Developed by Alfred Adler, Adlerian Therapy is a strength-based, holistic, and goal-oriented approach. Also known as Individual Psychology, this approach focuses on understanding clients within a social context, rather than focusing on their symptoms. Within Adlerian Therapy, it is believed that behaviors are purposeful and goal-directed, even when they lead to unwanted outcomes. Keep reading to discover 11+ Adlerian Therapy techniques and interventions you can use with clients.
Adlerian Therapy is grounded in the belief that we are motivated by a desire to feel significant, as though we belong, and to help others. This therapy believes that early childhood experiences can have a significant impact on a person’s lifestyle, including their beliefs, goals, and coping capabilities. Early experiences can shape how our clients feel about themselves, others, and the world they live in.
When using Adlerian Therapy, we strive to create a collaborative partnership with clients. You may find yourself providing education and guidance, or encouraging their progress. Key goals associated with Adlerian Therapy include developing a deeper understanding of goals and beliefs. Treatment plans may focus on helping clients make behavioral changes that support healthy lifestyle changes, increase social connections, and strengthen their use of coping strategies. Continue reading to learn about Adlerian Therapy techniques and interventions.
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7 Adlerian Therapy Techniques
Adlerian techniques can be used to promote reflection and understanding within sessions. These are specific skills or behaviors that we as clinicians can use in the moment to support our clients’ growth. You can incorporate Adlerian Techniques into your sessions and adapt them to your clients’ needs. Individual therapy sessions can range from 30 to 50 minutes, depending on your client’s age and development. Your sessions may end with homework assignments and a summary.
1. Offering Encouragement
Encouragement is a key component of Adlerian therapy and can help clients strengthen their ability to manage stressors and challenges outside of session. Encouragement can be incorporated into sessions in many ways, allowing you to provide personalized care for each client.
What It Is: Encouragement is the cornerstone of Adlerian therapy and goes beyond simple praise for clients’ efforts. Encouragement in Adlerian sessions can help clients recognize their strengths and develop courage. It can reinforce their efforts and capacity for growth.
How It Helps Clients: Encouragement can help clients feel valued and that their time and effort matter. You can remind them of previous successes to boost their confidence with the task at hand.
How To Do It: When using encouragement, focus on your client’s effort rather than the outcomes, and try to normalize mistakes as a part of learning. You can also explore their current strengths and coping skills that would support their current goals. Lastly, you can reframe current challenges as opportunities for growth and an opportunity to practice new skills.
2. “The Question”
This technique can help clients better identify their goals and desired outcomes. This can be helpful for clients experiencing a range of difficulties, including avoidance, depression, relationship challenges, and low self-confidence.
What It Is: This technique involves using a future-focused question that focuses on clients’ behaviors, relationships, and overall life-direction goals.
How It Helps Clients: Using “The Question” can help uncover unconscious goals and feared topics. It can also help shift their focus from seeking relief from their symptoms to more meaningful topics, such as their relationships, work, or self-direction.
How To Do It: You can gently ask your client a question such as “If this problem were gone tomorrow, in what ways would your life look different?” This can be followed by questions that target their answer, including hesitations or fears that are impacting their behavior.
3. Acting “As If”
Acting “As If” can give clients an opportunity to engage in new behaviors as though they have the skills or confidence to do so. You may use this technique with clients experiencing social anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and avoidance.
What It Is: You’ll ask your client to act out or engage in behaviors that they do not feel as though they have the skill set to do already.
How It Helps Clients: This technique addresses avoidance behaviors while building confidence and giving them experience in something they didn’t think they were capable of.
How To Do It: For a client who struggles with anxiety, you may ask them to attend a social event and introduce themselves to one new person. In their next session, you would review their experience and compare the actual outcomes versus their feared outcome.
4. The Pushbutton Technique
The pushbutton technique can help clients recognize how their emotions are influenced by their thoughts and memories. This can help them see their role in their emotions, highlighting active steps they can take to address unwanted emotions. This can be helpful for clients struggling with depression, anxiety, stress-related symptoms, and burnout.
What It Is: This technique encourages an intentional shift between positive and negative memories so that they can see how both affect their emotions.
How It Helps Clients: This can help clients recognize that their feelings can be influenced by internal events, empowering them to manage challenging emotions.
How To Do It: You can begin by asking your client to think of a positive memory, such as an enjoyable vacation, and identify their feelings. You would then ask them to think of a challenging memory, such as a disagreement with a loved one. You can ask about their emotional reaction and any changes they notice in their body, such as tension. Then you can highlight how the different thoughts led to emotional changes and physical sensations.
5. Catching Oneself
Catching oneself is an Adlerian Therapy technique that can help bring awareness to habitual, or automatic, thoughts and behaviors that contribute to unhealthy lifestyle patterns. This technique can be used with clients struggling with emotional dysregulation, addiction, depression, and anxiety.
What It Is: This technique can help clients identify early signs of unhelpful thoughts and avoidance behaviors, before they escalate and contribute to unwanted behaviors.
How It Helps Clients: You can help clients recognize unwanted behaviors, such as avoidance, when they occur, so they don’t contribute to unwanted behaviors, such as procrastination.
How To Do It: Begin by asking your client to identify repeated behavioral patterns, such as isolation or procrastination, and their early warning signs. Help your client learn to label the behavior when it occurs and interrupt the pattern with an alternative action. Over time, avoidance will give way to thoughtful action.
6. Task Setting
Task setting is an Adlerian technique that allows clients to use their new insights to create meaningful actions with new behaviors. This technique can be used with clients struggling with depression, anxiety, substance use disorders, and those adjusting to life changes and transitions.
What It Is: For task setting, you’ll help your client set small and realistic behavioral assignments. These can be tied to problem-solving skills, taking responsibility, or being more engaged in relationships, work, or self-care.
How It Helps Clients: Task setting can help clients increase their motivation and build their confidence. Small goals can also help reduce avoidance behaviors because they are more manageable. As they succeed at completing their tasks, they’re reinforcing their ability to accomplish tasks and cope with discomfort.
How To Do It: For this technique, you will begin by asking your client to identify a specific task that they have been struggling with or avoiding. Take time to review the task’s purpose, highlighting benefits such as building connections with others or boosting confidence. Help your client break their larger goal into smaller, more manageable tasks. Review potential barriers and coping strategies.
7. Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a technique that can help clients when they feel stuck, overwhelmed, or struggle to find options for their problems. This can be helpful for clients struggling with anxiety, depression, interpersonal struggles, high levels of stress, adjustment challenges, and difficulties within their careers.
What It Is: Brainstorming is a collaborative technique in which you and your client work together to find different responses to a current challenge they’re experiencing. Your goal is to help your client increase cognitive flexibility and reduce all-or-nothing thinking.
How It Helps Clients: You can use this technique to reduce hopelessness and promote creative problem-solving. Clients can begin to see that positive change can occur in small steps and that it does not require a large task. This can help them find new solutions to various problems that align with their strengths, abilities, and values.
How To Do It: You can begin by asking your client to identify a specific problem and generate a list of varying solutions, even some that sound outlandish. Then ask your client to write down the solutions that seem most realistic, so they can compare the pros, cons, and feasibility. Have them choose one or two solutions to try before their next session
4 Adlerian Therapy Interventions to Use in Sessions
Adlerian interventions differ from techniques in that they are structured actions clinicians can use in therapy. Interventions can target themes like their lifestyle and goal-oriented behaviors. You may encourage the use of interventions in between sessions as homework assignments to promote insight and useful change.
1. Lifestyle Assessment Interview
A lifestyle assessment interview is commonly incorporated into the early stages of treatment to help clinicians understand patterns rather than focusing solely on clients’ symptoms. This is commonly used with clients who experience interpersonal difficulties, identity challenges, depression, and anxiety.
What It Is: A lifestyle assessment interview can help you learn more about your client’s core beliefs, go-to coping strategies, values, and goals.
How It Helps Clients: You can use a lifestyle assessment to help your client identify beliefs and goals that are impacting their current distress and that they were previously unaware of. Sometimes talking through their goals, behaviors, and emotions can help them gain new perspectives on the difficulties or symptoms they experience.
How To Do It: During your interview, you’ll inquire about their family background, early childhood experiences, values, perceived failures or flaws, and the challenges that they face. Once you put this information together, you’ll share your insights.
2. Family Constellation Analysis
This intervention is commonly used to better understand a client’s current struggles by examining how early family dynamics have impacted their sense of belonging and confidence. This intervention is commonly used with clients experiencing relationship challenges, intimacy concerns, and codependency.
What It Is: A Family Constellation Analysis focuses on understanding family roles, sibling positions, and childhood relationship dynamics.
How It Helps Clients: Family Constellation Analysis can help clients gain insight into how their early experiences impact their coping capabilities later in life.
How To Do It: For this intervention, you’ll focus on exploring their family structure, perceived roles, relationship dynamics, and the emotional climate in which they grew up. You’ll then tie this information to the current challenges they’re experiencing in their relationships.
3. Style-of-Life Analysis
This is an Adlerian Therapy intervention that can help clients understand how their early experiences shaped their current coping patterns. You may use this with clients struggling with depression, relational issues, and identity difficulties.
What It Is: With this intervention, you’ll help your client explore their early memories, recurring themes, and family roles to understand their current coping behaviors. Coping is a learned behavior, directly impacted by those around us.
How It Helps Clients: This analysis can help clients recognize how outdated beliefs affect their current behaviors. They can also identify recurring patterns within their life.
How To Do It: Begin by asking about early memories, including those unrelated to trauma. Focus on themes like safety, responsibility, power, and belonging. You can help your client recognize early behaviors like people pleasing or Withdrawaling that were tied to the discussed themes. Together, you can link these early experiences to current behaviors and determine if their old beliefs still fit their lifestyle.
4. Hypothesis Interpretation
Hypothesis interpretation is an Adlerian Therapy intervention that helps clients understand the purpose of their behaviors without feeling judged or blamed. This can be helpful with clients who struggle with interpersonal relationships, certain personality characteristics, and trauma.
What It Is: This intervention helps clinicians frame behavioral patterns as possibilities rather than truths. This allows you to focus on understanding the associated goals and fears, as well as their attempt to feel significant.
How It Helps Clients: Clients can take an active role in finding meaning, thereby strengthening the therapeutic alliance. Because this technique avoids placing blame, it can decrease defensiveness and promote a healthy exploration and discussion of their behaviors.
How To Do It: While you’re exploring patterns within your clients’ behaviors or emotions, use phrasing that focuses on possibilities. This can include statements like “I wonder if..”. Encourage your client to provide feedback after connecting their behaviors to goals or fears, and revise the hypothesis as needed.
Other Helpful Adlerian Therapy Resources
Mental health professionals gravitate toward TherapyByPro for resources, worksheets, and other therapeutic materials, including session notes and intake assessments. TherapyByPro is a professional resource offering customizable documents and resources tailored to your expertise, clientele, and treatment setting.
Examples of popular Adlerian Therapy resources include:
Final Thoughts on Using Adlerian Therapy in Sessions
Adlerian therapy is a popular, holistic, and human-centered approach that can focus on understanding clients within their social, relational, and cultural context. This is a key component that sets this approach apart from others, especially for clients who are stuck in repeated patterns and want to understand the motivations behind their behaviors.
Because of its focus on social connection, purpose, and meaning, Adlerian therapy can help clients uncover their “style of life”. Techniques like encouragement, task setting, and “acting as if” can build confidence, increase accountability, and move forward without shame and blame. This approach is most effective with clients struggling with depression, anxiety, interpersonal challenges, life transitions, and mild substance use disorders.
You can learn more about this strengths-based approach through continuing education and other training experiences. This approach goes beyond symptom relief by promoting personal growth and fostering a sense of purpose in life, key components of emotional and psychological wellness.
TherapyByPro is a trusted resource for mental health professionals worldwide. Our therapy tools are designed with one mission in mind: to save you time and help you focus on what truly matters-your clients. Every worksheet, counseling script, and therapy poster in our shop is professionally crafted to simplify your workflow, enhance your sessions, reduce stress, and most of all, help your clients.
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References:
- Cedeno R, Torrico TJ. Adlerian Therapy. [Updated 2024 Jan 11]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2025 Jan-. Available from: