Solution Focus
Whose fault is it that you are unhappy? What is causing you to feel badly? Once you know the cause, the problem will go away...right? In my personal experience, that is not necessarily true.
Often people get very hung up on the past, what happened to create their present unhappiness. At its worst, this focus on past causes, sometimes called the “blame frame”, results in finding excuses why something cannot be accomplished, thereby reinforcing the problem. Also, concentrating on the problem tends only to make it worse since the unconscious mind tends to produce what is presented to it on a regular basis by the conscious mind. You become what you think!
On the other hand, every “problem” contains within it a roadmap for change. The past is past, and the real issue is not why you are the way you are now, but what do you want to think, feel and do instead. If you do not like where you are now, where do you want to be, and what are the steps you need to take to get there. This approach concentrates not on problems, but on goals and outcomes. So basic, and yet most of us get caught up in blame and excuses for why we are where we are, rather than where we want to be and how to get there.
My approach to counselling and therapy is based in this solution-focused model, rather than the problem-focus of some previous counselling methods. Solution-focused therapy is more concerned with what can be done in the present to address the current effects of a problem than in what one writer called the “psycho-archeology” of the past. I agree with Dr. Milton Erickson, considered one of the greatest hypnotherapists and all-round therapists in history, that we all possess all of the resources we need to solve any personal problem confronting us. The trick is to learn how to access those resources.
