Coaching practices for Solution Focused Brief Therapy Building on What Works After a Setback

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Solution Focused Brief Therapy Building on What Works After a Setback, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • All day my attention goes straight to what went wrong
  • I finally tried something and it only half-worked, and my whole brain went "see, nothing I do ever works"
  • It feels like this is just how I am
  • Everything is genuinely awful right now and any talk of "what would better look like" feels like a slap
  • I don’t believe I can actually pull this off, and the things I do that take real grit I just wave away as nothing

Practices that may help

  1. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
    Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), developed by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, directs attention to what already works — client strengths, past successes, and desired futures — rather than to analyzing problems. Meta-analyses report small-to-moderate positive effects across a range of presenting issues, with particular strength in behavioral problems and depression in adult populations.
  2. The Formula First-Session Task and Between-Session Noticing
    Assign between-session observation tasks that direct attention toward what’s already working.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  3. Evaluate the outcome and adjust
    After implementing, honestly assess what worked, what didn’t, and what to do next.
    Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical
  4. Exception Finding: When Is the Problem Already Less Severe?
    Identify times when the problem was absent or less severe — these are evidence that solutions already exist.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  5. Coping Questions
    When things seem terrible, ask how the person is managing at all — acknowledging and excavating their resilience.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  6. Complimenting Strengths Throughout the Session
    Deliberately name real strengths, efforts, and resources the person displays — not as praise but as information.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  7. Preferred Future: Describing Life When the Problem Is Solved
    Ask the person to describe in concrete, behavioral detail what life looks like when things are better.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  8. Maintain approach framing after a setback
    When you miss, ask "what does success look like from here?" rather than "how bad was the failure?"
    Approach vs Avoidance Goals
  9. Recover from setbacks without quitting the goal
    Build a routine for bouncing back so setbacks don’t end the pursuit.
    Grit: Passion and Perseverance, Honestly Assessed
  10. Review what happened after the event to refine the next cope ahead
    Compare how you actually coped to your plan — the gap is your next training target.
    Cope Ahead: DBT’s Method for Preparing for Difficult Situations

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