Brief Therapy Conversations

Brief Therapy Conversations features stimulating discussions between two international experts about essential topics, including the importance of the therapeutic relationship, the role of diagnosis, the therapist’s mindset, specific techniques and guiding logics, therapist development, and likely future trends. It explores a wide range of literature and ideas on brief therapy and single-session therapy. For those interested in time-sensitive treatment, several expanded journal articles are included that provide additional insights into ways to improve therapeutic efficiency. Reader friendly and conversational in format, this book is essential reading for professionals involved in brief therapy research, teaching, and practice. .

Respectful and effective solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) for suicidal clients Few tasks are more important—and daunting—than to help someone who is suicidal to go beyond the darkness of hopelessness to the light of hope. Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide is a unique resource providing fresh approaches to treating individuals and families where suicide is an issue. This comprehensive book provides a thorough grounding in using a solution-focused therapy approach to elicit and reinforce hope and reasons for living. Strategies are demonstrated with stories, case vignettes, and transcripts. Special applications include some of the most challenging high-risk clients that therapists treat, including people who make repeated attempts. This powerful resource offers a set of practice principles based on the existing empirical evidence in the context of clinical utility and client expertise. Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide provides case transcripts to help in role-play or rehearsal situations as well as numerous practical tips. The book also provides lists of solution-focused questions for use in various situations, including suicide crisis, the use of anti-depressant medications, facilitation of collaborative working relationships with colleagues as well as clients. Each application chapter gives therapists practical, hands-on tools and uses stories and illustrations to make the book user-friendly. The text also offers a brief appendix on the basic skills of SFBT. Topics discussed in Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide include: current knowledge about preventing suicide at the individual level helping clients to utilize their strengths even when they are in crisis how research in diverse areas supports the solution-focused approach effective treatment for couples and families when one member is suicidal basic approaches to effective therapy with young children and teens who have attempted suicide respectful, effective therapy with people who seem to have adopted being suicidal as their primary coping strategy therapeutic tools that help the therapist to stay hopeful about clients and strengthen the therapeutic relationship Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide is a valuable resource for counselors and therapists at every experience level.

In Very Brief Therapeutic Conversations, Windy Dryden demonstrates the therapeutic value of very brief interventions in counselling, psychotherapy and coaching, using a wide range of techniques and skills to bring this novel approach to life. The book provides an informative and innovative guide on 'how to do' very brief therapy in 30 minutes or less. The often fascinating and universal problems the volunteers discuss, as well as the goal and guiding principles of this novel therapy, are explored in the first half of this book. Inspired by Ellis's therapeutic 'Friday Night Workshops', transcripts from Dryden's own therapeutic conversations at his 'live sessions' with volunteers form the second half of the book. Very Brief Therapeutic Conversations is an accessible and entertaining read for all therapists, whether in training or practice, who want to see very clear examples of theory being put into practice.

This book is a compilation of twelve interviews with brief therapy experts and some of the field's most influential innovators (O'Hanlon, de Shazer, White, and Meichenbaum to name a few). The interviews, conducted to explore technical, theoretical, and ethical aspects of the theory and practice of brief therapy, offer the give-and-take spontaneity that can only be found in an interview style. The selection of the content is based on both the expertise of the interviewees as well as those issues of most concern to the field: managed care and economics, ethics, and being solution-focused.

In Very Brief Therapeutic Conversations, Windy Dryden demonstrates the therapeutic value of very brief interventions in counselling, psychotherapy and coaching, using a wide range of techniques and skills to bring this novel approach to life. The book provides an informative and innovative guide on 'how to do' very brief therapy in 30 minutes or less. The often fascinating and universal problems the volunteers discuss, as well as the goal and guiding principles of this novel therapy, are explored in the first half of this book. Inspired by Ellis’s therapeutic ‘Friday Night Workshops’, transcripts from Dryden’s own therapeutic conversations at his 'live sessions' with volunteers form the second half of the book. Very Brief Therapeutic Conversations is an accessible and entertaining read for all therapists, whether in training or practice, who want to see very clear examples of theory being put into practice.

Written by the developers of the microanalysis of opportunities approach, this book describes how clinicians can use this model when listening and responding to clients in solution-focused therapy, training, coaching, and supervision. Joel K. Simon and Lance Taylor begin by reviewing the evolution, philosophical foundations, and intervention tools of solution-focused brief therapy, sharing how their practice has evolved over time from their clinical experience with clients, trainees, supervisees, and colleagues. Moving from theory to practice, the book then explores microanalysis of opportunities, beginning with how the authors developed the approach and created the process. Replete with actual examples of conversations between clients and therapists, and between trainer and trainee, the book demonstrates how the model can be applied in practice with analyses and discussions about analyzed material throughout. It displays the application of the approach to coaching, supervision, and training. This valuable book will not only be useful to therapists new to solution-focused brief therapy, but also to those who are experienced solution-focused practitioners. Psychotherapists, clinical social workers, counselors, and other mental health professionals will find this an illuminating read.

Brief Narrative Practice in Single-Session Therapy emphasizes collaboration, meaning making, and relational ethics in single-session conversations. Chapters provide a thorough orientation to the therapy and address the diverse circumstances clinicians face in these conversations. Separating from many long-held traditions in therapy, this book explores a guiding framework and the accompanying micro-skills that therapeutic conversations demand. In these pages, readers will learn how to recalibrate their listening habits and talk differently about problems in ways that help them quickly hear and generate possibilities. All those who provide psychotherapy, counselling, and coaching in time-constrained contexts will find this book useful and engaging, including those working in crisis and call-in settings, walk-in clinics, medical centres, and live-in contexts where change conversations are brief.

A practical guide to becoming solution-focused and construction solutions in brief therapy. At the core of the book is a sequence of skill-building chapters that cover all aspects of construction solutions. Each chapter explains and demonstrates a particular skill with discussion and exercises.