A licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) working in private practice, Lisa A. Sisson possesses more than 15 years of experience as a counselor. She has operated out of her current office, located in Agoura, California, since 2010. Recently, she sat down to discuss her work as a therapist.
Question: What are some of the beliefs guiding your practice?
Lisa A. Sisson: I believe in the present, and in the present’s ability to influence the future. I work within a modality referred to as Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), which stresses exactly what its name implies.
Rather than delving deeply into the root causes of a problem, I encourage clients to imagine their ideal future, and then we work together to make that future happen through a series of small and large successes. We also examine the present for any commonalities with that ideal future, in order to identify patterns we want to repeat.
I am of the opinion that change is always occurring; when we form a concrete image of our ultimate goal, we can more easily harness and direct that change.