As therapists, we need a strong, connected therapeutic alliance with our clients to make progress. Yet, given our field’s tendency to train us to advise, direct, prescribe, or otherwise take the lead, this alliance—and our clients’ sense of autonomy and agency—can be compromised. In this excellent new video, Motivational Interviewing expert Cathy Cole offers practical tools to help you support and empower adolescents dealing with health concerns, in the spirit of attunement and partnership. You’ll watch Cole and her colleague apply MI to four engaging sessions with teenage clients, and you’ll learn strategies for applying these skills in your own practice.

Cole begins with an overview of MI’s key principles. You’ll learn about the “MI Spirit”; the open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries (otherwise known as OARS) that comprise MI’s skill set; the four MI processes of engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning; change talk and sustain talk; and “the righting reflex.” In sessions with Sean, Carlotta, Olga, and Missy, you’ll observe how to use MI to manage risk, communicate nonjudgment, deepen rapport, and draw out your clients’ innate strengths. This video also offers realistic commentary, in which Cole discusses both the successes and the challenges of each session and then discusses how to work with your own “righting reflex” to clinical benefit.

This video is an necessary resource for clinicians who want proven strategies for using Motivational Interviewing with teens, health issues, or even the general population.

By watching this video, you will:
• List the key tenets of Motivational Interviewing (MI) and its application to adolescent health behavior.
• Describe how to engage and empower clients using a collaborative, nonjudgmental approach.
• Compile helpful tools for working with your own urges to advise or “fix” a client.