Reflecting on My Journey with Motivational Interviewing

My Motivational Interviewing Experience
Introduction
My experiences with behavioral change comes mostly from the self-work I have done. Prior approaches to discussing behavioral change with a friend, client, or acquaintance are reflections of content and feeling, summarizing, joining, open and closed ended questions, active listening, and simply engaging in dialogue. I have experienced little results in the form of feedback from people I have talked with. Many conversations with others have turned out to become all about me. However, within the last few terms at school, I have actively practiced my reflection skills and have seen and experienced positive results. My readiness to apply motivational interviewing is at a six out of ten. I am

He is a student at both Rogue Community College and Southern Oregon University. We began to discuss his ambivalence toward his choice in a career and working toward the degree for this career. His experience thus far has been a gradual process toward completion of the degree and ambivalence toward changing his major, as stated by him. He finds himself in a position to lose the funding for his degree if he makes the wrong decision. His current experience at an internship has caused him to reassess his goals. This individual has a high degree of self-efficacy and does not seem to have many issues regarding taking action to solve problems. The Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (1999) states “self-efficacy is a critical determinant of behavior change—it is the belief that they can act in a certain way or perform a particular task and thereby exercise control over events” (p. 95). I happened to be in a comparable situation and used this opportunity to practice my motivational interviewing

As per the suggestions in the motivational interviewing book. This helped me to avoid using “why,” “do,” and “are” at the beginning of the question because they facilitate closed-ended questions. His response to all the open-ended questions was a willingness to answer, openly and with a little bit of vulnerability. It seemed to me that it helped to evoke some of the answers to the questions he had been asking himself about the dilemma he was in. The Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (1999) states “asking open-ended questions helps you understand your clients’ point of view and elicits their feelings about a given topic or situation” (p. 50). Also, the open-ended questions furthered the dialogue between us by keeping the focus on