What is Motivational Interviewing?
Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a style of communication used to help people change. It does so by clarifying motivation.
MI communication supports people to consciously form intentions based on available options, and therefore more wholeheartedly commit to processes necessary to make desired changes.
Motivational Interviewing pays special attention to the use of “change language”, or the ways that choices and commitments are framed in the client’s wording. MI is an evidence-based practice, having demonstrated effectiveness in a variety of settings. Its special gift is to help move people out of ambivalence and inner conflict, into genuine readiness for positive action.
Motivational Interviewing focuses on empowering people who are considering making changes in their lives to identify and pursue self-chosen goals. The emphasis on each person identifying and choosing their own goals before they are asked to commit to a change is a defining feature of this method.
Evidence demonstrates that goals are much, much more likely to be achieved when a person undergoing a change process has fully chosen from their own free will to undergo a change for their own truly personal reasons, rather than as submission or conformity to outer people’s wishes or authority.
Motivational Interviewing places a high amount of value on client autonomy, emphasizing full equality with the Motivational Interviewing practitioner, and recurrently highlights the free will choice of the person considering a change.
The goal of Motivational Interviewing is to supportively partner with a person to assist them in resolving ambivalence, making clear choices that are based on one’s own fully-completed decision-making process, however long that takes. That said, MI is known for reducing time spent in pre-change stages by helping remove inner conflicts and ambivalence that don’t need to last quite as long if it is helpfully highlighted for the client.
Motivational Interviewing represents respect for the right of each individual to come to their own conclusions and decisions based on their own values, experiences, common sense, and desires, as opposed to the idea that goals can or should be imposed from the outside.
Motivational Interviewing is a collaborative approach, in which an environment of compassion and acceptance facilitates an individual exploring their own deepest and most resonant reasons for wanting to change.
Motivational Interviewing is comprised of listening and direction both, but favors deep listening and guides practitioners to give advice only when genuinely sought.
