Traditional approaches to counselling often spend a lot of time focusing on the clients’ problem(s); their history and origins, classifying syndromes and mental illnesses, and analysing why situations have happened so they can diagnose treatment options. This is useful up to a point as we all need to make sense of how we reached our present state; but spending a lot of time concentrating on why an experience happened, or why we feel a certain way can result in embedding the problem even more deeply in our psyche and get in the way of acknowledging what working in the present, and what is possible for the future.

Solution Oriented Counselling focuses on what the clients want to achieve rather than the problems that motivated them to seek help in the first place. The therapy helps people to clearly envision their preferred future, identify their strengths and resources, pin point what has served them well in the past and support them to move towards the change that they desire.

Solution oriented therapists believe that change is both inevitable and constant. So by helping clients to clarify the things that they would like to change in their life, whilst also attending to the things that they want to remain the same, the clients can be guided to construct a vision of the life that they would like for themselves. The therapist assists the clients to identify times when they have used successful strategies before and reveals how those strategies can be utilised to move them towards a happier future.

“If you woke up tomorrow morning and your life was perfect, what would it look like?”…