In Solution Focused Therapy, we used scaling to measure how clients are feeling.
By ensuring the scale is a positive one, we encourage use of the clients left pre-frontal cortex when discussing how we may go up a number or two in the scale.
In most circumstances, the scale is from 1-10, I choose not to use 0-10 as I believe starting at 1 already puts a very slight positive aspect to the scale. A client could be asked, if the scale was on Happiness, a simple question, for instance “on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the happiest you have ever been and 1 being the lowest you have ever been, where are you on the scale now?”
This then gives us the opportunity to measure how the clients see themselves at the start of therapy and monitor this over the next few sessions, using any positive shifts as discussion points. We also use the scaling score to drive our Miracle question, by asking questions such as “Let us imagine we have a magic wand and you can wave it and change anything you want to change and you wake up tomorrow morning definitely a 3 and perhaps a 4. What would be the first thing you would notice that is different?” This allows the client to visualise a positive shift in their progress and therefore helpful in finding solutions. Tiny steps forward are all it takes to make a difference and we need to keep an active ear and notice these positive little gems of information.
Clients generally take longer to move forward at the lower end of the scale as they are at the begging of their journey and may be in a negative frame of mind and maybe thinking positively is something they haven’t done in a long while. As progress is made, it becomes less difficult for clients to think positively and they often find coming up with solutions to move forward on the scale far easier.
Scaling can also be used to ascertain when therapy should stop, a 10 is a very difficult number to achieve, the client may feel like an 8 is good enough and aim to end their therapy when they achieve this.
Any aspect of behaviour can be “Scaled” but positive scales are more often used in Solution Focused Hypnotherapy.
