Resilience Focused Motivational Interviewing

You became a helping professional because you want to support people. When someone comes to you in crisis, it's tempting to try to solve the problems causing their distress. Instead, how can you create space for someone to self-regulate, move out of survival mode and return to a space where thoughtful exploration is possible?

In this course, we'll explore how resiliency pauses can be blended with cultural inclusivity and Motivational Interviewing (MI) techniques to help clients reconnect with their motivations and feel empowered to make changes that align with their goals. Braiding together resilience and MI strengthens your ability to partner across cultures with clients who are dysregulated by stress or trauma reminders. Just as a braid is stronger than any single strand, these elements reinforce one another and create a more powerful, compassionate approach to helping clients.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, participants will be able to: 

• Discuss the impact of stress and trauma on the mind, body, spirit and culture
• Apply Community Resiliency Model tools for self-care and to support others in returning to their resilience zone
• Demonstrate the ability to ask open-ended questions, reflect and affirm clients to build a collaborative and empowering relationship
• Integrate Resiliency Pauses into Motivational Interviewing

How You'll Learn

• Instructor-led presentation on current literature and research
• Large group discussion of presentation content
• Small group dialogue and discussion to apply concepts
• Self-reflection and self-exploration
• In-class practice using real play and role-play scenarios

Learner Level

Intermediate

Prerequisite: To succeed in this course, you should have recently completed a foundational MI course or equivalent and be able to explain the MI principles, spirit, processes and core skills. It is highly recommended that you come to this course with previous practice applying the MI core skills (e.g., responding to sustain talk, discord and evoking change talk).

Looking for a foundational MI course? Check out Establishing a Foundation for Motivational Interviewing Skills or the Building Motivational Interviewing Competency Certificate.