Motivational interviewing (MI) empowers clients to explore their own reasons for change, resolve ambivalence, and strengthen internal motivation. Motivational interviewing techniques help counselors understand practical approaches to drawing out client-driven solutions, fostering collaborative conversations, and supporting the readiness needed for self-directed behavioral change.
is a collaborative, person-centered therapy approach designed to help people discover the motivation they need to alter specific behaviors. Rather than trying to persuade a client to change, the client eventually finds their own reasons to change through conversations with their counselor. Due to its ability to create lasting behavioral changes in clients, motivational interviewing is frequently used in mental health counseling, substance use and addiction treatment, and healthcare settings.
Motivational interviewing is based on a foundational client-counselor relationship that emphasizes partnership, honors the client's autonomy, expresses empathy, and draws out personal strengths. MI is designed to foster a counseling atmosphere where clients feel accepted and safe exploring their own motivations for change.
Motivational interviewing progresses and unfolds through a that includes:
During motivational interviewing, counselors use four basic client engagement techniques to help clients explore their feelings and discover their own motivations for overcoming ambivalence and beginning to change. These are commonly referred to as OARS counseling skills: open-ended questions, affirming, reflective listening, and summarizing.
Open questions can't be answered with a simple "yes" or "no." They challenge clients to think more deeply and invite them to share experiences freely. Open questions (such as "How would you like things to be different?") promote the exploration of values, concerns, and motivations, helping practitioners uncover insights that guide collaborative, client-centered counseling and sustainable change.
Affirmations highlight a client's strengths, values, and efforts. When used properly, they can reinforce self-efficacy and resilience. Counselors who authentically acknowledge progress can cultivate trust, boost motivation, and create a supportive, encouraging atmosphere.
Counselors use reflective listening skills to express empathy and mirror a client's feelings and thoughts. This helps promote clarity and understanding through careful listening. Reflective listening also lets the client know their counselor is paying attention and trying to understand, providing the client with opportunities to correct misunderstandings and elaborate.
As a type of reflection, summaries also demonstrate that the counselor has been listening and understands the client’s needs. Various types of summaries can be used throughout a conversation, such as:
Summaries reinforce understanding and highlight motivation and concerns. They can offer structure and clarity as well as guide conversations toward readiness, integrating insights and commitment to change.
To guide a client from feeling ambivalent about their situation to feeling motivated to change, counselors must have a strong understanding of ambivalence and the factors that contribute to the desire to change.
A word of Latin origin, ambivalence literally means for both sides to have strength. Being is a normal, healthy state, and it's a common part of the process of change. An individual who feels ambivalent has mixed feelings about changing their behavior or continuing in the same manner; they are not experiencing resistance to change.
Exploring both sides with an open mind and empathy can help clients clarify their values, resolve internal conflicts, and discover personally meaningful reasons to change and move forward.
A process of identifying and categorizing a client's change talk, is an acronym that stands for:
Counselors listen for and reinforce these cues during conversations with clients. They can then help clients articulate their thoughts and feelings and strengthen their motivation for meaningful change.
A primary foundation of motivational interviewing is that the counselor acts as a guide rather than as an expert, empowering the client to discover their own motivations, values, and solutions. This means that the counselor must strategically guide the conversation (as opposed to leading it).
Counselors can use elicitation techniques (such as targeted prompts and gentle curiosity) to invite reflection, explore discrepancies, and reinforce change talk while drawing out motivations. This helps clients articulate meaningful reasons to change and strengthens their personal commitment.
Importance and confidence rulers are specific questions that help clients rate how significant change feels and how capable they feel of achieving it. Counselors ask clients to provide a number on a scale of 0 to 10, ranking how important a change is for them and how confident they feel they could achieve it.
In motivational interviewing, refers to a client expressing reasons or justifications for maintaining their current behavior. It can represent resistance but also be a normal part of ambivalence.
Arguing for change can heighten a client's resistance and reinforce sustain talk. Instead of working against sustain talk, counselors should resist their "righting reflex" (i.e., their instinct to try to convince a client to stay on course) and instead work with it, using it as an opportunity to acknowledge their perspective, use reflective listening to explore concerns, and ask open questions to subtly shift the focus toward change.
When discord arises between a client and counselor, the counselor should restore the alliance by acknowledging the client's concerns, validating their perspective, and adjusting their approach. Prioritizing a collaborative stance builds trust, reduces resistance, and maintains an open space for the productive exploration of change.
Motivational interviewing seeks to direct the conversation in a way that aligns a patient's values with their identity.
Counselors ask open-ended questions to help clients explore the gaps that exist between their actions and the values they hold. They may also use This helps clients clarify their priorities, find motivation, and envision meaningful changes that are aligned with their values and identity.
By highlighting a client's strengths and helping them affirm their values and identity, counselors empower clients to build confidence. This also helps reinforce change talk and encourages clients to act in ways that are consistent with their goals.
In MI-directed counseling, finding motivation is just the beginning. Goal-setting in therapy centers on identifying concrete, actionable, and sustainable steps to achieve goals.
A collaborative change plan translates motivation into concrete steps by identifying goals, developing strategies, and gathering support. This helps clients anticipate challenges and pinpoint strategies for overcoming barriers to change.
A form of change talk, client statements that demonstrate a disposition or intention to change (such as "I'm going to" or "I plan to") are known as commitment language. These statements reinforce a client's readiness and reveal clear intentions and growing confidence. Counselors should work to support meaningful, long-term behavioral changes.
The motivational interviewing model is intentionally flexible, meaning it can be applied to a variety of contexts and populations.
In health and behavioral medicine settings, MI can be used to:
can help those struggling with substance use disorders. It fosters a safe, nonjudgmental environment that reduces stigmas and encourages open conversations where clients can explore goals and consider meaningful steps toward change without pressure.
is especially beneficial for youth and families, as it emphasizes collaboration, empowerment, and shared decision-making. The goal is to help groups navigate ambivalence and build collective motivation.
While motivational interviewing should be a gentle, gradual process, it can still be used in telehealth settings and brief client encounters.
During short sessions, counselors use focused MI strategies to build rapport, identify discrepancies, find motivation, and reinforce strengths. A focused approach can help clients make meaningful progress in a limited timeframe.
Take thorough, concise notes that highlight client goals, note change talk, record barriers, and outline the next steps. This ensures continuity and supports effective follow-up conversations across sessions.
Mental health counselors frequently integrate MI with different approaches to care, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and trauma-informed care (TIC), depending on the individual client's needs.
Integrating MI with other approaches helps enhance the client's motivation for treatment before introducing new skills and therapeutic techniques. This creates a client-centered treatment flow in which every aspect of treatment is tailored to the client’s needs.
In trauma-informed MI, care emphasizes safety, gradual pacing, and patient-driven choice. This ensures interventions respect a client's boundaries, support emotional regulation, and remain ethically appropriate.
In a goal-oriented motivational interviewing setting, counselors need a method for objectively measuring client progress, as well as the quality and efficacy of the treatment approach.
Collecting feedback from clients after each session helps counselors identify and measure perceived support, motivation, and engagement. They can then adjust approaches to achieve better results during subsequent conversations.
Counselors can continue improving their treatment approaches, confidence, OARS techniques, and client outcomes with ongoing training, mentorship, and supervision. It’s also helpful to continuously engage in self-reflection.
The trick of motivational interviewing is for counselors to guide a conversation without leading it. This is a very subtle difference that can be tricky to get right.
A counselor's natural impulse to direct clients toward specific changes is called the "," and it can trigger resistance from clients. Instead, practitioners should focus on reflective listening, empathy, and motivations.
Asking too many questions can overwhelm clients. Practitioners need to balance inquiries with reflective listening to encourage deeper insights, promote engagement, and support self-directed change exploration.
MI elicits a client's own reasons and strategies for change, rather than telling them what to do. Education is offered with permission, woven into reflections, and connected to client values — it’s never delivered as a lecture.
Acknowledge the client’s autonomy and reflect sustain talk (for example, "Part of you isn't sure the effort is worth it."). Use rulers and "looking forward" prompts to explore ambivalence, and avoid pushing for commitments.
Yes. Even in 10 to 15 minutes, you can engage briefly, ask one evocative question, reflect, and close with a small, client-chosen next step.
Name the mandates transparently, then pivot to what the client can control. Explore their values and desired outcomes, and look for places where these naturally overlap with required tasks.
Collect and summarize change talk, ask what feels like the most meaningful next step, shape an implementation intention, and schedule a quick follow-up to review progress.
Use MI to build readiness for change, then integrate CBT/ACT to teach skills and support relapse prevention. Maintain the MI spirit throughout so autonomy and values stay at the center of the work.
Record sessions (with consent), count reflections vs. questions, highlight DARN-CAT statements, and seek structured feedback from a supervisor or peer.
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