I want to follow up on my previous post about problems and their role in understanding the Solution Focused approach and its role in my hypnotherapy practice.

This line from my training at BRIEF stayed with me: “We do not want to detain our clients in their problem stories”. The word “detain” struck me and still defines my work. It’s such a robust and radical expression, so I love it.

Like every non-native English speaker, I had a wee look at the Cambridge Dictionary, and it can mean:

– to force someone officially to stay in a place

– to delay someone for a short length of time

– to keep someone in prison for as long as the courts feel it necessary.

But how does this relate to my work? More than just dwelling on problems, continuing to focus on what’s not working can imprison someone in a self-perpetuating narrative from which they cannot break free.

While I firmly believe in possibility, I want to be clear that in no way do I gloss over real suffering or challenges. I thoroughly validate how painful and immobilising some client issues and symptoms can be. The Solution Focused approach is not about toxic positivity.

It’s about daring to change the narrative through our use of language when you meet a helping professional. The Solution Focused approach is difference-led and change-oriented; since I don’t have a particular theory about how people should live their lives (apart from safeguarding), I focus on the language the client is using and with Solution Focused questions, we use that to co-construct different narratives and possibilities.

The last thing I want to do is to keep my clients in the narrative they want to change. I do not want to delay their potential for change or to slow it down. The cornerstone of my practice is that we all have the resources, qualities and skills to live a more fulfilling life. And that we all come to hypnotherapy/therapy because we wish to do/feel/experience something different.

Once we voiced this (usually in the framework of “best hopes from our talking together”), we already started to break out of the prison of the problem, that debilitating narrative we kept telling ourselves or were forced to hear from others. In that moment, the client is daring to imagine a different life.

And here’s when my part comes in: asking questions to elicit what that different life would look like, and I can assure you, I never run out of questions. We can talk about the immediate future or a past event; the heart of the practice is description.

At its foundation, this approach recognises no one can fully understand another person’s life experience. Rather than interpretations, models or diagnoses of problems, the primary building blocks are the client’s words and perceptions. My questions invite them to describe their preferred future and times when bits of that vision are already confirmed. This maintains respect for each person’s values while still gently promoting possibility. I meet them where they are while providing a roadmap when they wish to take the first steps of change.