First Things First

Over the years, I’m sure I’ve learned more from the trainees than they have learned from me. One thing I’ve learned: MI is deceptive.

Welcome to the very first post of TMI (Thoughts on Motivational Interviewing)! In this space I plan to share ideas and insights on training, practice, and science of Motivational Interviewing (MI). I first learned MI as a doctoral student at the University of Washington in the late 1990s. I was immediately enamored with the approach and sought out multiple settings to develop competence.

Since then, I have spent the last 22 years training thousands of professionals from diverse settings in applications of MI both in my home state of Oklahoma and across the country. Those professionals have included students, psychologists, social workers, counselors, parole officers, physicians, nurses, home-visiting program providers, college professors and even clergy. All of these people work in the helping professions in which at least part of their job is to help people confront, consider, and commit to adaptive changes in their lives. These changes might include stepping away from a harmful addiction, improving their lifestyle and overall health, adhering to difficult treatment regimens, seeking employment or education, addressing mental health challenges, or reducing risk factors for child abuse or neglect.

Over the years, I’m sure I’ve learned more from the trainees than they have learned from me. One thing I’ve learned: MI is deceptive.

Highly skilled MI providers make it look easy. To a naive observer, it often just looks like a casual and friendly conversation. But if you could access what’s going on in the mind of the provider, you would observe a frenzied process of complex observations, judgments, decision-making and strategic thinking: What does that mean? Change talk or sustain talk? Should I reflect that or ask a question? That sounds like a developing discrepancy.

The goal of this blog is to share some of my observations and insights about MI with fellow learners along the road as we all attempt to develop a deeper understanding of MI. I hope to share tips and strategies on the use of MI, connect readers to resources, explore questions and challenges, translate cool science, and amplify the voices of the diverse world of MI experts.

So if you are a fellow MI enthusiast - practitioner, trainer, scientist, or any combination - I invite you to subscribe and follow along. I would welcome your comments, challenges, questions and collaboration as we all continue down this road together.