Basic practice

To listen

Generally speaking all therapy models are concerned with helping clients think differently or act differently. In solution focused therapy this can be achieved by people changing their way of thinking and describing, changing what they do, where they do it, when they do it or with whom they are doing it.

How are you to know the easiest and most accessible route to achieve change? You can't know but you can listen. It's not that the client knows either but when you listen to how the client describes his problems, his goals, his exceptions and his resources, somewhere in the description there exists hints to what roads are not accessible and sometimes a strong indication to the ones possible.

The human way of functioning is that we tackle problems from how we define them. Is it a bad habit as an expression of a bad character, or is it the drug-effects that has taken a grip on Nils, or is it his bad friends that society hasn't taken care of? Does the wife see her nagging him as the problem and this leading to him withdrawing and drinking?

The details in these descriptions are important as they indicate different ways of thinking about the problem and different expectations of what can be useful ways of handling it. In one case relatives express that the problem and dealing with it is outside of their realm of possibilities and in another a person expresses that her behaviour has some importance to the problem and maybe also for solving it.

Listen for what?

A small map for what can be useful to listen for can sometimes be of help:

• What is the client thinking about his problem? Is he himself part of it, or is it caused by other people, by chance or destiny?

• Are there other areas of the client's life where these factors play another role and lead to positive experiences? Is it bad character or unhappy circumstances? Does the client see the solution as clenching his teeth and fighting the urge, or does he think he has to find something different and meaningful to do first? Is it someone else who has to change first? Does Nils believe that his wife has to stop nagging for him to be able to stop drinking? If so, how is Nils behaving when his wife sometimes isn’t nagging him?

• Does the problem exist only in certain circumstances, with certain people, or in certain places?

• Does the exceptions exist with certain people, in certain places or in special circumstances?

• Is the client's goal vague or utopian (become an astronaut or quit using drugs) or concrete, measurable (describable) and reachable? Can you, if you close your eyes and fantasize, see what the client and others will do that is different at breakfast or when they get up in the morning or any situation the client describes?

• Can you get any idea or description as to who's behaviour could be described as the starting point for the image (sequence) that you can visualize?

Don't forget that when you are asking for and listening to these things, you are participating in creating them. It is very common that at the start of a session someone defines a problem as being caused by someone else's behaviour and at the end of the session as his own responsibility. Clients being "forced" into treatment can start with having no problem at all and end up with being prepared to do a lot of hard work to get an ambitious social worker of their back.

The conditions for such change to take place is that you succeed in meeting the client respectfully despite the impression at outset that he has come to the wrong place or at least to a place he hasn't chosen by himself.

Kerstin’s 10-year old daughter is confident that her problem is solved after two sessions and doesn't want to come back anymore. Kerstin agrees on this but wants to come for her own sake.

She comes on her own and to the miracle question she answers: "Bosse (her husband) will stop being dishonest".

Despite hard work on her and the therapists behalf they don't succeed in forming a more useful goal for therapy. The problem is that her husband is dishonest, drinks to much and sometimes gets into rages and tares the house apart (three times in their marriage and the latest was 8 months earlier). Kerstin and the therapist agree that this is a very serious problem.

When the therapist wonders how much effort she can imagine to put in to "help Bosse become more honest" she answers weariedly that she already tried everything. "It is really his problem and he doesn't want to do anything about it. I've tried to make him seek help."

The therapist sympathizes with her suffering and explains that he understands how difficult this is for her and has she thought about getting a divorce? Of course she has, but for many reasons it's unthinkable. Ahead of herself she sees a long life filled with lies and suffering and the only conceivable solution is that Bosse changes and if he doesn't they will continue as now despite the fact that it is unbearable. The chances that he will change are no more then 2-3 on a 10-grade scale.

To questions dealing with how Kerstin will be different to Bosse when (and if) she will ever be 100% convinced that he is honest, Kerstin answers that she will be happy. She can not imagine how this will be noticed and she can not answer questions around how Bosse and her daughter will describe her change after Bosse has turned honest (and she will be happy).

She cannot offhand remember a time when she was certain Bosse wasn't lying to her. Maybe when the relationship was new (11 years earlier) and Bosse was more thoughtful and considerate towards her but despite many questions around this, and despite her efforts to find answers she doesn't succeed in describing how she was different towards him at that time. Questions around this theme in the present, the past and the future take up more than half the session and the therapist and Kerstin can't find any answers.

"So if he changes", asks the therapist, "how will you know"?

"I won't" she answers. Together they wonder how they are to know that a change occurred.

The summing up of the session contains a lot of compliments to Kerstin for her honesty and frankness and an idea for a task "that may help us to get some more information on what could be helpful". She is asked to put aside a moment each day to try and remember moments with Bosse when she with certainty knew that he was honest "and what was different at these moments".

The therapist never questions what could be described as Kerstin’s view (it is Bosse who has the problem and she only "reacts to it"). The therapist tries to cooperate with her on this premise and Kerstin gets a task that seems reasonably possible to do based on this premise.

When she comes back to the next session two weeks later, she starts the session by saying "I've thought about Bosse's dishonesty and I have come to the conclusion that he is actually being considerate". She then goes on to describe a new spring in their relationship. He has been thoughtful and considerate and has repeatedly taken initiatives in things that he knows she likes. On a scale from 1-10 where 10 means that the relationship is perfect she is at an 8-9. She is perfectly satisfied if it continues the same way.

"What did you do differently?" the therapist asks, and she answers:

"I didn't nag on him".

"Was it difficult"?

"In the beginning yes, but it became easier and easier as he did more of the things I wanted him to do".

"What do you think of your chances to continue to shut your mouth, for say the next 4 weeks".

"9", she answers.

The rest of the session deals with the new pattern that has the possibility of emerging from the interplay of not nagging - thoughtfulness, and the task to her becomes "continue to shut up, and continue to pay attention to how Bosse answers to this".

In this session Kerstin suddenly sees herself as part of the solution. The therapist can do nothing but follow along and now gives her a task of doing something (that she has already started doing).

The example shows how clients can move to different positions in the interplay that is developed in the conversation. At the start, Kerstin's relationship to the therapist can be described as someone who is complaining to the therapist about a problem that someone else is causing, and that person should do something about it. In the second session the relationship can be described as if she was a customer (someone who has a problem and is prepared to do something about it, or as in Kerstin's case, is already doing something about it). A third possible position is when the relationship is characterized by a person seemingly coming to visit the therapist. Most often, this is a visit the client doesn't wish, and therefore the client doesn't present a problem other than possibly the person that forced him or her to come.

So what of all this are you to listen for and how do you know what is important and useful and what is not? If you are trying to listen to everything you will gather a lot of information and you will find that you often get to a point where more and more information makes you more and more confused.

What's important is that you very actively listen for the client's/family's ideas and descriptions. Try to create a clear picture of how the client/family sees their situation when the problem is solved. Listen with your entire self. Not only with your intellect and your eyes and ears. Listen for areas where you notice that the clients and families gets cheerful and encouraged. Listen for concern and connectedness between people around descriptions of resources and exceptions.

Don't let yourself be blinded by the problem of addiction even if there are people around the addict, and maybe the addict himself, that can't imagine any other solution than for instance the 12-step AA-program. (If the addict wishes help to implement such a program, offer that help: "What do you have to do to go to 2 AA-meetings a week"?) Don't forget though to ask the client how his life will be different when he doesn't have to go to AA-meetings anymore. Also avoid to be blinded by the clients idea about the method.

Bosse and Stina have worked for a while with solution focused treatment but when Aida, 24, declares that she wants to continue therapy-sessions with them until she can have methadone (6 month waiting-list) they start trying to dissuade her from what they perceive as her goal; methadone. Bosse and Stina are very negative to methadone. They have seen younger and younger people with briefer and briefer histories of drug-taking getting into newly started methadone programs in Sweden easier and easier, and they carry frightening pictures from when they visited methadone clinics in the United States.

In supervision they are advised to bring up the discussion about methadone again with Aida, but they are to stay perfectly neutral in relationship to the methadone and to discuss what it is Aida hopes methadone can help her change in her life. That is; discuss the goals departing from Aida’s idea about the road.

It is easily forgotten that methadone is not a goal. Aida wants methadone because she thinks it can help her change something in her life. Instead of discussing with her why it wouldn't be good for her to take methadone, it is more fruitful for Aida to discuss what it is she thinks will be different when methadone is of help to her. Observe the difference in discussing how the methadone is helping her.

When they do this it becomes clear what Aida wants to achieve and within a few sessions she starts doing the things she thought she needed methadone to do. When 6 months has passed and she is invited to the methadone clinic she declines, as she is pretty certain that she solved her drug-problem for good.

Choosing strategy

Choosing strategy is based on how you and your client describe the problem/solution/goal, and from how you evaluate the relationship that is developing with the client, deciding whether you are to help people directly do something different or if you will work on only creating descriptions that can lead to different behaviours, that is working on helping them think differently.

Consider carefully that no explanation is better than any other and that you'd better find a way congruent with how the client perceives his problem, and congruent with how your relationship with the client is developing. Otherwise you don't stand a chance of them doing what you propose.

When you listen for and hear descriptions of exceptions, pay particular attention to how the client describes other peoples involvement. It is common that clients describe themselves as reacting positively to someone else being different. Accept this without challenging it. Expand the descriptions and explore how the client is different, what behaviours he thinks are different, and what behaviours he thinks other would ascribe to him as different in these situations. Take care in accepting that these behaviours are reactions to the positive behaviour of others.

If you succeed in creating concrete and relatively well described behaviours you have a fantastic material to choose from when you give tasks. Contrary to the family you are not bound to believe that one thing has to happen before the other. You know that behaviours are linked, connected to each other, and you know that if you can make someone do more of the behaviours described in the exception the others will do more of the behaviours that are complementary to it. (When one person changes everyone else will change too).

It is important if exceptions are deliberate or spontaneous as it is important how people see their own resources. Is it within their capacity to do it, is it something they tried before? Are there deliberate exceptions in line with the goal? Can the client do them tomorrow as an experiment to see what happens?

All of this you listen and ask for. With time you will discover that people are very creative when it comes to finding solutions and that you have a lot to learn from your clients.

The story you create contains a well-formed goal. You will discover that the client is working hard during the session and you will often evaluate the relationship as one of a customer (page *). It will be natural for you to ask the client if he thinks "it's possible to make a miracle-day tomorrow if he makes up his mind to do that"? and surprisingly often he will answer "yes, sure". Scaling-questions (page *) are often very useful to clarify how certain the client is.

One obvious direction will be to describe the behaviours of the solution so clearly that the client will know if he did or didn't do them until next session. As a task you can than ask the client to let for instance flipping a coin decide if it is to be a "miracle day" or not, and pay attention to the differences in how it makes him feel and how other people are different on those days. If the client is real certain about his ability to make a miracle day, maybe he doesn't even need the coin, but can decide in advance when he will "make a miracle day" and observe the differences compared to "non-miracle days".

Often a small element in a description can change and the whole requisite for the solution changes along and peoples behaviour change.

Leonardo's interplay with his father is characterized by incessant quarrels starting immediately father comes through the door at home after work. It's frustrating and tiring for everyone. The therapist (MS) suggests father to do something that will certainly surprise his son.

"1 - Don't talk to him. It always ends up in a fight anyway. Write notes instead and give to him, and then just walk away. 2 - Next time you come home from work, get in through the window or crawl in backwards or something like that and pay attention to how he reacts."

Father found a poem in a journal which he thought expressed what he wanted to tell his son and taped it on the mirror in the bathroom. (As Leonardo washed his hands 34 times a day, there was no chance of him not seeing it). The second suggestion was performed by mother. One day on the instant father entered the house, and the boy was waiting for him as usual, she started throwing saucepans and dishes and swearing her heart out. The son immediately took a dive for his room instead of arguing with father and suddenly there was room for a new pattern to emerge, a pattern different from the old arguing-pattern.

Here we will talk about some types of questions we’ve found useful when working with all kind of problems. All the questions are based on the presumption that people have resources to solve their problems and that it is always possible to find solutions.

When Jon and his mother talk about all the positive things that happened since the police took him the therapist thinks "They already solved the problem, they just don't know it." When clients and families can talk about such "pre-therapy change" the process of change is already on its way and it is the client himself who has taken charge of it. The rest of the session then becomes helping the client do more of this.

A couple in their thirties come to therapy referred by the nurse helping them with their newborn. It's their second child and the change has been tough for the woman. The referral source is worried that she will once again go into a puerperal psychosis as she did after her first delivery. The therapist asks what this last week has been like and together the couple recount that it has been a little bit better. They then proceed describing what has been different. The therapist asks when the changes started and the woman answers "It was when I decided to call here."

We have found that it is often helpful when we can connect the start of change in time to having made the decision to seek help. Not that it's good to seek help (it's much better to have solved the problem by themselves), but because it's simply that when families reached the decision to seek help, this is an expression of the decision to really do something about the problem. Other changes are common after one has made that decision. The rest of the session can deal with who did what that was right and good. A summary and encouragement to continue what works and one or more follow-up sessions (if they wish it) with the same theme is often enough.

Future-questions – goal-questions

A positive and optimistic expectation often leads to this expectation being fulfilled. This is of course not strange and is well known in sports and business. (Positive thinking, etc.)

Focusing on the future is a way to talk about possibilities, distinguish problems from their opposite (not-problem) and talk about the problems and the solutions without increasing the desperation.

The miracle question is of great help:

"Suppose that there is a miracle tonight while you are asleep and the problems that brought you here disappear. As you are asleep when the miracle occurs you don't know it happened. What is different when you awaken?" The most common answer is "the problem will be gone and I will be happy" or something similar and we follow up with; "yes of course, so what will you be doing differently?" We then often get a description of ordinary daily activities and life situations. Many times these descriptions say more than problem descriptions as they describe what the person longs to do and the descriptions are concrete.

A young cannabis-smoking schizophrenic girl answers the miracle-question. Her situation is that she is pregnant with a criminal addict, and shares her time about equally between her parent's home, the mental hospital where she is a day-patient and the man's parent's home where he lives. During the first 20 minutes of the interview she has only talked about how happy she is about her pregnancy, and how much she is looking forward to moving in with the man after she has had her baby. All the time in a monotone voice, a flat face and with practically no body movements. The parents and the psychiatric nurse shake their heads and look more and more to the floor.

She immediately answers "I would be well and my eyes would glitter".

It is the first time in the room that she has said anything about health thus indirectly mentioning that she doesn't feel very well.

The therapist adds: "But your parents are a little sleepy tomorrow when you come down the stairs so they wouldn't see your eyes glittering. What would you DO that would make them think that there must have been a miracle?"

She looks thoughtfully in the distance for maybe 10 seconds, a small smile slowly pops up in her face and she says "I would make an abortion, get myself a job, an apartment, a new man, and I'd stop the relationship with Mike".

The parents, the nurse and the therapist look at her in amazement. Nothing she said prior in the session has indicated any sort of awareness into the desperate situation that she finds herself in and with his chin hanging the therapist can only find "Tomorrow morning???" to ask her, and with a splendid smile she answers: "Yes". The therapist adds; "meeting a new man first and then break up with Mike." She smiles again and says with determination: "Exactly."

The rest of the session is devoted to cautiously examining if it isn't a bit much she wants at once, and how come she is so clear about her situation and what needs to be done. She assures again and again and stronger and stronger that she knows what she wants and that she also has the strength to do it.

One week after she carries through the abortion.

Other ways to focus on the future are:

"Imagine 5 years into the future and we're here talking about how you solved your problems. What do you tell me about how you did"?

"We find it amazing how you solved your problems and you want to write a book about it. What do you call the book and what do you write in the different chapters?"

"Imagine yourself 3 years into the future and you've solved your problems. You want to invite everyone who helped you in any way. Who do you invite and what do you want to thank them for?"

We believe that the sole most important purpose of future-oriented questions is that they help you and the client form goals for therapy. To accomplish this with some clients it fits better to ask what needs to be different for the client to feel or think that he doesn't need therapy anymore (everyone can't believe in or fantasize about miracles).

With clients that were coerced to see the therapist useful questions in this direction are for instance "What do you think your social worker/probation officer needs to see to think you don't have to come here anymore?"

As mentioned earlier there are always exceptions, moments and situations that are characterized by behaviours connected to goals and solutions rather than to what the client is complaining about. The form for questions focusing on this are: "What happens when the problem is not there"?

As the therapist pays attention to the exceptions and asks questions about them, meaning is created around behaviours that exist when the problem is not there and the prerequisites are then met for the description of these behaviours to become a difference to the description of the problem that could actually make a difference. The client will then be able repeat these behaviours and do more of what he does when he doesn't "have the problem". The solution is then already part of the clients repertoire and the therapist's job is to find ways to help the client do more of these behaviours.

Questions focusing on exceptions are, for instance:

"Are some days better than other?"

"How do you know if it's a good day?"

"How do other people notice that it is a good day?"

"What do you and other people do on the good days that distinguish them from bad days and moments?"

When Jon's mother describes the changes since the police took him, and she describes what will be different after the miracle the therapist asks "Does any of this happen sometime, or do things ever happen that are in line with it?"

Exception questions should be related to the complaint and the goal when those are related. For instance the period drinker who drinks for 1 week every month and wants to be able to control his drinking. In that case one can ask: "Why only one week?" That question will be followed by "did it ever happen that it was only 6 days?" "How do you decide when it's time to quit drinking?" "How do stop your period?"

In situations where the goal and the complaint are not directly related, like for instance Norbert page *, it is important that the questions focus on the clients goal (and not on his complaint).

"What is better?"

"What did you do since we met that has been good for you?"

"What has been going well since we last met?"

"In what ways has this last week been different compared to previous weeks?"

"How come this last week is better than the weeks before?"

"Is this something you did before? - No!!!? How did you get the idea to do it this way?"

"Has he done something that surprised you lately?"

"How many good days did you have since we met? - Only one you say - What did you do that day that was good for you?" or "How come you succeeded in having one day?"

These questions can be varied indefinitely depending on the situation in the session, the relationship therapist - client and the clients life-situation.

Scaling questions

Using visual-analogic scales is something most people do very easily. Maybe the human brain functions like that.

Scaling questions can be used in every possible situation and in any thinkable way. It is very common for people to think in terms of "either or". You have a problem or you don't. You nag or you don't nag. You drink or you don’t drink. When asked to scale the problem you automatically think about what would be more or less on this scale - the problem and the goal become relative. As the therapist then focuses on what has to happen for the client to move one step on the scale, the client is helped to explore new possibilities.

Examples of scaling questions:

"If 100 is that you are your ideal person, how close to 100 are you today?"

"If 0 means the worst you've ever been and 10 means the problem is gone or it's the day after the miracle - where are you at today?"

"If 0 stands for as bad as when you decided you needed therapy, and 10 means you're finished with therapy - where are you at now?"

The number of possible questions is limited only by the therapist's imagination. Scaling questions bring extraordinary possibilities to following up on questions. A few ways to continue:

"What do you have to do to get one step/half a step higher?"

"How will your spouse/your parents/your kids/your neighbours notice when you're one step higher on the scale?"

"Who will notice it first?"

"What will he do or say then?"

"If I asked your spouse/your parents/your kids/your neighbours where they think you are at on this scale - what would they answer?"

"What do you think they see that you don't see?" (when the client places himself lower than them).

"What do you think you see that they don't see?" (when the client places himself higher than them).

Scaling questions are also excellent to clarify wishes and will:

"How important is this relationship to you on a 10-grade scale"?

"If 10 stands for you being prepared to do anything to solve this problem, and 0 stands for the opposite, where are you at today?"

"If 10 stands for you being 100% sure that you are able to deal with the rest of this problem, and 0 stands for the opposite, where are you at today?"

"What do need to feel/think that you can handle to get half a step higher?"

"What do you have to do to get half a step higher?"

When clients present what we think are vague goals, scaling questions are many times the only way to get some clarification of what the client means. Scales for how one feels or how close one is to ones goal means something unique to each client and the therapist doesn't have to understand exactly what the client means. It is enough that the client does.

Steve de Shazer tells a story of the client who tells him, she has had several days at seven.

"What was different?" he asks.

"I felt more sevenish," she answers and shrugs her shoulders.

When you're dealing with chronic situations, for instance long term illness from which one will never get well or acute and serious crisis situations, the questions above do not always fit. A small number of parents are extremely preoccupied with all the suffering the addict caused them, and have difficulties at least initially to think forward. In these situations future oriented questions focusing on change won’t fit and may even damage cooperation.

Coping - questions can be an alternative.

"How did you cope with that situation"?

"What did you do to survive the shame?"

"How did you deal with that situation?"

"Where did you find the strengths?"

Through these questions the conversation focuses on how the client or relative did something good and useful, despite a difficult or impossible situation. The questions focus on resources and competence. Through them you can access how the clients found out what to do, how they did it, how it was helpful and how they discovered that it helped.

Below follows a model for the construction of summaries that clients and families most often profit from. For a thorough description we refer primarily to de Shazer "Clues. Investigating solutions in brief therapy" (1988).

The break

We always take a break before ending a session. We use the break to think for ourselves - or discuss with the team if we have one - what the client said and told us. Usually we write down a summary that we tell or read to the client/family.

We think the break is important. When we return the clients pay close attention to what we say about how we perceive their situation, and they seem extremely attentive to the ideas we have about what they can experiment with, observe or think about until next time.

It is important to be clear about the purpose of the break. It's not easy to wait for 5-10-15 minutes when you haven't got any idea what you are waiting for. Often we say as HK said to Jon: "I would like to take a break to think for a moment (discuss with my team) about what we talked about and what I (we) think about your situation and see if we have any ideas that we think could be useful. It will take 5-10 minutes. Is there anything important I forgot to ask about or anything you think I should know before I think (discuss)?"

Most often the clients have nothing to add but sometimes there is a point or two they want to clarify. We then ask the clients to either sit out into the waiting room or we go out of the room ourselves. We then sit down and take our time to make a summary that can be given to the family.

The summary can be seen as a second possibility. When the session has been messy, boring or distressing the summary gives us a possibility to contribute anyway. When the session has been clarifying and hopeful this can be even more strengthened.

Clients and families need to hear they have a serious problem and that it will take a lot of hard work to solve it. If you reduce the problem into a bagatelle, they hear you say that they should have solved this trifle long ago, and that experience doesn't exactly give more hope that change is possible.

Rather general ideas can be supporting for the family if you don't have a very clear idea exactly what is this family’s dilemma: "It’s painful to want the best and not quite know what's right", or perhaps more specific "it's painful to want to get close to your child, but not quite succeed as you are not certain of what the kid wants".

"First I want to say that I think it's good you came. This is a serious problem and you are both well aware that it will take a lot of hard work to solve it", the therapist says to Jon and his mother.

Don't forget that the more specific you are, the more the family will feel understood and confirmed if you're right and the more rejected and misunderstood if you're wrong. If you are uncertain be conservative and non-specific. Don't guess. Rather say to little than to much.

Use the clients own words or concepts. This will show them you've listened.

"It hurts here when I see him do this", says the father and lifts both hands to his chest.

In the summary the therapist says: "We understand how much it hurts in a fathers heart when his child has such a serious problem."

If you have very little to say in many consecutive interviews, think about what aspect of the interview you need to improve to increase your understanding of families dilemma.

Positive feed-back

Write down a few positively loaded value-judgments about each person in the room. Articulate the advances that everyone or at least most of the people agree upon. Tell each family member about their strong sides (resources and competence) that they themselves or others have said they possess. Once again it's best if you use the families own words.

With Jon and his mother we do something we often do. When we compliment Jon we turn to his mother and when we compliment mother we turn to Jon.

"I am very impressed with your boy. His open-mindedness, his sense for nuances, his honesty and sensitivity and this nice contact he is offering. I agree with you that he matured early".

"I think you are lucky to have a mother who dares show her involvement in many different ways".

Sometimes one can combine: "We are deeply impressed with your son's sensitivity and his ability to think so seriously about his situation. It says a lot about what he got from you."

The easiest is often to be direct:

"We see you as an unusually involved and concerned father and you are really amazingly creative."

"Your honesty when facing the difficulties your son is having has moved us deeply, as the way you are being realistic."

"You are really working very hard to keep your family together and you are impressing us with how well you are succeeding."

Don't be afraid to use strong words. When it comes to positive feed-back and compliments, the people you see are really not used to receiving it and if you are the least ambiguous they'll hear it. Tell them that you and the team (if you are working with one) are impressed by, amazed by, feels strongly etc.

You have to be very clear with the positive things you say as the people you say them to so often have very low self-esteem.

Idea

If you want to give more than simple ideas what clients and families can try to do at home until next time (which we hope this book inspires to) we recommend that you read Clues to Solutions. Two simple rules of thumb can be used by everybody though.

Did you get descriptions of concrete behaviours (exceptions) that someone or other is doing, that is in the direction of the goal or that has been helpful? Ask the people to either observe when these behaviours occur, or if the addict or the family members seem very keen on doing something concrete, ask them to try and do these behaviours and observe what difference it makes. Think about the difference between deliberate and spontaneous exceptions (page *). The rule is that deliberate exceptions you can simply ask people to do, while more spontaneous behaviours you have to ask people to predict if they will occur. When people are asked in this way to specifically observe "exception behaviours" more than 80% of the clients will report that they occur more often.

There is rarely any sense in asking people to stop doing something. It sometimes work to ask moms, wives or husbands: "When you feel the urge to nag, shut up!", but these situations are not common and demand a lot of the relationship between the therapist and someone who gets such a task.

It's easier to ask people to do something different: "We have understood that you are extremely sensitive to the needs of your child and at the same time fantastically insightful into how he can use you as an excuse to continue to do drugs. We therefore would like you to pay great attention to when you get an urge to nag, and then immediately grab your coat and take a walk around the block, no matter what you are doing at that moment and observe the effects on him."

Be careful to choose a task that you think the person can perform and the better connected the task is to what you talked about, the better the chances they will actually do it (or an improved version of it).

We have found that the classification of the client-therapist relationship into three different categories, proposed by de Shazer and his colleagues, is very useful (page *). Don't forget that the different categories are not characteristics of the clients but a way to describe the relationship between you and your client in this particular session (or during a part of the session).

Customer: Clients or family-members who clearly expressed that they have a problem and they are prepared to do anything to solve it. These you can ask to do something.

Visitors: Clients or family members who don't have any problem. You have received no answer to the miracle question, and when you asked who insisted they should come (if you did) the client was either evasive or told you that it was the probation officer, the social worker or someone else who set it as a condition for something. With these clients you talked about what they are good at, and the nice and useful things that exist in their lives. In the relationship they are developing at this point, it is clear that they are not thinking about what you can do for them. Giving them any form of task would be totally foreign to the relationship (too much difference) and would only make it clear to them that you are just another fool who didn't understand anything. Just give them positive feed-back for the competence and the resources they've succeeded in telling you about and if you want – and they want – set up a new appointment.

Complainants are just as unstable as the others. Depending on how your relationship is developing they can oscillate very quickly from being someone who just paid you a brief visit, to someone who is behaving as if he had a problem he wants to do something about. Your interactions have great importance for the direction in which the relationship will develop. It's very easy to make complainants into visitors. It's enough to tell them that they should change or that they ought to take on some kind of responsibility for the problem. Don't forget that "complainant" is only a way to describe the relationship with you. People can very well behave in one way towards you and then go home and behave differently there. You don't have to shame them for that. Look for instance at Kerstin page *.

Complainants you can ask to pay attention to in what situation the desired behaviours occur. Both with themselves and with the people they think should do something about the problem. They can even be asked to observe such behaviours with themselves that could lead to the desired behaviours of others, if during the course of the session they had ideas what these behaviours might be.

One simple rule that we’ve found useful is that when we are uncertain when assessing the relationship, we always choose the least offensive. That is, if we are in doubt about whether someone will perform a "do-task", we content ourselves with an "observation-task". If in doubt about an observation-task; than no task.

Consider the relationship first (customer or complainant) and ask the client/family members to observe or do the behaviours described. Be concrete when describing the behaviours you want the client to observe (if complainant) or do (if customer) (look at Jon page * for an example). Both you and the family should know if the behaviours in question occurred before the next session, and if they did, if the client thinks things are going in the right direction.

This can mean that there is no problem, and this probably means that the client came to the wrong place or hasn't chosen to come. Treat the client as a visitor; respectfully and friendly. Always give compliments. Acknowledge difficulties and suffering if you understood something about the clients dilemma. No task.

It is wise to make up ones mind about what the goal looks like before the break. When the goal is vague it needs to be made as clear as possible with scaling questions. Scales can then be built into the task in different ways. (Predict how high one will be on a certain scale the day after. Think about what's special on the days that one is at 8 on a certain scale, etc.)

Be thorough with the compliments and the confirmation. Prepare yourself to find out at the next interview more about what the client or family hopes to achieve through therapy. The first of the tasks below can be of great help to help you and the clients find out what the vague goal stands for.

"Until we meet next time I want you to pay attention to things you do or that happen in your life that you would like to continue to have happen in the future when the problem is solved. Note them in such a way that you can tell me about it next time.

"Until we meet next time I want you to pay attention to what you do when you resist the urge to do drugs (drink, binge etc.). Note it in such a way that you can tell me about it next time."

Don't be shy when you give tasks. You just explained that it will take a lot of hard work to solve this serious and difficult problem and the client and the family nodded all through your summary. If you are shy here this means you're not taking yourself seriously and then the clients wont take you seriously either.