Therapist Use of Client Strengths

Abstract

Gelso and Woodhouse highlight a lack of empirical efforts to bring a core identity of counseling psychology, the use of client strengths, into therapy. Additionally, the positive psychology movement is devoid of a system of positive therapeutic processes designed to help clients toward optimal human functioning. This investigation sought to explicitly identify positive processes thought to regularly occur in mainstream therapies by interviewing therapists. Interviews produced 266 significant statements leading to five themes: (a) amplification of strengths, (b) contextual considerations, (c) strength-oriented processes, (d) strength-oriented outcomes, and (e) positive meaning-making. Therapists reported using client strengths to broaden client perspectives and create hope and motivation, to create positive meanings through reframing and metaphors, to identify strengths through the interpersonal therapeutic process, to match client contexts through strengths, and to amplify strengths through encouragement and exception finding. Identified themes are recommended as a taxonomy of positive processes for future research.

Enhancing Students' Resilience: Comparing The Effect of Cognitive-Behavior And Strengths-Based Counseling

“…This model is relatively new in school counseling practices [33,34]. The emergent of this model hales from the theory of positive psychology and integration of theories which views students as the individual with potencies and sources [35]. Strengths-based counseling is aimed to substitute the traditional counseling model which focused on deficit condition and problems in individual mental illness and symptoms and be cured by remedial and clinical treatment with the counselor as the centre of the activities [36,37].…”

Finding Balance via Positive Psychological Assessment and Conceptualization

“…In a recent study, a phenomenological examination of how strengths are used in therapy across major theoretical orientations revealed that the identification of strengths (e.g., questions about strengths included in intake interviews) was one of many recurring processes (Scheel, Klentz Davis, & Henderson, 2012). It is encouraging that strengths are being purposefully identified in the assessment process, yet there are many other mechanisms and tools available to enhance current practices.…”

Cultivating Positive LGBTQA Identities: An Intervention Study with College Students

“…Professional counselors can use specific techniques to accomplish this goal, including asking direct questions about strengths and positive experiences, prompting clients to selectively attend to a more positive frame (Scheel, Downloaded by [SUNY Health Science Center] at 05:35 30 March 2015Davis, & Henderson, 2013. This constructivist approach reorients clients from a focus on the deficits and problems that prime negative emotions to a more useful, solution-focused stance based on positive emotions and hope.…”