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Solution-focused therapy (SFT) strategies and techniques can be helpful when working with neurodivergent people, including people diagnosed with Autism. In addition to solution-focused one-on-one work with children, adolescents, and adults, I often coach parents of neurodivergent children and adolescents to adopt a solution-focused mindset as well. The principles and strategies include:
- All people have strengths and resources. Assess for, and focus on, these strengths and resources, and not on weaknesses and deficits. Utilize and leverage them when designing interventions.
- Each person is a unique individual. Each person has their own goals, values, and ways of experiencing and being in the world, along with their own unique sets of strengths and resources. Individualizing interventions is key.
In their 2017 book, Autism and Solution-Focused Practice, Els Mattelin and Hannelore Volckaert write: “For us, it is fundamental that one regards persons with autism as people who think differently, with other ideas, values, life targets, needs, and solution strategies. Furthermore, we regard them as people with different strengths, talents, and ways of making life valuable. Different. Nothing more and nothing less.”
They note that when we use this strategy, we approach the neurodivergent with respect and curiosity. We acknowledge their strengths, talents, and solutions, and take into account the individual’s needs. The authors add that we can “listen very carefully to what they want.”
Strengths and Resources
Strengths and resources include: Experiences, successes, skills, talents, creativity, resilience, cultural traditions and wisdom, and worldview; values, social supports, and more. Solution-focused therapists ask about:
- Special interests, hobbies, activities, talents
- Family, peer, and community support networks
- Religion, culture
- Resilience, perseverance, coping skills—when facing life challenges
- Personal attributes (courage, compassion, kindness, curiosity, sense of humor, creativity, ingenuity)
- Values, beliefs, worldviews
- Heroes and influential people
- Previous solutions and solution attempts, including therapy experiences
When helping or collaborating with neurodivergent people, including autistic people, it might be useful to ask:
- “What do you enjoy doing?” “How did you learn to do that?” “How did you persist?” “How might that help you now?” These questions could be about gaming.
- “What do you enjoy learning and talking about?” “How did you learn that?” “How did you persist?” “How might that help you now?”
- When asking about heroes, you can include comic book superheroes, science fiction characters, among others.
Think in terms of multiple intelligences. Everyone has a unique profile of weaknesses and strengths and resources. A key question: How does one apply or transfer these intelligences to one’s goals? Also, what kinds of social, school, and work environments are good fits for one’s unique set of strengths and resources?
Noticing and Building Upon Exceptions
Exceptions are times and places in which the problem is
(a) absent
(b) less intense
(c) could have happened, but did not
Exceptions are important data about strengths and what works for clients in their environment. Conversations about exceptions often reveal inner and outer resources. Solution-focused therapists help improve existing successes, either small or infrequent. Murphy (2023) and other solution-focused therapists and writers talk about looking for, expanding upon, and utilizing exceptions.
SFT exception questions include:
- When is the problem absent or less noticeable? When are things better? When are things the way you want them to be, even partially?
- What was different about that time?
- What was on your mind? What were you thinking at that time?
- Who helped? How did you engage their help?
Solution-focused therapists help their clients pay especially close attention to deliberate exceptions, times when the person can link the exception to something they did differently to make it happen. Solution-focused therapists also strive to make it interactional, asking how other people react or respond. What did they seem to notice about you or your behaviors? Making it interactional might be relevant for people who struggle with attending to and making sense of social interactions, such as people diagnosed with autism.
Autism oriented exception questions include asking an autistic client to talk more about a time, or times, when they were able to at least somewhat or even just a little bit:
- Get up and go to school or work, and mostly do well
- Advocate for or explain themselves
- Put down a game and instead __
- Go out and meet up with people
- Go into and tolerate a crowded social setting
- Self-manage or self-soothe in a highly auditory or visual environment
- Cope with that change of plans or routine without melting down
Followed by: “How did you do that?” “What abilities or resources did you use?” “How did others react or treat you differently?”
Strengths, Exceptions, and Parenting
Strengths and exception approaches can be helpful to parents of neurodevelopmentally atypical children.
- When things have changed to the ways you want them to change, what will your child (you and your child) be doing differently? What will that look like, sound like, feel like?
- Are there times when that happens, at least a bit? When? Where? With whom?
- What are you doing and how are you contributing to the exception or success? How do others in the family or community react or respond? What strengths and abilities are you using at those times?
- What would be the next step? How can you keep that going?
And, perhaps especially, “How do you keep loving, helping, advocating for, and being such a good parent to a child that can be so challenging?”
