What is Solution Focused Counselling?

Solution focused counselling focuses on solutions rather than the problems themselves. As such it highlights people’s strengths and competences instead of their perceived deficits, weaknesses and limitations.

This shift in paradigm is dramatically different from previous counselling techniques that concentrated on identifying problems and trying to explain their origins. Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg were the founders of solution focused therapy in the 1980′s both were based in USA. Sadly both have pass away  recently.

There are several assumptions that provide the framework of solution focused counselling.

• All people have strengths and inner resources to solve life’s challenges.
• “Change is one of life’s constants”. Not only is change possible it is always happening.
• The counsellor’s role in the therapy session is to help each client identify the change that is occurring and to help them increase that level of change.
• We do not need to know what caused a problem to be able to solve it.
• Change begins with small steps
• The client is  the expert in their life.
• The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem
• If its not working, do something different