Exceptions to every problem can be created by the therapist and client and used to build solutions. Exceptions to every problem can be created by the therapist and client and used to build solutions.
By using the word “problem,” all of us distinguish problem times from all the other times when the problem does not happen. Unfortunately for all of us, once we make the distinction but the problem does not get resolved, we tend to focus even more on the problem time and on what does not work.
We tend to create or apply some rule or belief that we then use to filter all succeeding experience. Once we decide, for example, that fear of flying is a problem that we need to rid ourselves of, we look for the cause of the problem. We then tend to focus our attention on all the times we are afraid. Our fear escalates as we pay more attention to it.
The exceptions to the problems rule invite us to look at the other side of the distinction between problem time and everything else. When we do something else, we are probably doing something more workable. Therefore, we would like our clients to do the same.
With the next sequence of questions, we invite clients to enter the exceptions frame. Much of the early articulation of this sequencing of questions was done by Lipchik (1988a, b) and Lipchik and de Shazer (1986).
The basic sequence we use is as follows:
Exceptions elicitation:
“When are you already doing some of what you want?” (Used in response to a goal statement by the client)
“When doesn’t the problem happen?” (Used in response to a problem statement)
Contrasting for contextual differences:
“What is different about these times?”
Specification:
Within the client’s frame of reference:
“What are you doing differently?”
“How are you thinking differently?”
From outside the client’s frame of reference:
“How are you perceived by others as acting differently?”
“If they think you are acting differently, how then do the others act differently with you?”
Bridging the exceptions as the goal of therapy, and framing the goal as continuing to do the exceptions:
“So, as you continue to do these things, will you think that you are on the beginning of a track to getting what you want out of coming here?”
Pursuing the goal of continuing to perform the exceptions:
“How will you keep this going?”
“How do you predict that you will keep this going?”
“How will others know that you are keeping this going?”
The thrust of this sequencing of questions is to create exceptions to the problem times, find out what is different, bridge the exceptions as the goal of therapy, and then pursue the exceptions.
There are several advantages to talking about exceptions rather than about some hypothetical future or something else. The first advantage can be explained in a metaphorical way. In going through a revolving door of a building, all of us have had the experience of having to push the door from a dead stop. The door is heavy and sometimes difficult to start moving from a dead stop. We have to overcome all the inertia of a large glass and metal door. However, if we come to the door immediately upon someone else just leaving and the door is still moving, we have a much easier time because all we have to do is add our efforts to the momentum.
This is true for our clients. If the client thinks she or he has to solve a problem from a dead stop, the process can seem like having to overcome all the inertia of the problem. However, if we help the client to think about exceptions and to frame the goal of therapy as continuing to do more of what he/she is already doing, inertia of the problem does not exist. The client only has to keep the “door moving.”
Another advantage is that the exceptions put the solution in the realm of the possible and into the present. The present is a much more compelling time than the remote past or far distant future. The experience is at hand and easier to bring to mind for details of usefulness and success.
Exceptions can be created in several ways:
Here are some examples:
Therapist: What is your goal in coming here? (Goal frame)
Client: I thought about this on the way over here and I want to be acting more effectively with my kid. I just divorced and I have custody of my 15-year-old boy. (Goal statement)
Therapist: (With empathic tones) Sounds like quite a time of change. (With curiosity) How do you mean “acting effectively?” (Specification)
Client: Well, sometimes he goes to school and sometimes he does not. I think if I were acting effectively, he would be going to school and doing other things I tell him to do. I would be using discipline better. (Goal statement, “acting effectively” and “using discipline”)
Therapist: So when you are acting more effectively, you will be telling him what to do and you will be using discipline better. (Clarification) When are you acting more effectively now or using discipline more the way you want to? (Exceptions frame around the goal)
Client: There are some things that I am absolutely sure about, like curfew, for instance. With that, I am convinced of what a good time is for him to be home, and I can ground him if necessary. But there are other times when he says that his mother lets him do it or he argues with me and then I give in.
Therapist: So, are there times now where you act somewhat effectively even when he says those things or argues? (Exceptions frame to a problem statement)
Client: Sometimes. Sometimes, I know that it is just my guilt or my fear that he will want to go back to live with his mother that is getting to me. (Contextual difference, knowing he is responding to guilt or fear)
Therapist: How does that make a difference, knowing that you are responding to guilt or fear? (Contextual difference)
Client: Well, then I stay cool, and do what I know I should.
Therapist: So, as you continue to recognize when you are responding to guilt or fear and continue to do what you know you should, will you think you are on track toward getting what you want? (Bridging the exceptions as the goal of therapy)
Client: Yeah. I just have to catch myself.
Therapist: How will you continue to do that. (Pursuing the goal)
In this example, the man started with a goal stated in the positive. We assumed that there are times when he is already performing his goal and we asked about those exceptional times. We asked for the differences in those times, and found out that he is already doing what he wants to—“acting effectively” and “using discipline”—when he is sure of what is needed and when he catches himself responding to his guilt or fear. The remainder of the session then focused on how he would continue the exceptions.
A young man came in complaining of hearing voices. Voices are not necessarily a problem in themselves.
Therapist: So I am a little confused. How are these voices a problem for you? (Shifting from complaint level to problem)
Client: Well, these voices tell me that people are after me and that I’d better be careful.
Therapist: That could be good advice in some cases. So how are they a problem? (Shifting from complaint to problem)
Client: Well, people at my residence hall are telling me that I am acting pretty weird and paranoid.
Therapist: Oh, so the problem is that you act differently and then people treat you differently? (Clarifying problem)
Client: Yeah, they are getting real suspicious of me.
Therapist: So, are there times when you do not listen to the voices or you do not act that way? (Exception elicitation)
Client: Well, the voices are there all the time.
Therapist: So, do you listen to them all the time? (Exception elicitation)
Client: No, not all the time. Sometimes, I am just too busy or I trust my own opinion rather than the voices. (Contextual difference)
Therapist: So, sometimes you trust your own opinion and you act differently. Those times go more the way you like? (Specification)
Client: Yes.
Therapist: How do you do that? (Specification with a presupposition of his directing his choice)
Client: I just ignore the voice like a radio station I don’t like. (Specification)
Therapist: Are there also times when you want to listen to the voices telling you to be careful? (Exception elicitation)
Client Yes, some of my old crowd, back when I used to deal dope, still want to get back at me and I need to be cool.
Therapist: So, sometimes you think the advice is good and you choose to listen. So, if you continued to make choices of when you wanted to listen to your own opinion and when you wanted to take this other advice, would you think you were on track to getting what you want from coming here? (Bridging the exceptions as the goal of therapy)
Client: That would be all right.
Therapist: So how will you continue to make these choices? (Pursuing the exception of “making choices” as the goal of therapy)
In this example, the complaint was first moved from the complaint level of “voices” to the problem/solution level of “his acting weird and people treating him differently.” Hearing voices is not necessarily a problem. So, we needed to move the statement to the level of goal or problem before we asked about exceptions. He stated the voices were a problem because he then acted weird and people treated him as if he were weird.
Within the problem definition of how the voices led him to do things that make him appear weird to his friends, we could then ask for exceptions indicating when the voices were not a problem or when he did not act in the problematic way.
In pursuing the exceptions, we found that he makes choices, and that by choosing when to follow his own or some other person’s opinion, he is more satisfied that he produces more of what he wants.
A couple who had been married 13 years came to see us.
Therapist: What is your goal in coming here? (Elicitation of a goal)
Wife: We have been having difficulties. A few years ago, my husband quit his job to go back to school, and I took over the financial responsibilities. Lately, I have been feeling overwhelmed with all the responsibilities. In addition to the responsibilities, I used to think of his needs first all the time, but last weekend I decided that I had enough. I felt overwhelmed. I left him and went to stay with my sister. (Despite the goal-oriented question, sometimes clients will begin anyway with complaints or problems. Often, within these statements, there are hints of exceptions and differences.)
Therapist: Was that different for you to take that kind of action? (Exception elicitation and looking for contextual differences)
Wife: Yes, very much so, and things have been a little better since then. I have moved back in but I told him that there were things I wanted him to do differently. And since then, he has been better. We need to communicate differently and he has listened and been more open with me. (Client expands on the exception and how this action on her part is very different.)
Therapist: Really? (With encouraging tones and curiosity) How have you seen him do that? (Specification)
Wife: Well, in the past he would walk away, and now he really listens, and actually is encouraging me to say more. I also wanted him to come to therapy, and get a job. He has been looking for a job and the fact that he is here means a lot to me.
Therapist: I guess it does; (with encouraging tone) it is not always easy to come to therapy. Well, let me ask this: If you continued to have these good talks, and you continued to think more often of yourself first, would you think you were on track to getting what you want from coming here? (Bridging the exception as the goal of therapy, and using her words as much as possible)
Wife: Yes.
Therapist to husband (with enthusiasm): Is this true, have you been doing all these things? (Exception elicitation)
Husband: Yes, I have. But it has been hard. For a long time, the role reversal has been extreme. She has been taking care of the bills and sometimes not too well. When she would mess up the bills, I just did not want to know. I figured that if she messed them up, then she would have to clean them up. But lately I figured that we have to work together, so I got myself involved again. (Expands on exception, and offers the new meaning he is operating under, “We have to work together.”)
Therapist: So you decided that not being involved was not working and so you are getting more involved with the finances. That is really great. How are you doing that? (Eliciting contextual differences and specification)
Husband: Well, when she left for those few days, I realized how important she is to me, and that I cannot just leave all the headaches to her anymore. (New meaning)
Therapist: Well, how has she been different? (Exception elicitation about her)
Husband: Well, I have pushed for more of what is going on and no more keeping things from me just to keep peace. She has told me more about what she wants me to do and how bad things really are financially.
Therapist: I guess her leaving was quite a shock to you?
Husband: Yes, it was.
Therapist: Well, I am impressed that you went ahead and did something about it. Not everybody does and you could have just let her go. (Encouraging and reinforcing) So, are there other things you are doing that she has not noticed yet? (Elicitation and specification with the expectation that there are other exceptions)
Husband: Yes, I contacted my sister about a loan for us. I had to eat my pride because I am a pretty private person.
Therapist: I can see that it was hard. I guess that indicates how serious this situation is to you and how much you care to get things back on track. If you continue to do these things and the two of you continue to have these open and good talks, even if talking is not always easy, would you think you are on track to getting what you want out of coming here? (Bridging the exceptions as the goal of therapy)
Husband: Yes, I think so.
Therapist: Well then, let me ask, how are the two of you going to keep doing these things? (Pursuing the exceptions as the goal of therapy)
This case example typifies what can happen when, as therapist, we listen with great care for exceptions and differences. By asking how her leaving was different, we opened the discussion for many other differences that had occurred in the previous few days. These differences in the problem area were expanded upon and then bridged as the goal of therapy. If we had not asked about the recent change of her leaving, the potential of these recent actions could well have been lost.
A new, more virtuous (as opposed to vicious) cycle can be enhanced wherein the wife will continue to think of her own needs rather than of his first all the time and he will continue to involve himself with the affairs of the family rather than leaving them all to her.
Bridging these recent actions as the goal of therapy enables the couple to see their tasks as continuing to do things like they have been achieving in the past week, that is, keeping change going. Remember our metaphor of the revolving door, and how difficult moving a revolving door from a dead stop can be and how much easier the door is to move, if it is already moving. Metaphorically, the clients’ goal of continuing to do what they are already doing becomes roughly equivalent to keeping the revolving door moving. The task of the conversation from this point on is to elicit more of what the couple is doing that is working and to recycle through the exceptions sequence as necessary.
In the session just described, the wife responded to the “How will you keep this going” question with a concern. She said she found that her anger and resentment from the past sometimes got in the way. When she wanted to talked with her husband in this more frank and honest way they were developing, she would sometimes be stopped by her anger.
Rather than assuming the anger or resentment was a problem or that the anger stopped her all the time, we assumed that there were exceptions to this also. We asked, “So are there times now when the anger is less of a problem?” She responded that often when she would get angry, she would just become quiet and then stop talking to her husband. However, there were times now when she was dealing with the anger.
“How?” we asked. She said there were times now when she would consider dealing with her anger versus being quiet and not talking. At those times she decided to deal with her anger by letting him know how she felt and then to move beyond it. He had said to her that he could not change the past. She said that sometimes now after she had said what she felt, she could let go of the past, and talk some about the present.
This concern the wife had brought up with regard to our question about how the couple was going to keep the changing going was cycled through the exceptions sequence and the already emerging ways of her dealing with resentment were discovered. Again, if we had treated her resentment as a “problem” and had not focused on exceptions, we may have created a situation wherein she thought the resentment was a problem that she had to solve rather than continuing to express her feelings and put her needs first more often in ways she was already doing.
This notion that there are exceptions to every problem might not seem quite so strange if we consider that many clients come to see us in response to a crisis. The problems may have been going on for some time, but often there is some threshold that is reached when somebody says, “This has to change,” or the problem is moved to the fore by a school counselor or someone else. When confronted by a crisis, many people respond by calling a therapist as one of several steps they take action on. They have already taken steps other than calling the therapist on which the client and therapist can capitalize.
A supervisor once told us that he believed that clients came to therapy not because they needed a solution, but because they realized what the solution was and were terrified. This is another explanation of exceptions. People may already have ideas of what they need to do and may have already made a start. All we have to do is normalize their fears and support their continued actions.
Many newcomers to this approach say that they can identify and construct many exceptions but that either they do not know what to do with the exceptions or the exceptions do not seem to be significant enough to make for successful therapy.
After you have elicited exceptions, it is useful to check off three aspects of them. Exceptions should …
The map, the goal frame, the exceptions frame, and the hypothetical solution frame are all tools for goal and solution development. Regardless of the path we follow, we want to compare the client’s responses within the goal frame, the exceptions frame, or the hypothetical solution frame to the criteria for a well-defined goal.
As clients report what they are not doing during exception times, we ask what they are doing instead. We have then a linguistically positive representation of what they are doing. We also want clients to state the exceptions in a process form—that is, how they are doing what they are doing or thinking the way they are thinking.
Oftentimes, clients explain their exceptions as a result of activities or relationships other than their being different—that is, someone or something else is different. We want to redirect such responses in order to find out what the clients are doing that is within their control, (cf. Chapter Ten on enhancing agency)
When clients report exceptions to problem times, we need to review with them whether or not continuing to make the exceptions happen is acceptable to them as the goal of therapy. As we, mentioned earlier, to frame the goal of therapy as doing more of what clients are already doing makes the task of therapy seem much easier. However, we want to have an explicit understanding with clients that that is their goal for their therapy. We do not want to be pursuing a goal if that is not what the client wants or if the client believes that continuing on the particular track will not lead to solution.
We also want to bridge other concerns or goals to the exceptions. An example might be a mother who comes in with concerns about her four-year-old having behavior problems in preschool. She may say that what has been different lately is that she has given up trying to substitute for his missing father and that she is taking care of her own needs more. The continuation of these recent changes (exceptions)—her deciding she could not make up for the father; her taking care of herself more rather than devoting her attention almost exclusively to her son—needs to be bridged as the goal of therapy. It would be helpful to extend the bridging to her concern for her son. We might say, “Are you thinking—as you continue to take care of yourself more and give yourself a break from the pressure—that in the long run you will be more effective with regard to your son and his preschool situation?” If the answer is “Yes,” then we would ask, “How will you continue to decide to take care of yourself?” If the answer is “No,” then we would explore the concern or objection and check to see if the exceptions could be bridged in some other way.
Clients sometimes outline exceptions that are working; the meaning that surrounds their actions is likely to keep the exceptions going. Clients may say that they recently decided that worrying about things they could not do anything about just did not make sense and so they turned to focusing on problems they could do something about. This new decision contains a more workable framework, a distinction between things clients can do something about and those things they cannot. If they say they are confident they can continue to make this distinction, there is no further need on our part as therapists to coach them to some other framework.
On the other hand, a client who thinks that things are better between herself and her husband because she is “giving in” and may have trouble in the future. Even if she continues to avoid fights, she may still believe she is losing and will either feel bad or gather her strength to fight again. This framework of “giving in” is something you and she may want to redirect to some other framework.
Figure 5 is a worksheet that contains a sequence of questions for constructing exceptions. This is just a suggested order. The actual conversation with your client may not need certain questions or you may find yourself skipping around. Spaces are provided for your client’s response.
With a goal statement:
When are you already doing some of what you want?
With a problem statement:
When doesn’t the problem happen?
CONTEXTUAL DIFFERENCES
What is different about these times?
SPECIFICATIONS
Within the client’s frame of reference:
What do you do differently?
How do you think differently?
From outside the client’s frame of reference:
How are you being perceived by others as acting differently?
If others think you are acting differently, how do they act differently?
BRIDGING AND FRAMING
So, as you continue to do these things, will you think that you are on the beginning of a track to getting what you want out of coming here?
PURSUING THE GOAL OF CONTINUING EXCEPTIONS
How will you keep this going?
How do you predict that you will keep this going?
How will others know that you are keeping this going?
Figure 5. Exceptions Worksheet
QUESTION:
What about those problems that the client describes as happening all the time?
With most problems that clients bring up, scaling down the exception question will get you added results. For example, instead of saying, ‘Tell me about the times when your husband does not ignore you,” you might say, ‘Tell me about some of the times when this is a little less of a problem.” This scaling down of the frame with words like “a little less” or “not as much” will enable the client to enter the exceptions frame.
At other times, when the client says there are no exceptions, you want to ask the hypothetical solution question in order to advance thinking in a more positive direction or obtain a more workable frame. After obtaining a more workable or open frame through the use of the hypothetical solution question, you can again try to elicit exceptions. Remember to scale down the response to the hypothetical solution question, with words like “a little bit” or “slightly.” For example, with the client who thinks there are no times when he does not act fearfully in getting on a plane but thinks he will be thinking and acting more assertively when the problem is solved, you would then ask, ‘Tell me about those times now when you act a little assertively or at least not so fearfully.”
The expression “not so fearfully” is a way of scaling down the framework by staying in negative language as a pace for the client’s thinking. It might be too big a leap for the client to think he was acting even a litde assertively. He may think he is never assertive in any way. He can imagine, however, that sometimes he does not act quite so fearfully. This scaled-down negative framework may elicit exceptions. After talking about exceptions “of acting not quite so fearful” and after you have facilitated his building on these exceptions, he may be more able to identify his exceptions in a positive way and even use the word “assertive. “
1. Use the Exceptions Frame Worksheet with a colleague, initially, so that you can become used to using the worksheet and hearing yourself asking the questions. Asking the questions with a colleague will be helpful before you begin to use the questions with your clients.
2. Use the Solution Construction Worksheet (Figure 4, p. 87) in your session. Take note, during the session, of the goal or problem statements and of any exceptions that the client mentions. After the session, examine your worksheet and compare the client’s responses with the criteria for a well-defined goal (Figure 2, p. 60). Prepare the questions you want to ask next time. As you become more facile in using the worksheet, you will not need to wait for the end of the session to use the criteria.