Brief Strategic Therapy
How Do Problems Persist?
Our perception shapes how we react to reality. In BST, this is known as the Perceptive-Reactive System (Nardone, Watwlawick, 1990). In many cases, this system helps us navigate life effectively. However, when it becomes rigid, it leads to dysfunctional attempted solutions—repetitive behaviours that, paradoxically, make things worse.
For example, if someone fears social situations, avoiding them may bring short-term relief. But in the long run, avoidance reinforces fear and increases feelings of isolation. The same happens with panic attacks—trying to control them often intensifies anxiety. The more we try to "fix" the problem using the same unsuccessful strategy, the more ingrained it becomes.
How Does BST Help?
BST is not about providing a diagnosis and telling the person what to do. Instead, it is a collaborative process between therapist and client, where together they uncover what is not working for that specific person at that moment and identify the concrete steps needed to resolve the problem.
The focus is on practical, strategic interventions tailored to break ineffective patterns and create real change. BST guides individuals through action-based change—because real transformation happens not just by understanding, but by experiencing something different.
Unlike traditional approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), where you learn about your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours before acting, BST encourages action first. The aim is to provide a corrective emotional experience (Franz Alexander, 1946) that shifts your perspective. When you act differently, you feel differently, and then you understand, unlocking new ways of perceiving reality.
This experiential approach facilitates understanding through personal engagement: knowing through changing.
Change Doesn’t Have to Take Years
Persistent problems don’t necessarily require long-term therapy or complex solutions. Just as wind power transforms energy by working with nature rather than against it, BST helps you work with your problem’s logic to break free from it.
Brief Strategic Therapy (BST) is a highly effective and evidence-based, yet less commonly recognised therapeutic method in the UK compared to more widely practiced approaches like CBT. It demonstrates an extraordinarily high rate of efficacy across various disorders, with success rates reaching up to 91% in some cases. This effectiveness 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 at various locations worldwide, over several decades.
If you’re stuck in a cycle that feels impossible to escape, please don't hesitate to reach out and book a free initial consultation with me. I am here to support you on your journey. BST can help you find a way out—not by searching for "why" the problem started, but by changing how it operates right now. Because doing the same thing over and over won’t lead to different results. But doing something new will
As Albert Einstein famously said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
"Tell me and I forget; teach me and I remember; involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin.
When facing difficulties, our natural instinct is to rely on what has worked before. But what if those solutions no longer work? Often, we push harder in the same direction—only to find ourselves stuck in a cycle that keeps the problem alive.
This is where Brief Strategic Therapy (BST) offers a different approach.
Developed by Giorgio Nardone and influenced by the work of Paul Watzlawick in Palo Alto, BST is a pragmatic and solution-focused approach that shifts the focus away from the past—because the past cannot be changed—and instead examines how the problem works in the present in order to identify concrete strategies to unlock change.
+92% of recovered cases
This data is based on 98 therapies completed between years 2022 - December 2024.
A case is deemed as recovered when at the end of the treatment the person has achieved all of their goals identified at the start of the therapy.
The average of sessions needed to complete treatment is 11.
3.1%
4.1%
92.9%
*Data last updated in March 2025
Brief Strategic Therapy
VS
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Brief Strategic Therapy
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Resistances are bypassed using therapeutic stratagems that create change beyond the voluntary effort of the patient, and disrupting rigid patterns of behaviour.
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By bypassing resistance to change, is clearly more efficient, meaning it leads to a cure in a much shorter period of time.
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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.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
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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.
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Focused on changing maladaptive thoughts, emotions, and behaviours through cognitive restructuring and behaviour modification techniques.
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Communication is logical and rational, the language commonly used for explanation.
More analytical and logical approach.
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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
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Change is achieved through the willpower of the individual, often encountering resistance to change.
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Resistance to change and a logical approach, where the individual needs first to understand to initiate a change, may often delay recovery.
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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
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.