Motivational Interviewing

I attended an eight hour training to learn about Motivational Interviewing. Here are some of my thoughts about the training:

The story that was told about Motivational Interviewing is that it started in the substance abuse field with people who were called resistant to change.They have six stages for readiness for change which are precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and relapse. The precontemplation stage is supposed to be those who are in "denial" or do not think that they have a problem. I guess a lot of therapists were complaining that their clients were not motivated to meeting their treatment goals so along came an answer to resistant clients. How to motivate clients to participate in therapy is exactly what it is.

The presenters taught us that the therapist is supposed to develop a bag of tricks to move the client up the stages to maintenance. What I perceive that they have done is incorporate the CBT, SFT, and Collaborative ideas for an agenda of guiding the client to what they call true and appropriate behavior. They have scaling questions and reflective listening along with an agenda towards "right" behavior set forth by the therapist expert knowledge about how life is meant to be lived.


Link:
http://www.motivationalinterview.org/