Fall 2011

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Solution-Focused Ideas to Get Your Best Grades This Year

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!

Learn This Skill: Let Others Solve Their Own Problems

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This is one of my favorite skills that I teach. It comes in handy for parents, friends, family, and coworkers. Sometimes it even makes sense for couples, too.

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.

The Flip Side Of Your Problems: Some Surprising Benefits

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When discussing perceived “flaws” in counseling, my clients are often surprised to discover that the very things the dislike about themselves can be reframed as beneficial in some way. Therefore, coming to my office gives a client a chance to see himself from a new perspective. This doesn’t mean they always agree with my viewpoint, but as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, being able to see yourself in a compassionate manner is always the first step towards behavior change.

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.