Motivational interviewing is an approach or method to offer psychotherapy to individuals struggling with motivation and decision-making. The method is used to motivate individuals for making required behavioral changes.

What is Motivational Interviewing?

Motivational interviewing was developed to help people with drug and substance addiction. It is a therapy that helps people to find enough motivation to change unhealthy habits or seek help for addiction. It addresses the problem of low motivation that prevents people from making healthy and necessary changes. It is a gentle approach without confrontations and a healthy exchange between people who need help and their therapists. Therapists use motivational interviewing to initiate the process of change in their clients who simply lack the will to do it. Motivational interviewing therapy constitutes several principles. These are expressing empathy, developing discrepancies, resolving resistance, supporting a belief in change and offering autonomy. These principles are the pillars, which support motivational interviewing. These principles help formulate motivational interviewing techniques, which therapists use with their clients.

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Interviewing Process

Motivational interviewing training and questions are developed and derived from the principles of the therapy. The therapy includes open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, discussions and decisions. These are the stages of change in motivational interviewing which are followed during therapy. Open-ended questions help start discussions between therapists and clients. To answer open-ended questions, clients have to offer explanations rather than one-word definitive responses. Therapists will utilize affirmations to affirm or support decisions by their clients or any behavioral trait. It can build a person’s confidence in their ability to make decisions.
The reflection stage is helpful in creating more trust between therapists and their clients. Therapists reflect on the information shared by their clients to show their understanding of the situation in a non-judgmental way.
Discussions help to summarize the talks during sessions. The summaries help to detect issues and themes governing a client’s life and for which aspect the client is seeking change. Summarized discussions help clients come face-to-face with discrepancies in their lives or issues handled in therapy. Decisions stage occurs if previous techniques have been successful. It is referred to as ‘change talk’. It is the stage where the client has gained understanding of the problem, behavioral discrepancies and the need for change. It includes the preparatory stage and the implementing stage. During the first stage, clients acknowledge the desire, reasons and the ability to make requisite changes. During the second stage, clients make commitments to change and take necessary steps in that direction.

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Benefits

There are many benefits of motivational interviewing. It was primarily developed as a therapy method to help people with addiction. But it can also be helpful for motivating people with health problems such as diabetes and cardiac diseases. It can be used successfully by people who need motivation to lose weight or those who are prone to risky behavior. Motivational interviewing can be helpful in providing the right motivation to people with addiction and health problems to seek help or take steps to improve their health. It can help with any health issue a person may be struggling with by providing the right impetus and help in that direction by a trained therapist.
Motivational interviewing helps people understand their issues and their actions/ reasoning behind certain decisions and then committing to change. It can help people create lasting change. The therapy helps people resolve issues that were making them uninspired to make necessary changes.It can also produce results in a few sessions due to the gentle nature of the therapy. It can be very beneficial for people who are open to change but are not inspired enough to make the requisite changes.

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