How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 52

Strategy: The Three Ps of Effective Strategy
As its second word suggests, a fundamental concept of Brief Strategic Family Therapy is strategy. BSFT
interventions are strategic (Haley 1976) in that they are practical, problem-focused, and planned.
Practical
BSFT uses strategies that work quickly and effectively, even though they might seem unconventional.
BSFT may use any technique, approach, or strategy that will help change the maladaptive interactions that
contribute to or maintain the family's presenting problem. Some interventions used in BSFT may seem
"outside the theory" because they may be borrowed from other treatment modalities, such as behavior
modification. For example, behavioral contracting, in which patients sign a contract agreeing to do or not to
do certain things, is used frequently as part of BSFT because it is one way to re-establish the parent figures
as the family leaders. Frequ ently, the counselor's greatest challenge is to get the parent(s) to behave in a
measured and predictable fashion. Behavioral contracting may be an ideal tool to use to accomplish this.
The BSFT counselor uses whatever strategies are most likely to achieve the desired structural (i.e.,
interactional) changes with maximum speed, effectiveness, and permanence. Often, rather than trying to
capture every problematic aspect of a family, the BSFT counselor might emphasize one aspect because it
serves to move the counseling in a particular direction. For example, a counselor might emphasize a
mother's permissiveness because it is related to her daughter's drug abuse and not emphasize the mother's
relationship with her own parents, which may also be problematic.
Problem-Focused
The BSFT counselor works to change maladaptive interactions or to augment existing adaptive interactions
(i.e., when family members interact effectively with one another) that are directly related to the presenting
problem (e.g., adolescent drug use). This is a way of limiting the scope of treatment to those family
dynamics that directly influence the adolescent's symptoms. The counselor may realize that the family has
other problems. However, if they do not directly affect the adolescent's problem behaviors, these other
family problems may not become a part of the BSFT treatment. It is not that BSFT cannot focus on these
other problems. Rather, the counselor makes a choice about what problems to focus on as part of a timelimited counseling program. For example, the absence of clear family rules about appropriate and
inappropriate behavior may directly affect the adolescent's drug-using behavior, but marital problems might
not need to be modified to help the parents increase their involvement, control, monitoring and supervision,
rule setting, and enforcement of rules in the adolescent's life.
Most families of drug-abusing adolescents are likely to experience multiple problems in addition to the
adolescent's symptoms. Frequently, counselors complain that "this family has so many problems that I don't
know where to start." In these cases, it is important for the counselor to carefully observe the distinction
between "content" and "process" (see "Content Versus Process: A Critical Distinction," p. 13). Normally,
families with many different problems (a multitude of contents) are unable to tackle one problem at a time
and keep working on it until it has been resolved (process). These families move (process) from one
problem to another (content) without being able to focus on a single problem long enough to resolve it. This
is precisely how they become overwhelmed with a large number of unresolved problems. It is their process,
or how they resolve problems, that is faulty. The counselor's job is to help the family keep working on
(process) a single problem (content) long enough to resolve it. In turn, the experience of resolving the
problem may help change the family's process so that family members can apply their newly acquired
resolution skills to other problems they are facing. If the counselor gets lost in the family's process of
shifting from one content/ problem to another, he or she may feel overwhelmed and, thus, be less likely to
help the family resolve its conflicts.
Planned
In BSFT, the counselor plans the overall counseling strategy and the strategy for each session. "Planned"
means that after the counselor determines what problematic interactions in the family are contributing to the
problem, he or she then makes a clear and well-organized plan to correct them.

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