9 Different Ways Counselling Can Motivate People

There are a variety of ways people feel motivated to change things that are important in their lives. In this article, I'm going to share a list of nine ways counselling can support people's motivation:

1. Empowering and mobilizing a person's strengths and resources:

   In counselling, we support a person's autonomy and self-determination. This enables them to represent their own interests responsibly and act on their own authority. Together, we identify their strengths, including their knowledge, skills, and talents. We also assemble their resources, both internal and external, to help satisfy their needs and wants.

   
   

2. Crisis intervention to restore a person's sense of safety, control, and balance: Counselling can support a sense of safety, control, and balance in a person's life during times of crisis and chaos. Meeting essential needs and assisting with how to prioritize and plan for stability, is a critical step toward building motivation. These immediate and short term responses may involve establishing a relationship, understanding the problem and ensuring safety, providing support with possible solutions, making a plan, and committing to taking action steps.

   
   

3. Anti-oppressive practices to address potential issues with power dynamics:

   If a person has experienced oppression in the past, it is likely to get triggered in other situations where there are relationships involving power dynamics. Counselling can include anti-oppressive practices to address these issues and restore a sense of equality, equity, fairness, and dignity for people. It can teach knowledge and skills for coping with protective and defensive responses that get activated when experiencing oppression.

   
   

4. Strengths approach with motivational interviewing to help people overcome ambivalence:

   Counselling values a strengths based approach which focuses on what is working well in peoples' lives, instead of on what is deficient. It emphasizes the best qualities of a person and the belief in their potential and capacity for change and growth. This combined with motivational interviewing techniques, can develop the discrepancies which create ambivalence, and roll with any resistance that comes up in the stages of change process. Hearing the right open questions that encourage us to examine ways to close the gap between where we are in the present and where we want to go in the future, can be very motivating.

   
   

5. Stages of change model to support interventions that match a person's readiness for change:

   The stages of change model supports using strategies that are matched and aligned with a person's readiness for change. It requires the counsellor to listen deeply to a person's expression of their thoughts and feelings, and to notice non-verbal cues. These verbal and non-verbal expressions give clues about what stage a person is at. They might be in the pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, or maintenance stages. If we don't understand a person's readiness for change and move to quickly with a specific therapeutic action or process, this can increase their resistance and distrust, and decrease motivation.

   
   

6. Empathy, radical acceptance, and amplified reflection:

   In counselling, we seek to deeply understand a person's feelings and their experience. We are constantly working to bring unconditional positive regard and acceptance of all the parts of a person. We also use different ways of reflecting what we hear. This includes amplifying or intensifying what he hear back to the speaker, so they can really consider what they have said and clarify it if needed. These therapeutic approaches can deeply motivate individuals by fostering a unique and supportive relationship. Many of us have never experienced this in relationship with another person, not even a close family member, intimate partner, or friend.

   
   

7. Therapy to identify and modify unhelpful thinking and problematic behavior:

   Counselling therapies can assist with understanding and changing ways of thinking (or beliefs) that lead to problematic behavior. Most of us are living life on automatic pilot during our every day routines and habits. We are not connecting the dots between how we think and how we act, in real time. In order to get our needs met and live the life we want, it's important to learn how to navigate the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and actions. Our emotion, feelings, and body sensations are not isolated parts in this process. Realizing we can learn new knowledge and skills which give us power over changing this, is rewarding and motivating.

   
   

8. SMART goal setting, problem solving, and action strategies with plans:

   SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-limited. In counselling, we are privileged with the resources to explore problems and solutions. We can get clarity about how to set goals and create plans that specify the actions we want to take to achieve our goals. Support and guidance through this process is beneficial. It's not an easy or simple thing to do on one's own. Going from talking, listening, and brainstorming these concepts, to putting them down on paper and then implementing them, can inspire motivation.

   
   

9. Brief counselling with solution-focused talk to move beyond problems:

   Brief solution-focused talk in counselling is a goal-directed, collaborative approach to therapeutic change. It is considered short-term and evidence-based, with an emphasis on incorporating positive psychology. The counsellor and participant work together in partnership, sometimes using a series of precisely constructed questions that focus on the moments in a person's life when the problem or issue is not present. Because there are times when the problem or issue has not been active, it must mean that a person was engaged in using their strengths and abilities. So, we highlight these abilities to be useful in the present moment for solving problems. This is why it is called "solution-focused." It can be empowering and motivating.

   
   

These are nine ways counselling can motivate people. It is not an exhaustive or precise list, but a starting point. I hope you find that reading it has offered something new or useful for you to reflect on. The process of change and motivation are complex and there is no one size fits all approach because every person is unique and influenced by many things, including the social and cultural nature of their development.