Introduction to Solution Focused Therapy

An introduction to how Solution Focused Therapy developed, explaining its history from Milton H Erickson MD's work through to the Mental Research Institute and on to the work and contributions of Insoo Kim Berg, Steve De Shazer, and Bill O'Hanlon's contribution.

A list of recommended reading to compliment your learning through this course.

In this lecture, you will find all of the course resources

An introduction to using a solution focused approach

The big picture takes an overview look at the solution focused approach and the advantages of using this approach

In this lecture we explore why you might want to use a solution focused approach.

A lecture about some of the key benefits of using a solution focused approach

A lecture about the how solution focused approach is directed towards the present and future rather than the past

In this lecture we explore different frameworks for using the solution focused approach.

Recapping what you have learnt from the solution focused therapy section

A brief introduction to the types of solution focused therapy techniques that will be discussed over the lectures in this section of the course

A lecture about problem free talk, and why it is helpful to sometimes not talk about the problem

A lecture about the importance of looking for pre-session change.

Lecture on the solution focused therapy technique of scaling, and how scaling can be used both therapeutically and also to evidence-base your work.

A lecture on the solution focused therapy technique of establishing what a clients best hopes are, both for the therapy session and for therapy overall

A lecture on the solution focused therapy technique of looking for exceptions.

This lecture discusses presuppositions and how they can be helpful to use within solution focused therapy

Recapping what you have learnt about solution focused therapy techniques

This lecture discusses some other useful pointers and ideas to consider when doing solution focused therapy.

Lecture covering solution focused therapy example questions. You can listen to these questions with a problem in mind or a client in mind and think about the responses to the questions for yourself or the client you have in mind. You may want to pause the video after each question to give thought to answers that you, or a client of yours may say.

Here are some notes on structuring a solution focused session. They cover structuring the first session, and then ways of approaching the second and subsequent sessions based on the responses you get from the client.

This is a solution focused therapy demonstration about a client wanting to be able to say 'No'. The audio session ends abruptly at the point I move on to asking the client to close his eyes and just mentally rehearse situations where he is appropriately saying 'No' and feeling confident with this. I have the client mentally rehearse watching himself saying 'No' and then replay that mental rehearsal and have him associated into the mental rehearsal 'experiencing' what it is like to be saying 'No' and then end with asking him how confident he now feels to say 'No' when it is suitable and appropriate to do so. I didn't include this bit in the audio session clip (or transcript) because it is just me talking, guiding the client through a mental rehearsal based on what he has said, and not really demonstrating any aspects of solution focused working.

In the resources is an annotated transcript where I share more information about what I am doing.

Article about using a solution focused approach with parents to reduce their youth's anti-social behaviour and youth offending. This article talks about my research findings and uses a case study from the start to show how each part of what is being covered in the article was used within that case.

The concluding lecture summarising what has been covered on this course.

Here is a Sussex Hypnotherapy Centre certificate of completion which you can print off and add your name to. (Some people have asked if they can have a Sussex Hypnotherapy Centre certificate of completion rather than just the Udemy one and unfortunately there is no automated way of doing this automatically adding your name, so like when attending in person courses, you will need to add your name yourself)

This course has now been fully updated, but for those interested in the original course audio, this is the complete original audio track of the whole of this course except for the introductory videos and conclusion video, and the solution focused therapy demonstration. You can download this audio track to listen to at any time.

This lecture is a solution focused hypnotherapy session demonstration. It is edited session rather than the full hour long session. The client wanted to lose weight, quit smoking and stop drinking cola, she achieved all of this and a decade later still maintains the results all from this one single session. This isn't high quality video due to its age and the equipment I had available to me at the time which is why it is in the bonus lecture section at the end of this course. I don't often get opportunities to do therapy sessions on camera with permission of clients, so I don't have any high quality recorded solution focused therapy videos currently.

Students have asked if it would be possible for me to share some video therapy sessions so that they can see me using solution focused approach with real therapy clients.

I have chosen this video specifically because I edited it when I was teaching a Solution Focused Therapy course to local authority staff (so I needed to minimise my mentioning of hypnosis - my preference is to have clients close their eyes and 'hypnotically' do mental rehearsal) and as part of my editing I added in notes about what I was doing throughout the video which I thought would be useful for students here.