity of ‘coaching’, perhaps partly because it is perceived by many as a less scary alternative to therapy.
Meanwhile, Mental Health campaigners are encouraging people to take the plunge into therapy, pointing out the possible benefits, even if it could be an uncomfortable process. In which case, clearly more needs to be done by the Solution Focused community so that campaigners are aware of the alternative, and are accurately representing it in their messaging, so that we see lines such as ‘therapy needn’t be uncomfortable, and approaches exist, such as Solution Focused therapy, which don’t even require you to talk about anything that upsets you in order to move forward in the direction you hope to’
The bottom line is that therapy doesn’t have to be the way most people think it is. In fact, I can honestly say that every single portrayal of therapy I’ve ever seen in films and on TV (including ‘fly on the wall’ documentaries showing footage from actual therapy sessions) bears very little or no resemblance at all to what I, and my Solution Focused colleagues, practice. So if you’ve ever seen any of that stuff and been put off by it, then frankly so have I! And I would recommend trying the alternative.
Keep Calm and Solution Focused 