Author Archives: Eunice Okumu

When we are hearing our clients talk about change, we want to make sure we acknowledge it! This will not only be appreciated by the client, who will likely have felt heard, but it will also encourage more change talk. And when we acknowledge change talk from a client, affirmations...

Reflective listening is another effective communication technique, and is often considered the most important, because the counselor uses statements and not questions to make sure the client knows and feels that you understand them…both how they are feeling and/or what they are saying. This technique also keeps the conversation going...

Forming a reflection is attempting to understand what the client is communicating to us. We listen to what the client is expressing and we provide a response in the form of a statement, and not a question. The reason we do this is because asking questions of the client often...

When do we know when a client is ready to move from evoking to planning? After we have discussed and understand why the client is considering changing a behavior, how do we know when they are ready to explore how they are planning to integrate this change into their life?...

When we think about Motivational Interviewing and addressing the common issue of ambivalence, and how best to support the client in creating the change they want in their lives, the first place we often start is by seeing if their current behaviors are aligned with their values and goals. As...

When we think about values and goals, particularly related to a therapeutic setting, we are often attempting to gain some insight or understanding into the client’s internal perspectives. These perspectives can often be the motivation for making decisions in their lives. And these decisions could be short term or long...

Summaries are similar to reflections, however, instead of focusing on one thing at a time the client has shared, the clinician pulls together several things, and reflects back to the client. This offering back to the client can be affirming because it demonstrates that the clinician has been listening to...

It is always the hope that when we meet with our clients, that they will be motivated to create the needed changes in their lives. However, as we all know, this is not always the case. Many clients would prefer to maintain the status quo and keeps things the way...

One way to assess how important changing a behavior is to the client is to ask them using an Importance Ruler. This ruler invites the client to rate their level of perceived importance on a scale (Butler, Rollnick, Cohen, Russell, Bachmann, & Scott, 1999). The scale typically ranges from 0...

We have talked a lot about, and know, that no two sessions are ever the same and how important it is for us, as clinicians, to bring our curiosity, and openness to being surprised to every session. And after we have invested a good deal of time engaging with the...

Often, when we meet with our clients, no two sessions are ever the same. Each one may have just a little different flavor and that is part of what makes MI so interesting. As clinicians, we are constantly bringing our curiosities to the sessions, and being open to the element...

When there is change talk being expressed by the client, and we, as clinicians, reflect this back to the client, what often comes next is more change talk. And the more we reflect change talk, the more we will receive it. If the client is speaking about change and there...