The Strengths-Based Perspective - Essay Example

The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of a strengths-based perspective.
Firstly, a strengths-based perspective will be defined as a method of approaching work in which every person there is a strength that the worker can identify and emphasize in the helping process.

There was an individual who was a very close business associate with my father who I will identify as Mr. X. For reasons unbeknownst to me, Mr. X was an excellent sales associate and had a very successful professional career; however, it is the case that this individual had a very task oriented/problem-solving orientation when it came to personal matters. I knew Mr. X personally and (Successful as he may be) had a lot of difficulties in his social life in general terms, he was not a pleasant person to be around in social circumstances. Despite these problems, Mr. X had been happily married until his wife suffered a brain aneurysm and passed away quite suddenly. Newly widowed, Mr. X had a great deal of difficulty in dealing with his grief and began to see much of his personal life spiraling out of control. As it is the case that most issues in Mr. X’s professional life were viewed as being task-oriented it could be the case that he looked at his grief as a problem that he was trying to solve.
It comes as no surprise that there was no solution to Mr. X’s Grief, and it was the case that he started to see his professional life start to decline as well, and around this time Mr. X began battling with problematic drinking.

On the advice of his work colleagues (Including my father), Mr. X started seeing a therapist. As I highlighted earlier, Mr. X always had a task-oriented personality and by being active in his routines (Typically work routines) Mr. X on a personal level was in general terms happier. Mr.X was simply unable to handle the problem of his grief, and by failing in this aspect of his life it started to negatively affect other parts of his life and he was on track to see his life spiral out of control.
If he could look at improving one part of his life (ie. His professional life) then he would start to recognize a greater level of overall happiness and stop his life from spiraling out of control. Although the therapist was not able to specifically ‘Cure’ Mr. X from his grief over the loss of his wife, he was able to help Mr. X from having his life spiraling out of control by highlighting the strongest measure of his character and using that as a catalyst for improving his overall quality and condition of his life. Read More