“Let’s think back and see if we can remember a time when it was working…”

Part of an occasional series about phrases that this therapist finds himself repeating, often.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

As a clinician in private practice, one of the phrases that I frequently hear myself saying is this: “Let’s think back to a time when it was working.” Generally, this phrase comes when we find ourselves stuck or frozen. Many times when we get to the point of checking in with a therapist we have reached a place where it feels as if “nothing ever works” or “it is never going to get better”.

So we stop; we take a deep breath … after we’ve all had a chance to tell the story of what has been happening for the past few weeks, months, or maybe years. We address the emotion first.

We stop. We take a deep breath. Then we try to “think back to a time when it was working”.

Now it may be my social work training that leads me in this direction. After all, at least when I was working on my MSW in the late ’90s, talking about being strengths-based and “starting where the client is” was what we were taught.

In practice, this means not looking for “pathology” first. If this person has made it to your office, if they have…