How Does Solution Focused Therapy Help?

Solution focused therapy is a new style of marriage therapy. It focuses on the future rather than the past or present. Instead of dwelling on present problems or what caused them, it looks to the future and helps us realize the steps we need to take to get there.

In other words, it focuses on results. The couple thinks about tomorrow and what they'd like it to be. Then, the therapist works with them to decide which steps to take will bring that future happiness. It has lots of advantages over traditional types of marriage therapy.

We Can Work It Out

This style of therapy focuses on the positive instead of negative. Traditionally, we looked at weaknesses and faults. Negative thinking breeds only more of negative thinking. Always looking at weaknesses can help, but it can also intensify problems and hurt self-confidence. This type of thinking often leads to "wallowing" and feeling like the problems are unsolvable.

On the other hand, focusing on the positive aspects of you with results-based therapy helps boost confidence and show the couple that there is a way out of the current situation. Looking at your marriage and yourselves in a positive light is the first step to working out your problems.

The Blame Game

Older methods focus on how the current problem developed. In other words, how did we get to where we are now? While this can be effective in working out present problems, it can have an unfortunate side effect, which we call "the blame game." The blaming game is a killer for almost all relationships. We start blaming the other for everything that happened, and it just spirals downward from there.

Most married couples don't go to the therapist until things are bad already. With a problem that's been dragging on a long time, there's lots of blame to place. Solution-based counseling helps move things away from blaming each other, and makes a clean break. The focus is on the future and what can be done to make it right.

Tracking Small Changes

Fixing a marriage seems like an overwhelming problem. It's too much to take in all at once. The solution based approach looks at small changes, and how each small change can affect a bigger change. Instead of trying to fix the entire marriage, we look at making small adjustments in the future, and what their outcome will be. The therapist will often ask what bothers you about your spouse's behavior or attitude, and what small change could make it better. This approach to therapy not only produces immediate results, but also shows you that it's not so tough to change.

Solution based marriage therapy looks to the future instead of dwelling on the past. By making small changes day by day, you can fix your problems and the time you spend together can be happy and enriching, the way it's supposed to be.

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