I’ve been a baseball fan, and a Texas Rangers fan in particular, for decades. If you’re following the team at all, you know that sometimes they do far better than expected, but they also falter.
My experience as a fan has taught me to resist the urge to have a knee-jerk reaction to this.
The same goes for our work to cope with post-estrangement life. For your consideration, progress is not linear, and we can expect to have tough days and setbacks as we do the work of healing.
We talk a lot about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in my private sessions and in our groups, but I thought I’d take a moment to touch on another widely-used approach, which is called Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. I left grad school primarily practicing SFBT, as it works to capitalize on one’s own successes and resilience.
An example of how it works: If you’re experiencing distress six out of seven days a week, SFBT calls that one distress-free day an “exception.” Something was at least a little bit successful, even before you sought counseling.
For your consideration, here are a few SFBT questions that might be useful in helping you focus on your exceptions. Keep in mind that for these questions, the “problem” is the emotional distress.
- When has this problem diminished or been less intense?
- What role did you play in it diminishing or going away?
- What was different about you while the problem was gone or less intense?
- If your estranged child saw you while the problem was diminishing or going away, what would they notice about you?
- How distressing is the problem today on a scale of 1 to 10?
- If your distress moved down one point on this scale, what would you notice?
- What would people around you notice?
If you’d like to learn more about SFBT, a widely-used book is More Than Miracles by Steve deShazer, Yvonne Dolan, Harry Korman, and Terry Trepper.
Most of what’s available about this therapy is written for counselors. If you’d prefer a simpler introduction, let me know and I can share worksheets and short resources for you.
Renee and I understand that the hard days still happen, and it’s crucial during such times to remember that the bad days cannot and will not last forever.
Hold on to that hope. Hope is a very good thing.
