Counseling Psychology - helping to make choices

I am a Board Certified Professional Counselor and also a Licensed Marriage, Family Therapist. Counseling psychology or life coaching in general is where the challenges people are working on are often common life issues. This basically involves helping people to get from where they are at now to where they want to be. I’ve had training in counseling psychology and now I am working on advanced training in Motivational Interviewing. Motivational Interviewing is a person-centered, guiding method of communication and counseling to elicit and strengthen motivation for change. Motivational Interviewing works well with people who have ambivalence. Ambivalence (i.e. “torn between a rock and a hard spot”) is a normal state for the majority of people to be in. An example could be that a person knows they should do more of something, less of something, or that they need to change their behavior in some way but they’re not changing their behavior and they don’t understand why. I help them understand why they’re not changing their behavior. However, that understanding is not what helps them to change their behavior. The next step is to help them find the motivation within themselves to change that behavior. Then I help them to clarify and strengthen that motivation. This involves analyzing, determining, or deciding what is important enough to them to cause them or inspire them to change their behavior or make a different choice. Motivational interviewing techniques really come into play in these circumstances as we explore and resolve ambivalence as well as nurture hope and confidence that change can happen.