Solution Focused Family Therapy
Solution Focused Family Therapy (SFFT) is a therapeutic approach that emphasizes identifying and utilizing a family's strengths to address current challenges. Evolving in the late 1970s from Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), SFFT focuses on the present and future rather than delving deeply into past problems. The therapist collaborates with the family to explore positive past experiences and develop a vision for achieving their desired outcomes. In this process, the therapist plays a role in expanding the family’s options and facilitating conversations that highlight their strengths and successes.
Core components of SFFT include asking targeted questions to help families articulate their goals and measure their progress, envision what a successful future looks like, and recognize moments when the problems were less pronounced. SFFT has been applied in various clinical settings, even those involving significant trauma, and has also been adapted in contexts like Christian pastoral counseling and corporate environments. This approach fosters a respectful and culturally sensitive dialogue that acknowledges diverse family dynamics and experiences, making it a versatile option for many seeking therapeutic support.
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Subject Terms
Solution Focused Family Therapy
Solution-focused family therapy (SFFT) is a form of psychotherapy in which a family’s strengths are identified with the help of a therapist and then used to overcome its current challenges. SFFT was derived from solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), in which clients establish goals they wish to achieve through their therapy and together the client and the therapist identify the path the client would like to take to achieve that goal and then create a vision of how to get there. In both SFFT and SFBT, the therapist does not examine the problems of the past to any great degree. Both SFFT and SFBT have been used in a wide variety of clinical settings, even those as serious as sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Overview
SFFT, which evolved around 1978 as an extension of SFBT, takes the approach of identifying the strengths of the family or of the interactions of multiple persons and applies both their individual and communal strengths used in previous situations to their current problems. The therapist asks the family about their good times together and what their goals are for bringing these positive experiences back. The therapist works with the family to imagine what that solution might look like and how these past strengths can be put to use to bring about what the family desires. The role of the therapist, therefore, is to expand rather than limit the options available to the family. The Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Association Research Committee counts three components to both SFFT and SFBT: using conversations that center on the concerns of the clients, fostering conversations that focus on new meanings of the concerns of the clients, and helping clients construct a vision of the future or solution they are seeking by drawing on successes and strengths they can use to resolve the issues at hand. Other models are based on a greater number of components, which generally comprise elements of the following: posing a miracle question, envisioning how the future will be different from the present; arriving at a scaling question, which gives clients the opportunity to measure and track their progress; generating exception-seeking questions, which identify when the current problem was less severe and having the clients specify how and why a solution worked for them in the past; presenting coping questions, which elicit helpful information that may have eluded the clients; engaging in problem-free talk, that is, having nonjudgmental conversations to uncover hidden life experiences and tools for managing anxiety and conflict.
SFBT was developed at the Brief Family Therapy Center, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was founded by the husband-and-wife team of Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg. Over the years, other practitioners have built on this modality of psychotherapy; it has also found use in Christian pastoral counseling, where it is referred to as solution-focused pastoral counseling or brief pastoral counseling. In addition, corporate and organizational consultants have adapted SFBT practices in their work.
Bibliography
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"What Is Solution-Focused Therapy?" Institute for Solution-Focused Therapy, 2022, solutionfocused.net/what-is-solution-focused-therapy/. Accessed 15 Oct. 2024.