Ep 85 – Ambivalence and Motivational Interviewing
Talking To Change - A Motivational Interviewing PodcastShow Notes
Glenn and Sebastian were happy to welcome back Dr. Allan Zuckoff to the podcast to discuss ambivalence. Allan is a clinical psychologist who has dedicated the past 30 years to motivational interviewing (MI) research, training, implementation, and practice. As a clinician, teacher, and clinical researcher in the departments of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh for more than two decades, he oversaw intervention development, training, and fidelity monitoring for a dozen clinical trials testing novel applications of MI in substance use, mental health, and health behavior setting; he has presented widely at international meetings and published more than 40 articles and chapters on this work. More recently, he has been responsible for clinical innovation in design and execution of MI-based telehealth advance care planning and patient navigation programs.
Allan has been a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) since 1998. He served for nine years on MINT’s Board of Directors, including three as Chair, and was Editor of the MINT Bulletin and MINT’s online journal, Motivational Interviewing: Training, Research, Implementation, Practice (MITRIP). He has trained professionals from a variety of disciplines on three continents and served as a MINT trainer of trainers. He is the author of the self-guided MI book Finding Your Way to Change: How the Power of Motivational Interviewing Can Reveal What You Want and Help You Get There, published by Guilford Press and available in English, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish.
Ambivalence in Motivational Interviewing
Allan Zuckoff explores ambivalence as a central human experience and an important focus within Motivational Interviewing. He considers ambivalence as an internal conflict rather than resistance, and discusses how values, importance and confidence can help practitioners understand the different directions a person may be pulled towards.
The conversation also explores discord, hidden ambivalence, values card sorts and the practitioner’s capacity to stay alongside uncertainty without rushing to resolve it. These themes connect with Sustain Talk, Discord and Reflective Listening.
In this episode
0:00 – Episode intro
10:10 – Allan’s introduction and early MI story
15:00 – The core of MI stays the same
23:10 – What is ambivalence?
27:10 – Ambivalence as a conflict within ourselves
31:15 – The role of values in separating the two sides of ambivalence
34:55 – Importance and confidence scaling
41:15 – Resonance as a metaphor
47:15 – Discord and the capacity to tolerate ambivalence
59:45 – The benefits of ambivalence
1:12:00 – Hidden ambivalence and the use of the Values Card Sort
1:20:00 – “There’s a good reason for everything that people do”
1:26:10 – “Foxes and hedgehogs”
1:30:15 – End of episode
Links and resources:
– Allan’s email – [email protected]
– Allan’s website – www.allanzuckoff.com
– Allan’s blog – https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/allan-zuckoff-phd
– Allan’s book – Finding Your Way to Change: How the Power of Motivational Interviewing Can Reveal What You Want and Help You Get There. Guilford Press, 2015.
Continue the learning with the MI Practice Companion
Explore the key ideas from this episode in greater depth, listen to selected extracts and use practical reflection and deliberate-practice activities.
Working with Ambivalence in Motivational Interviewing: Practice Lessons from Dr Allan Zuckoff →
Listen to Episode 85
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