“Strength lies in differences
not in similarities ”
Steven Covey
What exactly is Brief Strategic Therapy and how might it address your concerns? Is it comparable to CBT, and does it offer similar effectiveness? What makes it unique?
If you're unfamiliar with Brief Strategic Therapy and contemplating if it suits your psychotherapy needs, including how it differs from CBT, you've landed in the right place.
For further insight into this approach, I encourage you to read the "My Approach" section on this website.
Let's explore some key similarities and differences.
Similarities
Constructivist theory - BST and CBT operate on the premise that individuals construct their own reality through their interactions with themselves, others, and the world.
Intervention protocols - Both approaches have developed intervention protocols based on therapeutic dialogue and the employment of therapeutical prescriptions/ assignments to be completed between sessions.
Goal-oriented - Focused on achieving specific outcomes within a relatively short period of time.
Present-focused - Emphasise addressing current issues and symptoms rather than exploring past experiences
Collaboration - Involve collaboration between therapist and client, with the therapist guiding the therapeutic process.
Empirical method - Employ an empirical and experimental method for validating techniques and controlling outcomes.
Change and learning - Change processes and learning processes have occurred at the end of effective therapy, which is indispensable for building a new healthy balance to replace the previous unhealthy one.
Differences
BST | CBT | |
The underlying theory | Based on the theory of change
The strategic therapist initially employs therapeutic manoeuvres that create genuine corrective emotional experiences in the patient's perceptions and actions, allowing them to then develop the ability to manage them. | Based on the learning theory,
Therapist guides patient through a process based on awareness and voluntary effort to learn how to combat and manage the disorder. |
The techniquesused | Focuses on changing patterns of interaction and communication within the context of social systems. May employ strategic, creative, and sometimes counterintuitive techniques to induce change, often incorporating paradoxical interventions. Uses strategic interventions tailored to the specific needs and circumstances of each client. | Focused on changing maladaptive thoughts, emotions, and behaviours through cognitive restructuring and behaviour modification techniques. |
Communication and language used | Uses hypnotic and evocative language that makes the patient feel before to understand. Employs suggestive metaphors, stories and anecdotes, as well as verbal and non-verbal hypnotic communication. | Communication is logical and rational, the language commonly used for explanation. More analytical and logical approach. |
Change | Change occurs quickly through the unblocking of symptoms, which may appear almost magical. Therapist employs therapeutic techniques that induce individuals to first change their perception of things that lead to pathological reactions, and then their reaction to reality, leading to the acquisition of the ability to manage it - change to know. Knowledge is acquired through discovery followed by subsequent acquisitions. | Change occurs progressively through learning to control one's thoughts and actions - knowing to change. Therapist guides the patient through a process based on awareness and voluntary effort to learn how to combat or manage the disorder. Knowledge is acquired gradually |
Resistance to change | Resistances are bypassed using therapeutic stratagems that create change beyond the voluntary effort of the patient, and disrupting rigid patterns of behaviour. | Change is achieved through the willpower of the individual, often encountering resistance to change. |
Outcomes | By bypassing resistance to change, is clearly more efficient, meaning it leads to a cure in a much shorter period of time. | Resistance to change and a logical approach, where the individual needs first to understand to initiate a change, may often delay recovery. |
Therapy focus | Solution-focused and future oriented, aiming to help clients achieve their goals and resolve their difficulties efficiently. Focuses on identifying and amplifying clients' strengths and resources to generate solutions to their problems. It emphasizes building on what is already working well for the client and exploring exceptions to the problem. Focused on changing relational and interactional patterns that contribute to the maintenance of problems. | Problem-focused, concentrating on analysing and addressing the specific problems or issues that the individual presents. It involves identifying the root causes of the problem and working to resolve or mitigate them.
Primarily targets individual symptoms and distressing emotions |
Brief Strategic Therapy demonstrates a remarkably high rate of efficacy across various disorders. This efficacy is validated by the multitude of successfully treated cases overseen by Professor Giorgio Nardone and his colleagues, both at the Arezzo Strategic Therapy Centre and in various locations worldwide, over the course of several decades.
Efficacy rates:
OCD – 89%
Anxiety disorders (panic attacks with and without agoraphobia, social phobia, generalised anxiety disorder, PTSD and specific phobias) – 95%
Health anxiety – 89%
Depression and adjustment disorder – 82%
Eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, binge eating, and vomit syndrome) – 83%
Sexual disorders – 91%
If you still have any questions regarding the brief strategic therapy model and how it can help you to address your concerns, don't hesitate to reach out to me for further information or to schedule an appointment.
Related readings:
"The logic of therapeutic change", Giorgio Nardone and Elisa Balbi).
"Knowing through change", Giorgio Nardone and Claudette Portelli
"Panic attacks therapy" - "La terapia de los ataques de pánico, Giorgio Nardone. Spanish version. (No English edition is available for this book)
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