The miracle question, it really is kind of the signature question that solution focused brief therapy is known for and actually for good reason. What we're really after is trying to get a sense of what people's preferred future is. In other words, how will they know that they've achieved what it is that they want to get out of therapy and out of life in general as a result of working in therapy? And what we're after actually is what it will look like once they've been successful in some way in their therapeutic work.
Not while they're doing it, not as they're making their way, but once they're finished, once they've completed their task. Because then we know what it is that as a team working together, we can aim for that will tell us that in fact this has worked, this has been helpful, things are better for them. So this is the miracle question. The miracle question is, so let's suppose for a moment that you go to bed tonight and you go to sleep and then while you're sleeping, a miracle happens. And the miracle is that the problems you've come in here for are solved. What will be different tomorrow morning that will tell you that this miracle would happen?
So obviously there are several components about the miracle question. One of them is that this occurs during sleep. In other words, when they're not conscious, not aware of it. So it has this kind of dreamlike magical quality that helps people to look at something that they normally don't look at because there's this suspension of disbelief. Another thing of course is that this skips over all of that, how do I get there?
It actually describes how the person is after they've achieved it already. So they don't get tangled up in all these procedural things and what they've already tried and so on. It just gets them to think about once they've achieved it what will be different. So it gets them into a very different headspace than they were before they were asked the miracle question.
So the more detail we elicit from our clients about the miracle, the more we get to how they see themselves different, how they feel different, what they will be doing different, how others will perceive them differently, that will help really solidify their idea of what that will look like because again that provides that North Star, that powerful preferred future vision that they then can follow as they go through therapy with me.