Are you someone who feels a surge of optimistic energy at the beginning of a school year?  There is something about fall that makes students motivated and ready to start fresh.  The fall semester is a good example of how you can use Solution-Focused therapy ideas to get your best grades yet.

One fun thing about psychology is that you can take one problem and use different theoretical approaches to try to solve it.  For example, a cognitive therapist would use different techniques than a psychodynamic therapist to solve and understand a communication problem in a romantic relationship.

One concept that I like to use from Solution-Focused therapy is to figure out what is working and why it is working.  This might sound too simple of an idea to solve complicated problems, but it has many applications and layers to it.  For example, a problem is never occurring all the time or across every area of your life.  You are adept at one subject and not another, you look your best in one color and not another, and you click with one type of friend and not another.

Here are some ideas to try to make your goals happen:

• What is your “best” subject?  Think back to the classes you performed the best in high school.  What was it about English, or Biology, that made you do so well?  In other words, why is it easier for you to write a paper instead of do problem sets (or vice versa).  When you understand some of your strengths in a certain subject, you can move on to the next step.
• Chances are that when it comes to your best subject, you have a fair amount of confidence when tackling assignments in it.  See if you can identify the beliefs you have about yourself when it comes to these tasks.  For example, do you know that you can sit down at 10pm to write a paper that is due at 8am?  This involves confidence that someone who does not enjoy writing papers would not have.  What is it about the way you work that allows you to tackle writing a paper but makes you freeze at the idea of giving a presentation (or something else?)
• Get really concrete with your goals and habits.  When I ask students how they plan to improve their grades in a certain subject, the most common answer is “study harder.”  This vague answer hardly ever produces results we want.  What do you really mean?  More hours?  Different method?  Different location?  See if you can identify WHERE you do your best work, WITH whom (including alone), WHEN you can focus best, etc.  Make this an image in your mind: studying in a certain corner of the library, with a particular friend, after dinner, etc.
• Think about the last time you did your best work: aced a test or wrote your best paper or presentation.  What did you do?  How did you make it happen?  See if you can repeat some of the choices you made and apply them to a class where you are not succeeding as naturally.
• Consider observing someone who excels in this particular subject or assignment you are trying to improve.  Sometimes it is easier to describe another person’s successful methods.  I’ll sometimes ask a client the question, “Why is this person able to perform this task?  What do they do?  What do they believe about themselves that you currently don’t believe about yourself?”

I hope this school year is your best yet.

What Is Worth My Investment Right Now?

In order for you to decide if something, especially therapy, is worth your money, the object of your energy has to have some sort of leverage.  In other words, therapy has leverage because it invites the belief that things can get better and has the research to back it up.  Your favorite charity has leverage because it has captured your interest, excitement, or sympathy.  Even your favorite coffee drink has leverage because it gives you a desired taste and experience.  If you can put your money somewhere and get a desired outcome, that choice has leverage.

My specialty is solution-focused counseling, and my clients are a diverse group.  But everyone who is a part of my practice has decided that something about therapy is worth his or her money, and I work hard to make it consistently worthwhile.  It is not easy to hire someone else to help you talk to your boyfriend, feel better about your job, or teach you how to have a different relationship with food.  You are essentially paying someone to help you shine a light into all the parts of you that you have ignored, abused, or disliked for so long.  You have initiated a process that you hope will bring you more happiness.

Of course, therapy doesn’t always feel like a choice.  Some people are at the end of their rope, and they don’t see counseling as an option.  It feels like life has given them an ultimatum: shape up or ship out.

Is it worth it to have a few sessions with someone who can help you feel better about something you’ve been struggling with forever?  How much would you pay to be able to wake up and feel better about your life?  If you have a friend who broke his leg, wouldn’t you take him to a doctor and treat it?  It’s not any different, then, to treat depression.

Where Your Energy (and your money) Go

Much like money, personal energy is slippery.  Does your free time ever pass and leave you wondering where it went?  Have you ever sat down at the computer, intending a quick check of your email, only to get up an hour (or more) later?  Have you ever traveled somewhere where you have to pay for Internet use and realized how much you can do without?

If you took a calendar from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. and marked your time off in 15-minute increments, what would a pie chart of your time look like?

The key with energy is that we don’t have an infinite amount.  We are always making choices about what to do with our energy, and when we don’t, outside circumstances decide for us.  Let’s see what is possible when you divide your energy among meaningful things.

Here’s a great exercise that will help you understand more about where you’re spending your energy.  When you’re finished, you’ll have a clear look at how to prioritize some tasks:

• Take a stack of cards and on each one of them write something that you need to do, hope to do, wish you could do, or feel like you have to do.  These cards should include everything from “Learn Italian” to “Clean out my email inbox.”

• When you are finished, divide the cards into two piles: Important and Not Important.

• Go through each of those piles to form 2 more piles (when you are finished, you will have four).  Decide if those Important and Not Important piles are then Urgent or Not Urgent.

Now you can prioritize in a way that makes sense given your limited amount of energy:

1. Important and Urgent

2. Important and Not Urgent

3. Not important and Urgent

4. Not Important and Not Urgent

It might be a toss up whether to call a friend who’s going through a breakup (#2), or whether to check your new voicemails (#3).  But you can also see how quickly your energy drains away when you focus on replying to personal email (often #4) instead of researching plane tickets for your upcoming winter break (#1).

This is a new twist on your to-do list that will take an extra few minutes at first, but once you can identify tasks using these categories, you will become more efficient at prioritizing.  Have a happy fall and contact me if you need anything!

In order to release yourself from the burden of solving others’ problems (especially when you’re not being paid to do so!), you must understand the art of deflection. Deflecting means being able to listen to another’s plight and his or her attempt to pull you in, empathizing with it, and then putting it back on the speaker to see what they do next.

Deflecting is very simple and involves a few key phrases:

“Wow, that is a bummer.”
“Oh, that’s too bad – what a pain!”
“I would feel the same way.”

These are sympathetic statements that are offered in a sincere and genuine manner. Often just by repeating these statements in different forms, the listener is able to let the speaker vent and express feelings without being distracted by solutions offered up by the listener. Usually (especially with kids!) this is all the speaker wants: a sympathetic ear.

What happens too often though, is the listener makes the mistake of trying to “help” the speaker with advice, a “similar” story of his own (which is almost always perceived as 0ne-upping and not helpful) and the listener ends up with his advice being rejected. For a full explanation of this phenomenon, please reread my story about “Your New Golden Rule: Never Drag a Cat”, which discusses listeners who spend a lot of time in this inefficient mode.

If you cannot maintain patience to listen any longer and must turn the conversation “productive”, the trick to not getting drawn in (especially with a chronic complainer) is to add one more phrase after the sympathetic statement.

“What do you think you are going to do?”

Again, you are turning the speaker’s problem back onto the speaker. In the extremely rare case where the speaker actually actively solicits your advice (be sure this actually happens) even then you can think for a moment and ask the speaker:

• What have you tried?
• What do you think would work next?
• What worked the last time you were in a similar situation?

It is always amazing to me how many clients have the answers to their own problems – and these solutions are far more creative and effective than anything anyone else could come up with.

Children especially are very creative thinkers, and develop coping and self-soothing skills when allowed to brainstorm their own solutions with your guidance. They do NOT need answers to all their problems; usually children just want a venting session (“I hate math! I’m never going to school again!”) These kinds of statements always sound alarming but when offered a sympathetic ear, the conversation usually end abruptly with a change of subject and an amnesia-like quality of moving on from the problem.

For more information on this technique, check out the cheesy but effective book, “I Don’t Have to Make Everything All Better” by Gary and Joy Lundeberg.

When seeking out solutions to problems, it is always worth at least noting that most problems have some benefits to them as well. In therapy we call these secondary gains. (You can learn more about secondary gains on my website.)

Here are some upsides to common complaints brought to individual counseling:

• The Upside of Anger: A client might feel worried that their anger is uncontrollable, but the positive side to feeling anger is just that – the client is actually feeling something and can therefore DO something productive with that anger. Anger can relieve stress and prevent runaway anxiety. Anger gives a therapist a lot of opportunity to help a client.
• The Upside of Loneliness: A client struggling with loneliness has already advanced past many of us who fill our days trying to prevent this feeling; they are experiencing something we fear most. A lonely client seeking companionship has already been figuring out how to structure his day, soothe his quietest moments, and engage in solo activities. Plus, a client who has learned how to live through loneliness can be well prepared to be an independent and self-sufficient partner. A lonely client gives the therapist a chance to help them build his life around his most permanent relationship: the one with himself.
• The Upside of Anxiety: An anxious client wants to soothe the physical feelings that accompany anxiety. What the client doesn’t realize is that the flip side to his anxiety is the concerted effort his brain is making to soothe him. The client is tuned into life and cares about something; otherwise, anxiety would not be present. Therefore, we can reframe anxiety as a normal response to something that has just gotten blown out of proportion. Anxiety is an extreme measure of self-care.
• The Upside of Depression: Clients who have worst-case scenario thoughts about their lives are usually very good at predicting and overcoming potential obstacles. This can turn anxiety and brooding into action, which is empowering. A depressed client always has positive aspects to his life that he has been downplaying or not tapping into. This is one reason why depression is so difficult to tackle without professional help; there are immense blind spots with regards to positive qualities that a therapist can help the client see and use.

Solution-Focused therapy, in my opinion, is better than any other therapy when it comes to helping a client reframe their problems and see opportunity and choice.

Lucky people seem to generate their own good fortune, but it’s not all due to hard or conscientious work. For example, one quality of lucky people is a tendency towards extraversion; they are more likely to have something good happen to them because they encounter more people and tend to be more open to new ideas. Extraversion also tends to go hand-in-hand with less anxiety, anger, and depression.

That idea seems simple enough: the more you put yourself out there, the more likely you are to increase your chances of a fortuitous situation. But two other qualities common in lucky people are being flexible and allowing yourself to stray off-task. Why? Flexible people respond with less rigidity to a situation, which provides more opportunities for solutions and lucky outcomes. Similarly, being overly conscientious can result in missing the point – “losing the forest through the trees,” so to speak. A stubborn focus on a task does not allow us to see hidden opportunities or to catch lucky breaks.

So what is the connection between lucky people and Solution Focused counseling? A solution focused therapist helps the client look for what is going well in life, as well as what is not. The therapist is interested in helping a client apply his own strengths to a situation using flexibility, cognitive re-framing (looking at a problem from a different point of view), and taking the focus off the problem exclusively. Sound familiar? This is the way lucky people approach their lives.

Because Solution Focused therapy isn’t problem-oriented, a client spends much more time examining alternative ideas to nagging issues. This again requires flexibility, for it is not easy to see good fortune or hopeful outcomes in the same area one has failed again and again.

A Solution-Focused therapist is also helping the client become confident in his own strengths and abilities, which gives the client more incentive to say “yes” to a potentially lucky situation. Saying Yes and learning to not live feeling trapped by fear of regret or guilt expands a client’s choices. As we learned above, expanded choices increase luck.

Being guided by a Solution-Focused therapist and experiencing luck does not mean that there will not be obstacles along the way. Again, the solution-focused mindset teaches the client resiliency. Because I believe that a client’s strengths – including those untapped – are greater than his shortcomings, I can help a client rebound from failure. Resiliency is much easier to implement when you believe that more good fortune is just around the corner.

There are 4 steps to a real apology. Practice:

1. State what you did wrong. “I am so sorry I didn’t call you sooner when I knew I would be late.”
2. Accept responsibility. “I should have taken the time to let you know my plans had changed. Because I didn’t, you ended up waiting for 30 minutes, and that is my fault.”
3. Offer an explanation. ** This is NOT your opportunity to make an excuse. Don’t ruin your apology with excuses! You can revisit the other person’s part in the problem at a later time. ** “I got so caught up in my conference call that I didn’t even think to step away.”
4. Show remorse. “So I feel terrible about what happened and want to be sure you know that.”

Here are some things I can tell you about people who make an apology:

• The first person to make an apology almost always comes out as a winner. The bigger and more humble, the better.
• With apologies among a couple, usually one person offers up apologies more readily than the other. This is OK. It is just as important that the receiver recognizes and accepts the apology.
• Separate your apology from your desire to improve the situation for the next time. I know it usually takes two to make something go wrong, but you can create a new, snafu-proof system in a later conversation. Let your apology stand on its own.
• After your apology has been accepted, suggest to the person that “Sometime let’s talk about how we can keep this from happening again. Maybe this weekend we can look at our schedules or figure out a system that works better.”

If you have a partner or a friend who apologies easily, count yourself lucky – accept his or her apology and suggest a later date to review how you can improve the situation, especially if it involves chronic apologies.

In 2009, I set out to find a talented clinician to work with me. I wanted someone who would bring complementary skills and understand the priorities in my practice. I was looking for someone who could:

• Be a down-to-earth person who directly answers clients’ questions, laughs, and gives practical, positive things to think about in session
• Genuinely like my clients and be looking for their strengths while guiding them through their problems
• Be a nerd; that is, attend conferences and stay up-to-date on the newest research in psychology so that we can always give our clients the best and most relevant information possible

Maybe it wouldn’t surprise you to know that a good therapist is hard to find and a good therapist to team up with is even harder. However, I have found an excellent sidekick in Karen Flynn.

Karen specializes in treating couples using the most effective form of couples therapy I believe that we have to date, the Gottman method. What this means to you, to the potential client, is that these therapists are renowned for their work with improving marital stability and divorce prediction, and teach practical skills while restoring relationships.

(I’ve mentioned John Gottman and his research institute before; this is the man featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and author of Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, and 10 Lessons to Transform Your Marriage).

You don’t have to see Karen for couples therapy, of course. She sees individuals, too. Here are two reasons for now why you might consider calling Karen:

Maybe you are intrigued by the kind of work I do, but since you know me, you wouldn’t be comfortable being my client. Yes, Karen works in my office (as well as a Solano Avenue location) but maintains the privacy of all her clients.

You are interested in the best couples counseling and want to come in right now. I have very few openings in my practice at the moment, especially in the evenings. Karen works first thing in the morning, Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings.

Read more about Karen here.

In addition to teaching clients new skills, sharing important research on their goals and behaviors, and of course providing a listening ear, I think one of the most healing aspects to counseling is the fact that I am not part of the client’s negative view of himself and his failed attempts. Instead, I am an advocate for the strengths related to who they already are.

The trouble with most problems is that we’ve tried to fix them on our own using a critical mindset which results in a repetitive pattern of defeat. Here are some examples:

• A compulsive eater resolves after a binge to do better tomorrow, but not until beating herself up over what she ate today and how she looks and feels. She tells herself, “No more disgusting behavior. You’re fat and need to get it together.”
• A depressed student feels isolated and pessimistic about who he is and his future. He sees other students appear to be social, happy, and successful. He tells himself he cannot turn his situation around until he can feel competent around others. Each urge to join the rest of the world is met by his critic who tells him he’s not good enough to do that yet.
• A mom worries that her son isn’t keeping up with his peers in school or will not make his desired soccer team. Her son otherwise seems well-adjusted, but she tries to support him and prevent him from any disappointment by scheduling sports lessons, extra play dates, and lots of pep talks. The more the mom does, the less she feels he cares and the fewer results she sees.

The problem with our internal critic is that it is usually misguided. We all need a conscience. We need an internal system of regulation to make sure we go to work on time, finish projects and take care of each other and our selves. However, people who are stuck in a problem mindset have been ruminating. This is the tendency to over think problems, and it is at the core of depression and anxiety.
Have you found yourself ruminating on something that bothers you? Of course. But this kind of excessive pursuit of the perfect solution or our “ideal self” leads to dejection. When we are too hard on others, or ourselves it distracts from possible solutions to our problems. We miss what is right in front of our own eyes.

Do This Instead:

• Cultivate self-compassion. If you can’t do it, ask a therapist, friend, or family member for help. Note: this does NOT mean letting yourself “off the hook” for your goals. But in order to achieve any goal, you have to get out of the destructive cycle of self-criticism and dedication to a rigid regimen.
• Remind yourself that humans are malleable. We are the skills that we choose to cultivate. If you are seeking a positive goal by cultivating self-critical skills, you are missing the point.
• Practice gratitude. There are huge amounts of data that show counting your blessings even once a week result in better physical health and more positive relationships. Teach your kids to write in a gratitude journal once a week. Define gratitude simply as “wonder at things that are given to you.”

In therapy, I treat individual anger by helping to “clean up” the emotions surrounding it. We first deal with the “meta emotion” – essentially the feeling about the feeling. How do you feel about being angry?

When feeling anger, people also often feel:

• stressed out or confused
• mad at themselves, guilty
• embarrassed

As with most negative emotions, a little of it is not a problem, especially if you are using anger productively.

How can you do that?

1. Anger is first felt physically. If you have issues controlling your anger, pay attention to your body and notice how it “buzzes” to attention and becomes angry before your mind does.
2. Once you notice the physical symptoms, you learn to train your body to calm down so that rational thought can proceed. The research shows marked cognitive decline when you pulse rises above 100 due to agitation. So remind yourself that you can’t think properly until you calm yourself down.
3. Train yourself to be calm by focusing on your breath, or using a mantra to talk yourself down. A reassuring sentence like “I will be understood” or “I am in control of myself” can help, but make it personal to you.
4. Seek support from those close to you for help monitoring anger. Ask them to tell you when they perceive you to be angry, and help you communicate your feelings so that you can be understood without escalating tension.
5. Work to understand some of your trigger feelings about anger, and learn how to manage those. Some people might always make you angry. Can you develop a different belief about them to avoid inflaming your anger? Can you avoid activities that escalate your anger (perhaps golf or traffic?) until you understand yourself better?

If someone has told you that they think you have a problem with anger, do yourself a favor and get help. Anger leads to physical health problems and is very treatable.

Strength-based therapy focuses on the present and the future. It is concerned with today’s problems and tomorrow’s concerns. The kind of therapy I do is also non-pathologizing therapy. This means that I don’t view my clients as being crazy or deficient in some way. I don’t diagnose clients (unless insurance requires it) and I don’t let them diagnose themselves either.
It’s not that insight-oriented therapy is the opposite, but it is more interested in one’s past, one’s history of repetitive patterns and relationships, and gives much more weight to subconscious drives, behaviors, and issues.

While both therapies have their places in the world of mental health, my experience has found strength-based therapy to be more effective.” I want to share three points that I heard recently at one of my conferences about the kind of work I do.

Focusing on your strengths always produces the best return on your investment.

Work to improve what you’re good at. You don’t have to ignore the rest – cross training is good — but if you were born to swim butterfly, then for god’s sake beware of breaststroke. It’s hard.

People are always trying to right themselves.

Even if someone you know doesn’t seem like they are doing themselves any favors, they don’t see it that way. When they find the right system for them, their efforts to right themselves will eventually work.

Thoughts are our best predictors of happiness.

Train your brain and see results.

There are three main “time personalities”: Pasts, Presents, and Futures. Most of us lean towards one as our dominant perspective.

Pasts can be Past Positive or Past Negative. Past positives are the nostalgic types who love family, the “good old days”, and reminiscing. Whether or not their past has been truly positive, Past Positives weave good feelings about their life story into their memories and often compare the present to the positive past.
Past Negatives tend to feel a chip on their shoulders about the hand they have been dealt in life. They feel wronged by the world, regret decisions, and would like a “do-over” more often than not.

Presents can be Present Hedonists or Present Fatalists. Present Hedonists are your classic “good time” guys. They live in the moment and are very focused on their senses and having a good time right now. They know that they have to work tomorrow but “have another drink and worry about that later!” They are usually outgoing, not always punctual, and extremely popular.
Present Fatalists are less common, but easy to spot. They are the “why bother, things won’t work out for me” types. Behind their present focus is a cynical attitude that they don’t have much control over their future, so they might as well not plan for it. They’re like a guy I sat next to on an airplane who looked at my baggage ticket and said, “Might as well just throw that out, since they probably just threw your bag away!”
Both types of Presents can be reckless with their money or emotionally promiscuous. They are also the classic “addict” personalities, concerned with their present-moment fix of drugs or shopping or other addictive behavior and not focused on the trouble it has caused them in the past (or awaits them in the future).

Futures are planners and leaders. They are the ones who get their medical checkups on time, who invest their money (often saving it for too long) and have trouble taking vacations or relaxing. Futures tend to be healthy, financially stable, and emotionally strong. While futures set themselves up to be the healthiest and most stable of the personalities, they have their downsides. Futures can be repressed, anal and annoyingly goody-goodies. Watch out for them and their Blackberries on the beach.

What Is Helpful About Knowing My Perspective?

Each holds some information that you might find helpful in solving a problem or improving a relationship. This is important to talk about in counseling, especially with couples, because if one partner is a Present Hedonist and the other is a Future, they are going to have to discuss money early on so that the Present Hedonist’s impulsive spending doesn’t get in the way of the Future’s goals. This same couple can also use the Present Hedonist’s ability to enjoy the moment and to relax to help the Future learn to balance work and play.

An example of an individual use is if you are trying to overcome insomnia; it might help to know how your Future orientation might be keeping you awake.

The only time perspectives that experts agree are not necessary to our well-being are the Past Negative and Present Fatalists. These types of are downers that sometimes surface in all of us, but really get become dangerously embedded in a few unlucky people. Both would do well with some therapy to help them move on from their negative core beliefs.

The best balance is:

• Moderately high in Future and Present Hedonism (an equal balance)
• Very high in Past Positive
• Low or No Present Fatalism and Past Negative

Here are some ways you can balance your outlook.

Pasts: Take care to not compare your current life in a negative light to your good old days. Embrace some Present Hedonism and enjoy new things that are part of your present life and be careful to not get stuck in a rut. Practice your Future orientation by making plans based on what you know helps create your favorite memories. Use therapy to help you see yourself as you are now, and to make your past as positive a story as possible.

Presents: **This is the biggest red flag category as Present Hedonism often leads to debt, addiction, or health problems** Take care of your body and be extremely careful with your chosen substances. Food, drink, drugs, and spending are attractive to Present Hedonists. Wear a watch and try to overestimate your time commitments. Plan. Train your brain to think like a Future: use a calendar, make plans and stick to them, use a budget, schedule doctor’s appointments, and surround yourself with other Futures who can help you make good decisions.

Futures: Make plans with Present Hedonists, and see what it’s like to go with the flow. Have unscripted free time every week and use cognitive therapy to help give yourself permission to relax and have fun. Take off your watch, eat dessert, and sleep in. Remember the good old days, when you weren’t using all the neat gadgets that help you save time. What are you doing with all the time you’ve saved being so efficient?