5 solution-focused therapy techniques and activities to try in your sessions

SFBT should be a collaborative process, with therapist and client working together to envision a better future and create a roadmap for getting there. As the practitioner, your overarching goal should be pulling a client’s focus away from their problem and toward solutions to that problem. But how?

Throughout the SFBT process, it’s important to distinguish between “problem talk” (dwelling on what’s going wrong or perceived weaknesses) and “solution talk” (picturing a better future and identifying strengths that can help the client get there). Of course, simply recognizing that difference isn’t enough; you must also guide your client to use solution talk to shift their mindset and move forward productively.

Below, we’ll walk through some specific SFBT techniques. Remember, these are meant to be used together as a comprehensive system, rather than in isolation.

The miracle question: Creating a vision of possibility

SFBT therapists usually start by helping their clients set goals. After all, you can’t achieve success unless you define what success is.

A practitioner might start by asking their client about their greatest hope for therapy, or what would have to happen for them to consider therapy a success. Then, they’d help their client envision what life would look like if that outcome were realized. 

To flesh out that thinking, many therapists use the “miracle question.” While it can be phrased in different ways, the crux of the miracle question is this: “If a miracle happened overnight and made your problem disappear — but you were unaware it had happened because you were sleeping — what would make you realize your problem was gone?”

Answers will naturally vary depending on the client’s age, problem, and outlook. For a couple on the brink of divorce, the first tip off might be greeting each other with a warm “good morning” rather than bickering right away. For a child dealing with bullying, it might be waking up excited, rather than fearful, about the school day.

The specifics can and should change from person to person. The idea is just to get your client thinking about what their life could look like, both to provide hope and to start defining steps they can take to reach that new reality.

Discovering exceptions: Uncovering client strengths and resources

To the extent that SFBT therapists are interested in the past, it’s to look for sources of strength and hope in a client’s history. One form that can take is looking for “exceptions” — times when the problem in question felt less pressing or didn’t bother the client as much as usual. Mining these examples can help clients think about what led to exceptions and figure out how to recapture those circumstances.

To identify exceptions, a therapist might ask something like, “Can you remember a time when your problem wasn’t as bad as it is now? Or when you reacted to it differently?” 

When the client answers, the therapist might follow up with a question like, “What was different about that time?” This line of thinking can help clients identify useful insights, while also reinforcing that problems are modifiable.

Scaling questions: Measuring progress and motivation 

Understanding progress is an important part of achieving success. To do so, SFBT practitioners often use “scaling questions.”

These questions typically ask clients to quantify their feelings on a scale of 1-10. For example, a therapist might ask, “On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you that this problem can be solved?” Or, “On a scale of 1-10, how severe would you rate your problem right now?”

The answers to these questions — and tracking how they change over time — can help the therapist translate subjective feelings into objective data. This makes it easier to monitor progress and tailor future sessions to tap into what’s working. (Objective data is also helpful for documentation. More on that below.)

Coping questions: Highlighting resilience in difficult situations

“Coping questions” are prompts meant to remind clients that they have dealt with difficulties before and can do so again. A therapist might ask, “How have you gotten through hard times in the past?” Or, “How did you stop a bad situation from becoming worse?”

These questions can not only uncover practical information (i.e., coping tactics that have worked in the past) but also serve as confidence-building reminders of resilience. That can be especially powerful for a client who is in crisis or feeling hopeless.

Although they are similar, there are subtle differences between coping questions and those meant to identify exceptions. Coping questions remind clients of their strength in the face of adversity. Exceptions, meanwhile, highlight times when a problem didn’t feel as bad as it usually does, in hopes of replicating those conditions in the future. 

Future-oriented questions: Building momentum toward change

A therapist using SFBT techniques probably isn’t getting hung up on why someone has a particular problem, but rather on how different their life will be once that issue has been conquered. It’s an inherently forward-looking modality. 

To that end, a therapist using SFBT techniques should ask future-oriented questions, rooted in the assumption that progress will happen. (These are sometimes called “presuppositional” questions, because they take for granted that some degree of change is already in motion.) At the end of a session, a therapist might say something like, “What will you do this week to build on your progress?” Or, “How will you take what’s already worked and do it again?”