Nov 17, 2022 Benefits of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

If you find yourself constantly experiencing mental, emotional, or behavioral health crises and unable to attain the better days you long for, you may benefit from solution-focused brief therapy. This form of psychotherapy is more positive in theory, requiring you to recognize and use your inner strength and resilience to do away with unhelpful behaviors and find solutions to your problems. Today’s blog reviews the benefits of solution focused brief therapy and how it can help you. 

In this image, a therapist sits across from her client, offering Solution-Focused Brief Therapy.

Life is full of continuous change. It’s a process of trying new things, making mistakes, and learning. It’s an unpredictable journey jam-packed with ups, downs, straight paths, and curves. Our lives aren’t just one single destination to reach. Instead, it’s a series of destinations we travel along through positive and negative experiences. Through time, growth, goal-setting, and changing course when necessary. However, learning to be okay with changing your goals and action plans and knowing when to do so can take effort, self-exploration, and problem-solving. 

When Life Feels Like a Series of Problems

When crisis after crisis presents itself, it can feel like all your energy is directed towards keeping you afloat. Solving problem after problem can be challenging for everyone, especially for individuals with anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions and behavioral issues. Solution-focused brief therapy is available for people who need help identifying healthy paths forward in the face of distress and mental health issues. 

Individuals in need of counseling in Washington can turn to Susan Delia Counseling Services for the solution-focused brief therapy they need to help stimulate critical thinking and empower them to identify and remedy their challenges.

What is Solution-Focused Brief Therapy?

Solution-focused brief therapy is psychotherapy that follows a humanistic, positive psychology-influenced, and strength-based approach. This type of therapy motivates clients to find solutions for their problems from within and look at the areas in life where things are working. 

Individuals receiving solution-focused brief therapy counseling in Washington from Susan Delia Counseling Services will feel respected, encouraged, and hopeful in their sessions and be encouraged to…

  • Discover the strengths and resources they already have
  • Transform their strengths into healing power that can move them forward toward their desired future
  • Discuss with their clinician what their desired future looks like
  • Figure out how to redirect obsessive thoughts
  • Do away with and overcome unhelpful behaviors that keep them from making their desires a reality
  • Recognize the signs of burnout, anxiety, depression and trauma and learn how to recover

Through solution-focused brief therapy, clients will be encouraged to use their inner strength to identify practical solutions to mental, behavioral, or interpersonal conflicts and to develop a set of skills for looking at the challenges in their life from a new lens. For this reason, this psychotherapy method can be brief in administration. It’s more efficient and can be more beneficial for clients to learn to harness their strengths and resources instead of creating and nurturing new ones.

What Happens in Solution-Focused Brief Therapy?

In solution-focused brief therapy, clients receive a gentle yet realistic reminder of life: change is inevitable. For individuals seeking counseling in Washington, sessions with Susan Delia entail learning healthy ways to adapt to such change. Clients speak with a skilled, licensed clinical social worker in sessions tailored to address their unique challenges. Here, clients work to understand the root of their struggles and, with their clinician’s help, harness their strength into long-lasting coping strategies that bring them closer to the life they desire.

At the crux of solution-focused brief therapy, clients are considered the experts of their lives. With a better understanding of the client, a solution-focused mental health provider can help them identify their strengths and challenges. Clients of Delia Counseling Services will experience therapy as a collaborative process, as their therapist respects their experiences and the information they share in counseling sessions.

Questions Asked in Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Clinicians may ask a variation of five types of questions intended to provoke thoughts and conversations about problem-solving and goal-setting:

  • Exception questions. Exception questions ask clients about experiences with and without their problems. Therapists may ask, “can you tell me about times you felt the happiest?” or “can you think of times when the problem was absent from your life?” These questions help clients explore the times they successfully addressed or coped with past challenges. They can help differentiate circumstances when the problems have the most power over the clients and those when they have less power or none at all. When the client can describe positive moments or improved periods in their lives, the therapist can move conversations toward identifying what could currently be causing the client distress. 
  • Coping questions. These questions can help clients recognize their resilience. Questions like “how do you manage to fulfill your daily obligations in the face of such difficulties?” or “how’d you manage to keep things from getting worse?” can help clients and clinicians identify effective coping mechanisms clients may already use.
  • Miracle questions. Generally worded as “imagine a miracle has happened. The problem you struggle with is suddenly gone. How does your life look without this issue?This question prompts the client to imagine their life without the challenges that trouble them. By opening one’s mind up to the possibility of less stressful days, an individual can identify appropriate concrete steps that can make this desirable future attainable.
  • Best-hopes questions. In cases where miracle questions aren’t practical, solution-focused therapists may ask best hopes questions. Questions like “what are your best hopes for our session today?” or “what needs to happen in our session for you to think it was worthwhile?” can help the client establish achievable, realistic goals and avoid unrealistic expectations for therapy.
  • Scaling questions. Clinicians ask scaling questions like “how would you rate your progress in finding a solution to your problem on a scale from 0 to 10?” to gauge progress. To get an idea of how clients may feel about their current problems. Or how motivated and confident the client is in finding solutions. Scaling their experiences can enable clients to better identify their agency within life stressors and problems, develop plans and hopes, and gain enhanced emotional awareness.

What Are the Benefits of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy?

Most traditional forms of psychotherapy focus on analyzing clients’ problems and past life events. Solution-focused brief therapy, as implemented by Susan Delia Counseling Services in Washington, is beneficial because of its basis in optimism and positive psychology and its focus on the future. It concentrates on finding solutions in the present and exploring hopes for the future. This therapeutic method can make counseling safer for some clients as it doesn’t require them to dive into their past. They don’t have to relive embarrassing and distressing thoughts and experiences. They don’t have to have conversations that can be triggering or re-traumatizing. They can figure out how to redirect obsessive thoughts and break free from an anxious or negative mindset.

Who Benefits From Solution-Focused Brief Therapy?  

This psychotherapy form demonstrates effectiveness in helping treat individuals experiencing mental, emotional, or behavioral challenges related to

  • Substance abuse or addiction
  • Low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, or trauma
  • Behavioral problems in children
  • Grief, loss, relationship, or family conflicts
  • Difficult life transitions
In this bird's eye image, a pair of sunglasses, two latte's in yellow mugs and a picture frame tat reads " Inhale the future, Exhale the past" sits on a dark wood surface.

Counseling in Washington Available Now

Our mental health can fluctuate throughout life. When something feels wrong or causes declines in our mental and emotional states, these experiences can be signs we need help. The right clinician can provide the support and care you need while helping you find and unlock the healing power you have within yourself to solve your problems. 

Reach out to Susan Delia, LICSW, when you’re ready to make changes for the better. With Delia Counseling Services, you’ll receive counseling in Washington that empowers you to identify necessary solutions for improving your emotional well-being. You’ll receive future-oriented, goal-directed care that enhances your quality of life and allows you to look ahead to the future instead of back at the past that’s hurt you.


Delia Counseling Services provides quality solution-focused therapy for individual adults and teens 13 years and older who are struggling with anxiety, depression, grief and loss, relationship concerns, and life transitions. We serve the Yakima, Washington area including zip codes 98902 and 98901 and beyond.

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