Notes On… Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing is not a script.
It’s not persuasion.
It’s not pushing someone where they’re not ready to go.

Motivational Interviewing is the art of meeting ambivalence with compassion.
Of treating indecision not as resistance, but as sacred conflict.
Of believing that the client already carries the wisdom, they just need a space where it’s safe to say it out loud.

Clients say:
I want to change... but I’m scared.
I know what I should do... but I don't know if I can.
Part of me wants to move forward... and part of me doesn’t.

MI doesn't see these as contradictions.
It sees them as truth.

At its heart, Motivational Interviewing is built on four core principles:

• Express empathy

• Develop discrepancy

• Roll with resistance

• Support self-efficacy

It asks the therapist to become less of an advisor and more of a mirror.
To reflect, not direct.
To evoke, not impose.
To trust that even the client’s ambivalence is movement.

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they themselves have discovered, than by those which have come into the mind of others.”
— adapted from Blaise Pascal, echoed in MI tradition

MI listens for change talk, those subtle flickers:
Maybe I could...
I guess I want...
I wish it were different...

Maybe… just… maybe…

And it nourishes them.
Not by force.
But by offering space and faith.

Motivational Interviewing holds the paradox:
You are allowed to want two opposite things at once.
And your capacity for change lives inside that tension.

It is therapy at its most collaborative.
Most honoring.
Most human.

Because real change never happens from pressure.
It happens from permission.

From being asked, gently:
What do you want for yourself?
And how can I help you remember that it's possible?