Summaries that Focus & Guide

The Motivational Interviewing OARS deep dive continues! This is the fourth and final in my OARS series as it relates to CHANGE TALK in Motivational Interviewing. 

In Motivational Interviewing, OARS stand for Open-ended questions, Affirmations, Reflections and Summaries. First, I talked about Open-ended questions, then Affirmations. Then, I shared about Reflections, and finally today, SUMMARIES! 

Woohoo! (Am I the only one that gets this excited about the OARS of Motivational Interviewing?!)

Summaries are used to consolidate and guide conversation in Motivational Interviewing. 

A couple of things we gotta remember- Motivational Interviewing is a guiding style of communication. So when we summarize, we pay particular attention to what we are summarizing. 

Because what we pay attention to grows. 

Clients tend to respond to what we reflect, and if we are reflecting everything a client says in a big ol’ summary, clients can feel overwhelmed and stuck. 

And we aren’t in the business of helping clients stay stuck!

Our first task is to listen for Motivational Interviewing Change Talk.

Then, we provide it back to clients like a bouquet of ‘change talk flowers’ we have picked up along the way.

People become more connected to what they say, and then when they hear it reflected back to them- it’s like a double whammy of motivation!

In this same selective way, summaries FOCUS the conversation. If clients talk about lots of different things, you can use summaries to help clients focus by reflecting the topic back to clients.

Summaries consolidate and guide conversation!

Motivational Interviewing Tip of the Week: Listen for that Motivational Interviewing Change Talk! (Your clients desires, abilities, reasons & needs for change). Then, provide this change talk back to them in summaries. Our goal is to help clients stay focused and hear the change talk they provide! 

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Watch my full video here!