Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing



Recovery from addiction is difficult for people who escape their addiction without help, and often people relapse. When these people decide to change themselves, they are often on the fence. This is not because they don’t know which way they want to go, but because they are frightened and don’t have confidence to make the change. Motivational interviewing is one of the psychological therapies for these people. “Motivational interviewing is a narrative process of evoking from the client reasons for and commitment to change.” (Miller, 1998, p. 169) It helps people develop an inspiration to change and respect themselves in such a way that strengthens their confidence about making changes.
In motivational interviewing, the relationship between practitioners and clients is important for a successful treatment. In this equal relationship clients start to look more inwards and to inform their feelings and symptoms without hiding or omitting. Practitioners use counselling techniques such as open-ended questioning, reflective listening, summarizing, affirming and eliciting client self-motivational statements (Heckman, Egleston, and Hofmann). The early stage of MI starts from evoking the client’s cognitive dissonance, which is the gap between current problem and the client’s aspirations. During this period clients are doubtful about the need to change and therefore MI strategy focuses on the client recognizing the consequence of the current addictive problems and the benefits of alternative behaviors. As the clients are accepting their current problems and are willing to change themselves, the role of practitioners shift to strengthen and encourage the motivational enthusiasm, give direction, help to set an action plan and elicit self-motivational statement. During this period, the practitioners should avoid asserting authority, argumentation, persuasion, and imposing assumptions. Practitioners share their responsibility with clients to...

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