Category: Conversations About Change: Additional Strategies and Motivation for Change

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...

In previous blog posts, we have explored change talk and discussed several strategies to elicit and listen for the client’s own motivations for change. Some of the most common ways clinicians listen for change talk is when a client talks about or mentions: Desire: “I would like to lose some...

The definition below highlights the guidance and facilitation needed by the clinician to strengthen an individual’s motivation for and movement towards change as well as explore the person’s own reasons for change. Motivational Interviewing is a person-centered counseling style for addressing the common problem of ambivalence about change. It is...

We continue this week with the third “process” of Motivational Interviewing, Evoking. In our last post, we talked about the client strengthening their motivation for change. This change for the individual could be related to desire, ability, reasons, or need. The practice for the counselor is to not only recognize...

There may be many thoughts that come to mind when we think about the importance of speaking one’s own motivation for change; perhaps words such as ownership, commitment, accountability, and support come up for us. And our actual role as practitioners is to try to guide or facilitate the client...