Motivational interviewing is a powerful counseling method that helps explore ambivalence and evoke motivation for change within a person. This effective counseling tool is often used within mental health treatment in San Diego. It is a client-centered approach that invites patients to take the lead on their healing journey by taking ownership of their treatment and recovery for mental health in San Diego. It’s conducted through various motivational interviewing techniques that allow clients to reflect on their emotions and actions to facilitate a change in their lives.
What Is Motivational Interviewing?
The most effective way to support clients in pursuing change is to help them take ownership of the change they want. Motivational interviewing is a client-centered approach that helps inspire behavior change through a guiding communication style. Through active listening and positive reinforcement, clients can start goal setting for areas of change that come from their own meaning and importance. The open dialogue between the mental health counselor and the patient allows for curious conversations that help evoke motivation by honoring a client’s autonomy, voice, and choice. Through open-ended questions and free-flowing dialogue at the heart of motivational interviewing techniques, clients can develop a therapeutic alliance with the counselor that helps to explore ambivalence, foster behavior change, and overcome resistance to change through positive personal empowerment.
The Core Principles of Motivational Interviewing
The foundation of motivational interviewing is based on principles guiding the therapeutic alliance and mental healing process. The four core motivational interviewing principles are:
- Expressing empathy: This motivational interviewing principle is critical to building rapport between the counselor and the participant. Empathy shows the client’s acceptance and understanding in a nonjudgmental approach that helps to bridge conversations and trust.
- Developing discrepancy: This motivational interviewing principle supports clients in understanding that their current situation may not fit within their own values and beliefs. This is when the client-centered approach enables the participant to begin exploring a behavior change.
- Rolling with resistance: This motivational interviewing principle enables participants to overcome resistance on their own terms. The counselor allows the participant to explore their views without arguing about change and enables the client to develop their own motivation for change through open communication and personal empowerment.
- Supporting self-efficacy: This motivational interviewing principle is key for long-lasting change. The client is supported to believe in their own abilities to foster behavior change and, through personal empowerment, believe they have what it takes to make the desired change.
Technique 1: Open-Ended Questions
An essential tool to have motivational interviewing benefits that allow clients to explore ambivalence and foster behavior change is utilizing open-ended questions. This form of open communication supports client engagement in diving deeper into their own emotions and experiences to understand where their resistance stems from and discover methods of overcoming resistance. This technique uses a client-centered approach that helps participants draw their own conclusions to what has been preventing behavior change and find solutions for embracing change moving forward.
Technique 2: Affirmations
Beginning to make a behavior change can feel scary for some, especially when you’ve been resistant to change. To support participants in overcoming resistance, it’s important to inspire personal empowerment through positive reinforcement. Drawing on the strengths and resilience the client has shown thus far helps to highlight their strengths and abilities. This realization can increase a client’s confidence and provide assurance that they have the capacity for change.
Technique 3: Reflective Listening
One of the motivational interviewing benefits is that clients have the opportunity to feel heard and validated in their experiences. Through active listening and reflective listening, vital components of motivational interviewing techniques, clients can openly discuss their emotions and experiences while feeling that the counselor is seeking to understand and empathize with them. This active listening style ensures no miscommunication by reaffirming a client’s experience and emotions. As someone feels validated, their trust, rapport, and therapeutic alliance with the counselor strengthens, allowing them to dive deeper into their desired behavior change and begin looking forward to goal setting for making the change they want.
Technique 4: Summarization
Summarization is another form of active listening that ensures that the counselor and client are on the same page and clearly understand the emotions and experiences presented in the conversation. This technique has motivational interviewing benefits of enabling the client to begin talking or making strides towards positive behavior change and embracing their own personal empowerment to create change. Summarizing the conversation ensures that nothing was missed, the client feels heard, and helps to act as a stepping stone toward the next process of motivational interviewing, where clients start creating their own personal plan with the help of the therapeutic alliance and positive reinforcement to begin acting on the change they want to see.
Technique 5: Eliciting Change Talk
This final motivational interviewing technique is designed to evoke motivation and explore ambivalence to overcome resistance to change effectively. The mental health counselor will work with the client to inspire personal empowerment to create change talk on their own without the counselor forcing it. BY drawing on the narratives of their conversation, the counselor can support the client to present their own arguments for change and begin goal setting toward a behavior change.
How Alter Mental Health San Diego Incorporates Motivational Interviewing Techniques
Alter Mental Health offers San Diego residents motivational interviewing within our San Diego therapy programs. Our therapeutic programs within our treatment centers and outpatient programs use a client-centered approach with access to individualized care for each patient who receives treatment. Our San Diego counseling staff are specifically trained in motivational interviewing and evidence-based practices that honor our client’s personal experiences and emotions by having intentional one-on-one client engagement therapeutic sessions. We’ll work with you to explore ambivalence, inspire personal empowerment, and help facilitate behavior change on your terms.
Frequently Asked Questions About Motivational Interviewing in San Diego
How often are MI sessions typically conducted?
Motivational interviewing is often conducted with the intention of continued therapeutic support. The motivational interviewing sessions will often occur over 1 to 2 sessions. Afterward, clients are encouraged to continue with specific San Diego therapy methods that support and foster behavior change and personal growth.
Is Motivational Interviewing suitable for everyone?
The people who benefit most from motivational interviewing evidence-based practices are those contemplating change or have mixed feelings about eliciting a change in their lives. If someone has no desire for behavior change or has motivation or begun making a change, this therapeutic method may not be the best fit.
What qualifications do MI practitioners at Alter Mental Health hold?
MI practitioners in our San Diego therapy programs at Alter Mental Health have extensive social work and clinical psychology education. Each MI practitioner is specifically trained in the motivational interviewing techniques and practices of motivational interviewing.
How does MI complement other treatment modalities?
Motivational interviewing benefits and complements treatment methods such as behavioral therapies. As a client evokes motivation for change, behavioral therapies support clients in exploring how emotions, thoughts, and behaviors may have prevented or hindered change previously. Through positive reinforcement and healthy coping tools, clients learn various coping strategies to overcome these barriers.
