Motivational Interviewing Monday Boosters Session (Virtual)

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a client-centered communication style that enhances collaboration, fosters trust, and facilitates positive behavior change. MI skills can be immediately applied in work with clients, contributing to improved client engagement, greater motivation for change, and more successful outcomes.

These one-hour, virtual sessions are a deep-dive into a topic area to strengthen MI practice. Sessions are open to anyone with some form of MI training. Each session will be a combination of concept, discussion, and practice. Booster topics areas include:

1. Affirmations: Affirmations are a skill in MI which is particularly helpful with individuals whose ambivalence for change is associated with lack of confidence. This session will focus on offering reflections including general and more specific affirmations. We will also focus on conversations which support a person acknowledging their own strengths.
2. Managing Discord: Discord is an indication of challenges in the relationship between the caregiver and the client. The discord can be generated by the caregiver or the client. This session will focus on how caregivers might generate discord and how clients might generate discord. We will discuss how to manage the discord. This is considered an advanced skill in MI.
3. Strategies to Evoke Change Talk: There are strategies in MI to generate change talk which have proven to be helpful; Query Extremes, 2 Path Solution, Values Cared Sort, and Decisional Balance. This session will focus on specific conversations that elicit change talk.
4. Responding to Change Talk in a Manner that Strengthens it and Softens Sustain Talk: Ambivalent clients often offer statements which include a combination of change talk and sustain talk. These statements appear as “yes…but…”. Sometimes there is a tendency to focus on the “but” part of the statement versus the change talk part. In this session we will focus on responding to these types of statements in a manner that supports change and softens not changing.
5. Advanced and Complex Reflections and Sustaining Reflections: Reflections are a way the caregiver demonstrates empathy. It is a way the client hears their own arguments for change. It is a way for the client to hear their own values and motivation for change. Offering advanced, complex, and sustaining reflections is often considered the most difficult skill in MI. In this session we will discuss the different types of reflections, how to form reflections and sustain reflections. We will focus on helpful and not so helpful reflections.

Sessions occur on the 4th Monday of each month: August 25, September 22, October 27, November 24, December 22.