What is Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)?

SFBT is a counseling approach that highlights and activates your child’s strengths, resources, and resilience to bring about change in the shortest amount of time. By having a hopeful conversation, I expand your child’s vision of what’s possible in life.

How Does SFBT Work?

Simply put, solution-focused brief therapy challenges your child to think and shift their pattern of attention.

They will answer questions they’ve never heard before, in ways they’ve never heard themselves respond before. Doing so creates new pathways that will lead your child to notice differences and make changes in their life.

Numerous evidence-based studies have shown SFBT’s effectiveness.

What is the Difference Between SFBT and Other Counseling Techniques?

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is unique in the assumption of why your child comes for therapy.

Although anxiety may be the problem, your child has also come to therapy because they want something.

And it’s this different assumption, that sends the conversation in a different direction creating more possibilities and avenues for change.

Additionally, the SFBT approach taps into the motivation of each child knowing that the pull of what they want (e.g. fun, calmness, happiness) is often a lot stronger than the push away from what they don’t want (e.g. anxiety).

Here are Some Additional Differences Between Solution-Focused Brief Therapy and Other Therapy Approaches:

Your child is the expert, not their therapist.

Your child has a way of doing things that work for them and will eventually lead them to their own solutions.

SFBT’s motto is: “Every child carries the key to the solution. Every solution-focused therapist just needs to know where to look.”

Creativity is a value.

I do not give your child suggestions on what to do or how to think. Instead, I invite them into a very particular way of describing their lives.

It’s this attention to detail and creative description of what life can be like that enables them to move forward with hope and expectation that they will be successful.

Your child gets all the credit.

Once they begin to realize that change is not some external factor over which they have no control, your child becomes the agent of change.

Change occurs because of your child’s contribution to it. They put their existing gifts, talents, skills, and resources to use to make it happen.

Less is more.

Other counseling approaches maintain that therapy is good in and of itself and that more sessions are better than less.

But this view is almost always associated with your child remaining in therapy longer and is NOT supported by research. The average number of solution-focused brief therapy sessions is 6.

Why does SFBT work so quickly?

We begin with the assumption that one session can make a difference, and very often it does.

I help your child to zero in on their goals without getting lost in the details, old history, and diagnoses.

Change can happen quickly. And because your child’s strengths already exist, it often takes less time to put them to use in addressing the problem.

Is Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Better Than Other Counseling Approaches?

No counseling approach is superior to another. However, I can tell you that every time SFBT has been researched, it has been shown to be as effective as any other therapy approach.

Most importantly, 100% of the time, it has been effective in fewer sessions.

Begin Solution-Focused Therapy with Briefly Counseling Today!

As a Solution-Focused Brief therapist, I enjoy helping my clients overcome anxiety.  Solution Focused Brief therapy is effective and can help teens and children who are struggling find hope,  confidence, and resilience.

At my Illinois online counseling practice, I specialize in online Christian counseling, therapy for teen anxiety, and therapy for anxiety in kids. To start online therapy in Illinois, follow these simple steps:

1. Complete my Contact form or call me at 224-236-2296 to schedule a 20-minute phone consultation.
2. If we agree that I’m the right fit for your child, we’ll select a day and time for the first appointment.
3. Learn more about me, your child’s new online therapist 
4. Watch your child gain confidence and feel better