2013 solution focused training courses

After a gentle brush with brief therapy in the mid-80s at the Young People’s Unit in Macclesfield and an early love affair with Change and The Tactics of Change from the MRI, I first seriously studied solution-focused brief therapy by reading about it in The Brief Guide to Brief Therapy, by Brian Cade & Bill O’Hanlon in the early 90s, by which time a social work qualification had got in the way a bit (slightly tongue-in-cheek comment, though one of my social work tutors had dismissed brief therapy as a fringe activity).

It was probably 1993, and I was a social worker with children and families, and I read the chapter about exceptions. What a terrific idea! and one that I thought I should be able to import into my practice easily enough. I was working with a family in which there were two teenage lads who were often (before reading Brian and Bill’s book I might have written always) at each others’ throats and a single mum who was tearing her hair out in trying to deal with them. So one day armed with my new tool I asked them if they could think of a time when something had happened so that they could have fallen out with each other, but they’d managed not to, they’d managed to do something else instead.

They said yes, or at least one of them did, and told me of a time when they might have fallen out, but didn’t…

…

I was trying to remember what the book said to do next.

“Great”, I said. “Keep it up then!” And realised that this sounded a little lame.

It wasn’t until two years later that I started to become more adept at knowing what to do next (or rather, knowing how to do what next), which was of course, to ask a question about it. Then listen to the answer. Then ask another question. And so on. And even those this is simple, it ain’t easy.

It took attending a training course to properly set me on my way, just as a night class in Spanish four years later enabled me to travel independently around Spain.

So, get hold of one of the many excellent books that are now around in solution-focused practice, but, if you want to begin to travel independently in the approach, even if at first just to be able to do the equivalent of booking a room and ordering a meal, you need to go on a training course.

And the details of my open access courses in 2013 are now available – here they are!

Do contact me via the website if you have any questions about the training.

Guy