Root Cause? MI is Interested in Root Motivation!

Many of us, as helping professionals, are trained to look for the root cause problem.

We notice barriers, issues, problems, and our brains want to go toward identifying those and fixing those. 

In Motivational Interviewing, we aren’t looking for the root cause, we are looking for root motivation!

This shift of focus of attention has big impacts. 

We know from change research that the more people talk about change, the more likely they are to change. So if we are helping our clients focus on motivation, we grow that motivation! (And alternately, if we are focusing on the problems or barriers, we can accidentally grow the stuckness). 

In Motivational Interviewing, when people talk about change, it’s called change talk. Change talk is a client’s argument for change.

And because ambivalence is normal, and change is hard, when people are struggling with change you will also hear arguments against change. And if we dig for the root cause of the stuckness, we will likely uncover more sustain talk.

Motivational Interviewing calls that sustain talk. It’s the stuck talk, the “why not change” talk. It’s called sustain talk because it’s arguing for the status quo, or sustaining the current situation. 

We have lots of reasons to maintain the status quo!

Since the percentage of change talk expressed in a session has been shown to be positively related to improved behavioral outcomes,

 

In this 2014 research study, Probability analyses showed change talk reflections were 11 times more likely to be followed by change talk (and 71% less likely to be followed by counter change talk), and sustain talk reflections were 19 times more likely to be followed by sustain talk (and 65% less likely to be followed by change talk). 

One caveat– of COURSE identifying barriers is an important process to supporting change. Of course! We can do that, while also paying attention to the percentage of time we spend dwelling on the problem and keeping a clearer direction on change talk!

MI Tip of the Week: Notice that you likely naturally are drawn to identifying problems and barriers that are keeping your client stuck. That’s natural! However, the more time we linger on this sustain talk, the more likely they are to give more sustain talk and stay stuck. As Motivational Interviewers, we want to spend more time and effort applying our OARS skills to elicit and reinforce change talk! The more a person talks about their motivations for change, the more likely they are to make those changes!

Watch my full video here!