In this latest episode of our podcast, we tap into the Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) framework to help us identify the strengths that have gotten us through the last 8 months… the ones we often overlook or minimise because ‘we just do what we do’. No. Doing ‘what you do’ is likely to reflect the very resources that have helped you face adversity in your life and brought you to where you are today. It is incredibly helpful to bring these to the surface to help you get a sense of how you have coped with all things Covid so far… and to know that you have things you can draw upon and for the next however long. 

SFBT aims to help people find the other side of the coin, to try to find the positives even in the most difficult of circumstances. It tries to encourage people to build resilience by gaining a different perspective, to see the glass as half full or at least, not as empty as they feel it is. It does this through the use of specific and focused questions.

Some of the questions we explore in this episode are: What has gotten you through the last 7 months? What have you learnt about yourself over this time that you perhaps didn’t know before? And what in your life are you taking joy in, no matter how small?

Listen to the podcast link using the Spotify player above or by going to our Youtube channel. 

The handout accompanying this podcast can be downloaded as a PDF here or viewed as a webpage here.

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FURTHER LEARNING

Pollyanna Syndrome is something you may have heard about before – it comes up in the team’s discussion. It refers to someone who is ‘excessively or blindly optimistic’ and is a term often wrongly associated with SFBT. As an approach, SFBT doesn’t discount the negative or the fact that people with depression have real problems that need addressing. It allows space for people to talk about their difficulties but always has within reach the idea that there is something that has brought them to where they are today, no matter how difficult their current life circumstances are.

The term comes from the film, Pollyanna, who plays a game called ‘The Glad Game’ as a way of coping with the difficulties and sorrows in her life. Liz recommends not watching the movie but this clip is definitely worth a look.