Plamen Panayotov
  • Most referrals in therapy come from friends and relatives of the client and the therapist, i.e., persons who know them both personally. What goes on in therapy is usually perceived by clients as more connected to the therapist's personality and to the concrete interpersonal relationship between the client and the therapist, than to some therapeutic method or approach.
  • Many clients respond to the scaling questions with answers between, above, or below numbers, as "I'm somewhere between three and five," "I find myself a little above six," and "It's less than a four." Therapists "creatively misunderstand" these answers as signs to see numbers as milestones along the way, i.e., useful instruments to measure progress, without sticking to them while passing by (Berg &de Shazer, 1993).
  • Some clients explicitly say that they want the therapist to give them some piece of advice. These persons are often skilled advisers in their natural groups. Therefore, a useful question to them is "Imagine that a very close relative (a friend, neighbor, or colleague) of yours happens to be in your situation - what kind of advice would you give to her?" Possible interactional aspects and expected outcomes are then discussed to reconstruct the self-given advice into an experiment for a homework task.
  • Most therapists use compliments very carefully and very concretely. Clients tend to meet excessive and unspecific compliments with suspicion and tension.
  • It is frequently more useful to use questions as homework, than to prescribe behavioral tasks.
  • Clients usually reformulate the Formula First Session Task, FFST, when it is used in its original formulation (de Shazer, 1985). Clients simplify it, and propose forms like "So, you want me to observe all the good things that happens to me and my family?"
  • At the end of therapy some therapists often say things like "Please, keep me informed about how you are doing in the future. You don't need to have problems to call me. I want to know how you go on. . . ." Clients and therapists alike don't necessarily see the end of therapy as the end of their relationship.
It will certainly be a priority for many of us to continue to observe details when practicing solution-focused therapy, attempting to ft this approach to our clients, their language, and needs.

References
Berg, I. K. and de Shazer, S., (1993), Making Numbers Talk: Language in Therapy. In S. Friedman (ed.) The New Language of Change: Constructive Collaboration in Psychotherapy, The Guilford Press, New York.de Shazer, S. (1985), Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy. New York, W.W. NortonVassiliou, G &Vassiliou, V. (1981), On Group Therapy Developments in Context: a Hellenic View,International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 34(3): 377-385

Acknowledgements
The author wants to thank Boyan Strahilov, Rossanka Gulian, Aneta Anitchkina, Nina Staikova, and many other therapists who continously look for what works best for our clients. This paper is about their shared observations.

Solution Focused Brief Therapy in Bulgaria

By
Alley Vazrajdane 14 Rousse 7002, Bulgaria

The Balkan model of help-seeking and help-providing could be called an "inwards-outwards approach." This means that when in need of help, people's first choice is turn to their closest relatives and friends, after that, they turn to other relatives, friends' friends, neighbors, colleagues, etc., until a satisfactory solution is found. People outside the natural group are usually not approached, mental health practitioners included (Vassiliou and Vassiliou, 1981). When in trouble, persons search for help in personal, face-to-face, and intimate relationships. They remain cautious toward outsiders, and especially institutions.
The socioeconomic situation in Bulgaria is presently undergoing rapid, largely unplanned, and uncontrolled changes. This results in a widespread confusion and an invalidation of traditionally useful solutions: What seemed to work in the recent past now turns out to be useless, and what fits today's situation may be quite inappropriate tomorrow.

Many aspects of the Solution Focused approach make it suitable for this context: Firstly, the not-knowing stance makes the therapist look like one of the client's natural helpers. Secondly, the approach satisfies the need for quick, sometimes urgent solutions. In our experience, even before coming to therapy, clients often pay more attention to possible effective solutions than to "reasons" or "causes." And thirdly, the approach rapidly provides relief for the clients, and doesn't add more pressure to an overload of many and different problems.We have made some observations about technical details about solution focused work in Bulgaria: