ABSTRACT
Nearly all families require some help in framing possible solutions and the therapist may ®nd it necessary to ®nd ways of making suggestions to them. A strategy for offering a solution without making it seem too much like a direct suggestion is the embedded suggestion question. Here the therapist aims to point the family in a direction that may prove useful and does this by asking a variant of the `what if' question; such questions can be asked about actions, beliefs or feelings.
