What is brief strategic intervention

If you desire to see, learn how to act - P. Watzlawick

When we are in need of a deep change and we feel we’re not able to do it alone, a strategic intervention can be a great fit.

Therapists and clients will find together the definition of the problem that most suits the specific situation and will then identify on what balance this issue stands on. Gradually, following a process called operative diagnosis, through the use of practical indications, the balance of the problem will be replaced with a better, more functional, tailored alternative: the balance of solution.

It all starts though with our instinctive reactions to the reality we perceive; it all starts with emotions. Sometimes these are blocked and won't unblock naturally so our well-being gets damaged as a result.

A strategic intervention, through the use of suggestive language, guides the person to the identification of correct strategies to unblock our emotional balance and let the person feel differently. The person will eventually start to perceive reality in a new way and eventually build the desirable, long-lasting, change.

“There is nothing more practical than a good theory” – Kurt Lewin

The background of Brief Strategic Psychotherapy is to be found in an intersection between systemic studies on communication and family therapy of Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, based on the core work of Gregory Bateson, with antique teachings of Chinese strategists and Greek Sophist philosophers and the powerful hypnosis without trance and communicational techniques of Milton Erickson.

Following these rich origins, the Brief Strategic Therapy Centre based in Arezzo (Italy) was then co-founded by psychotherapist Giorgio Nardone and Paul Watzlawick - family therapist, psychologist, communications theorist, and philosopher - with a core practical approach in strategic problem-solving.

The approach has, in time, evolved from the study of psychological problems and their logics, to the study of the identified therapeutic solutions and how they are effective. These interventions have been found successful for a wide range of psychopathological issues with a percentage of success that reaches overall 88% but even more, in specific areas, such as panic and anxiety issues.

At the core of the work there is the proven concept of attempted solutions; most of the psychological issues are not created by simple and specific causes but developed in time through the use and reiteration of negative, dysfunctional, strategies. These behaviours that we perpetrate pushed by the strong beliefs that they will eventually work to solve our problems, are, in fact, maintaining the issues and making them worse.

Reality is not what happens to us but what we decide to do with it.

Since most of the time it is difficult to accept change or adaptation that life demands, instead of working with the rational intellect of people, the strategic work is developed with the use of evocative communication to guide the individual in shifting his/her emotional perception of reality to find a more functional point of view.

This re-organisation of perception is the main leverage of therapeutic change.

Making the individual feel prior to understanding.

With a new perception it is possible to change the behaviours and unblock stuck mechanism and reactions.

The rapport between therapist and client is extremely dialogical in line with a person-centred setting.