Solution Focused Brief Therapy: a personal view and an End-to-End bike ride
By Stephen Sheasby

Stephen Sheasby Photo: Dominic Brown

Solution-focused brief therapy teaches you that if you do more of what has produced results in the past, a general improvement is likely. The most important part of my 'solution focused brief therapy' was the identifying of exceptions - occasions in the past when the 'miracle' had already happened and my speech was more fluent than usual. I now wondered if I could use this in a positive way, either by mentioning my stammer more, or by somehow creating a situation where it would be mentioned 'big time'.

I had been planning a bike ride from Lands End to John o'Groats for some time, so I wondered whether I could use this new approach. What about asking people to sponsor me for the British Stammering Association? At first the thought was too scary, but eventually I got used to the idea and decided to take the plunge. This I would never have done without the brief therapy. With the therapist we explored my strengths - particularly courage and determination. Before, my appreciation of these strengths were very low, but my awareness of them increased with time.

So, I asked friends and work colleagues to sponsor me for the BSA, thereby mentioning in one go, to everybody I knew, the dreaded word stammering. I wouldn't say that it was easy to begin with, but with time it got easier and I found it a liberating experience. Where I used to be the one who was embarrassed if anyone mentioned stammering, I was now doing the mentioning and occasionally watching other people get embarrassed by me talking about it. Maybe I could add 'a certain mischievousness' to my list of strengths.

Solution-focused brief therapy uses various scales to measure perceptions, specific to the individual. An example I used was a scale for avoiding situations, where 100% represented avoiding all speaking situations and 0% indicated not avoiding at all. At the beginning of the therapy I avoided a lot, but I didn't place myself at 100%, so I knew I already had some strengths to carry me into tough speaking situations. To move up the 'not-avoiding things' scale, I signed up to do an Open University arts degree next year. Apart from committing myself to entering speaking situations like tutorials and summer schools, it has more significance. At school I chose the sciences rather than the arts because I thought there would be less speaking. Although, I went on to do science at university, I have always had this nagging doubt that I was really better at the arts than the sciences. Well, I shall now see.

Scales were normally explored towards the end of the sessions: assessing progress, setting new targets for me to achieve, and identifying a conclusion for therapy. If I placed myself at a position of 20% on a fluency scale, and my final desired position was 80%, when I reached this place, it was obvious that the therapy was at an end.

I read a few books on Solution Focused Brief Therapy because I am the sort of person who needs to know why I am to do a certain thing before I actually get around to doing it. I identified that my speech was better than normal after vigorous exercise. Once I realised the connection I now cycle to work even harder when I have an important meeting first thing in the morning.

Brief therapy by definition is supposed to be brief. My course was for six months, one hour a week for the first three months, then one hour every two weeks. This is probably longer than normal for the treatment of other problems. It might be that the pressure of talking in a therapy session makes the problem more obvious. It takes time to become de-sensitised, so you can concentrate more on the solution than the problem. I would like to mention my therapist, Amanda Mozley at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital Speech Therapy Department, who was always very positive and encouraging.

It was very satisfying to plan the end-to-end bike ride and carry it out successfully. I am glad that BSA benefited through the money I raised. It was all connected with my therapy, so I obviously benefited. Was Solution Focused Brief Therapy a success for me? On a scale of 0 to 100%, I would give it 80%. I still stammer, but considerably less than I did. I don't now avoid difficult speaking situations (well not many anyway) and I feel very happy to be known as a mild stammerer.

Solution Focused Brief Therapy teaches you that you are the one finding the solutions, within the creative atmosphere of the client/therapist association. Perhaps most importantly it teaches you that change is possible.

Editor's note: Further information
'Problem to Solution', George, E., Iveson, C., and Ratner, H., Brief Therapy Press 2001
www.brieftherapy.org.uk

From the Winter 2002 edition of Speaking Out

See also: news article

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