SFBT

Unit 8 Solution Focused Brief Therapy Weekly Learning Record 6

Student name: Elena Stavreva

My perceptions and emotions related to the counselling training are being constantly modulated. As if I am rewriting or this part of my life is being re-edited constantly. That is one of the impressions the SFBT session left in my mind and emotions.

It is quite amazing to observe the flexibility of the human soul. Like every living being and organism, humans move, change, react and express themselves. On the other hand, God, our creator doesn't change, He is the same but He surprises us. He is unchangeable and unpredictable. We are made in His image, we seem to be predictable and changeable. We change our thoughts, ideas, feelings, moods, desires...And we are still made by His image. How much of life is being and how much is doing?

When Jesus said in the Bible “I am”, things happened, miracles happened. By being who He is, He produces, He does. So for a follower of Jesus doing comes through being.

In some parts of he world, cultures and people are considered to be more people-oriented while in others, we call them goal-oriented or task-oriented.

At first glance, the solution focused brief therapy seems to be matching better the second ones who would need a clear perspective and knowledge of what they would be doing and how they would be achieving or scoring any results. Is the idea of having achieved something a good enough motivation for a change to take place? Is that change going to help the person come to terms with the pain and anger? Escape the pain? Or realise the pain becomes less powerful when you know how to move forward and you know where you are heading? Is healing involved in the action?

And I think of the many times when Jesus told the person to do something before they received their healing. And before they did something, they were often asked a question about their faith, about what they could see in the future, one way to describe faith.

SFBT uses the so called miracle question which in reality invites the person to go through their mind in the future. Then the person speaks and talks about their thoughts, or new, dreamed, preferred thoughts, hopes or some therapies talk about a “preferred future”. The fact that the person is speaking into their future is already one step towards empowering. The fact that the future is called into the present is another step further into the process of empowering.

Thoughts remain and they make it painful. The problem seems to be in the remembering.

Remembering the pain. Remembering a bad word, situation or attitude.

I would say that SFBT is another way, as well, of empowering our good memories.

One of the interventions in this therapy is about the person applying coping strategies that have already worked in their life. These are the powerful thoughts, the powerful memories which cancel the painful ones and eliminate their influence.

These lines of thoughts are going through my mind because I am having a debate in my mind about the pros and cons of SFBT.

There will be more to be discovered, of course, by examining further the story, the interventions used in this model and the results achieved.

Date: 09.11.2017