Coaching practices for Solution Focused Crisis

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Solution Focused Crisis, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

• 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
• All day my attention goes straight to what went wrong
• I keep circling the same painful thing for hours and every loop makes it worse
• Every time we get into this it turns into my side versus theirs, two solutions dug in, and it never occurs to either of us that we might actually want the same thing underneath the fight.

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. 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
3. 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
4. The Miracle Question: Designing Your Life Without the Problem
   The miracle question — "Suppose a miracle happened and the problem was solved while you slept — how would you know? What would be different?" — is a solution-focused technique that bypasses problem-analysis and invites clients to describe, in concrete behavioral detail, what they actually want. It is a clinical tool within SFBT, which has moderate RCT support; the question itself has not been isolated in controlled trials but is widely used and clinically well-supported.
5. 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
6. ACCEPTS — structured distraction from crisis
   Use Activities, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Pushing away, Thoughts, and Sensations to redirect attention during a crisis.
   Distress Tolerance Skills, Made Practical
7. Find mutual purpose
   Establish a shared goal both people care about so the conversation is "us vs the problem".
   Crucial Conversations, Made Practical
8. Transform the relationship, not just the issue
   Use each conflict as an opportunity to raise the quality of the relationship itself.
   The Third Alternative, Made Practical
9. Separate the person from the problem
   Treat the conflict as a problem you face together, not a contest you fight each other.
   The Third Alternative, Made Practical
10. Maintain an unsolved problems list
    Write down recurring triggers so they become solvable problems rather than repeated emergencies.
    Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.