When knowing what to do isn’t the problem

Often, we know what we need to do. Sometimes, knowing isn’t the problem!

The topic today is going to be a technique used by therapeutic service providers to help people to enact positive changes in their lives.

While this is a necessarily dialectic practice (i.e., it involves a back-and-forth dialogue), it’s still perfectly possible to do it alone, and that’s what we’ll be focussing on in this main feature.

What is Motivational Interviewing?

❝Motivational interviewing (MI) is a technique that has been specifically developed to help motivate ambivalent patients to change their behavior.❞

Read in full: Motivational Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Approach for Use in Medical Practice

It’s mostly used for such things as helping people reduce or eliminate substance abuse, or manage their weight, or exercise more, things like that.

However, it can be employed for any endeavour that requires motivation and sustained willpower to carry it through.

Three Phases

Motivational Interviewing traditionally has three phases:

1. Exploring and understanding the issue at hand
2. Guiding and deciding importance and goals
3. Choosing and setting an action plan

In self-practice, maybe you can already know and understand what it is that you want/need to change.

If not, consider asking yourself such questions as:

• What does a good day look like? What does a bad day look like?
• If things are not good now, when were they good? What changed?
• If everything were perfect now, what would that look like? How would you know?

Once you have a clear idea of where you want to be, the next thing to know is: how much do you want it? And how confident are you in attaining it?

This is a critical process:

• Give your answers numerically on a scale from 0 to 10
• Whatever your score, ask yourself why it’s not lower. For example, if you scored your motivation 4 and your confidence 2, what factors made your motivation not a lower number? What factors made your confidence not a lower number?
• In the unlikely event that you gave yourself a 0, ask whether you can really afford to scrap the goal. If you can’t, find something, anything, to bring it to at least a 1.
• After you’ve done that, then you can ask yourself the more obvious question of why your numbers aren’t higher. This will help you identify barriers to overcome.

Now you’re ready to choose what to focus on and how to do it. Don’t bite off more than you can chew; it’s fine to start low and work up. You should revisit this regularly, just like you would if you had a counsellor helping you.

Some things to ask yourself at this stage of the motivational self-interviewing:

• What’s a good SMART goal to get you started?
• What could stop you from achieving your goal?
  • How could you overcome that challenge?
  • What is your backup plan, if you have to scale back your goal for some reason?

A conceptual example: if your goal is to stick to a whole foods Mediterranean diet, but you are attending a wedding next week, then now is the time to decide in advance 1) what personal lines-in-the-sand you will or will not draw 2) what secondary, backup plan you will make to not go too far off track.

The same example in practice: wedding menus often offer meat/fish/vegetarian options, so you might choose the fish or vegetarian, and as for sugar and alcohol, you might limit yourself to “a small slice of wedding cake only; coffee/cheese option instead of dessert”, and “alcohol only for toasts”.

Giving yourself the permission well in advance for small (clearly defined and boundaried!) diversions from the plan, will stop you from falling into the trap of “well, since today’s a cheat-day now…”

Secret fourth stage

The secret here is to keep going back and reassessing at regular intervals. Set your own calendar; you might want to start out weekly and then move to monthly when you’re more strongly on-track.

For this reason, it’s good to keep a journal with your notes from your self-interview sessions, the scores you gave yourself, the goals and plans you set, etc.

When conducting your regular review, be sure to examine what worked for you, and what didn’t (and why). That way, you can practice trial-and-improvement as you go.

Want to learn more?

We only have so much room here, but there are lots of resources out there.

Here’s a high-quality page that:

• explains motivational interviewing in more depth than we have room for here
• offers a lot of free downloadable resource packs and the like

Check it out: Motivational Interviewing Theory & Resources

Enjoy!

How To Leverage Attachment Theory In Your Relationship

Attachment theory has come to be seen in “kids nowadays”’ TikTok circles as almost a sort of astrology, but that’s not what it was intended for, and there’s really nothing esoteric about it.

What it can be, is a (fairly simple, but) powerful tool to understand about our relationships with each other.

To demystify it, let’s start with a little history…

Attachment theory was conceived by developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, and popularized as a theory bypsychiatrist John Bowlby. The two would later become research partners.

• Dr. Ainsworth’s initial work focused on children having different attachment styles when it came to their caregivers: secure, avoidant, or anxious.
• Later, she would add a fourth attachment style: disorganized, and then subdivisions, such as anxious-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant.
• Much later, the theory would be extended to attachments in (and between) adults.

What does it all mean?

To understand this, we must first talk about “The Strange Situation”.

“The Strange Situation” was an experiment conducted by Dr. Ainsworth, in which a child would be observed playing, while caregivers and strangers would periodically arrive and leave, recreating a natural environment of most children’s lives. Each child’s different reactions were recorded, especially noting:

• The child’s reaction (if any) to their caregiver’s departure
• The child’s reaction (if any) to the stranger’s presence
• The child’s reaction (if any) to their caregiver’s return
• The child’s behavior on play, specifically, how much or little the child explored and played with new toys

She observed different attachment styles, including:

1. Secure: a securely attached child would play freely, using the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore. Will engage with the stranger when the caregiver is also present. May become upset when the caregiver leaves, and happy when they return.
2. Avoidant: an avoidantly attached child will not explore much regardless of who is there; will not care much when the caregiver departs or returns.
3. Anxious: an anxiously attached child may be clingy before separation, helplessly passive when the caregiver is absent, and difficult to comfort upon the caregiver’s return.
4. Disorganized: a disorganizedly attached child may flit between the above types

These attachment styles were generally reflective of the parenting styles of the respective caregivers:

1. If a caregiver was reliably present (physically and emotionally), the child would learn to expect that and feel secure about it.
2. If a caregiver was absent a lot (physically and/or emotionally), the child would learn to give up on expecting a caregiver to give care.
3. If a caregiver was unpredictable a lot in presence (physical and/or emotional), the child would become anxious and/or confused about whether the caregiver would give care.

What does this mean for us as adults?

As we learn when we are children, tends to go for us in life. We can change, but we usually don’t. And while we (usually) no longer rely on caregivers per se as adults, we do rely (or not!) on our partners, friends, and so forth. Let’s look at it in terms of partners:

1. A securely attached adult will trust that their partner loves them and will be there for them if necessary. They may miss their partner when absent, but won’t be anxious about it and will look forward to their return.
2. An avoidantly attached adult will not assume their partner’s love, and will feel their partner might let them down at any time. To protect themself, they may try to manage their own expectations, and strive always to keep their independence, to make sure that if the worst happens, they’ll still be ok by themself.
3. An anxiously attached adult will tend towards clinginess, and try to keep their partner’s attention and commitment by any means necessary.

Which means…

• When both partners have secure attachment styles, most things go swimmingly, and indeed, securely attached partners most often end up with each other.
• A very common pairing, however, is one anxious partner dating one avoidant partner. This happens because the avoidant partner looks like a tower of strength, which the anxious partner needs. The anxious partner’s clinginess can also help the avoidant partner feel better about themself (bearing in mind, the avoidant partner almost certainly grew up feeling deeply unwanted).
• Anxious-anxious pairings happen less because anxiously attached people don’t tend to be attracted to people who are in the same boat.
• Avoidant-avoidant pairings happen least of all, because avoidantly attached people having nothing to bind them together. Iff they even get together in the first place, then later when trouble hits, one will propose breaking up, and the other will say “ok, bye”.

This is fascinating, but is there a practical use for this knowledge?

Yes! Understanding our own attachment styles, and those around us, helps us understand why we/they act a certain way, and realize what relational need is or isn’t being met, and react accordingly.

That sometimes, an anxiously attached person just needs some reassurance:

• “I love you”
• “I miss you”
• “I look forward to seeing you later”

That sometimes, an avoidantly attached person needs exactly the right amount of space:

• Give them too little space, and they will feel their independence slipping, and yearn to break free
• Give them too much space, and oops, they’re gone now

Maybe you’re reading that and thinking “won’t that make their anxious partner anxious?” and yes, yes it will. That’s why the avoidant partner needs to skip back up and remember to do the reassurance.

It helps also when either partner is going to be away (physically or emotionally! This counts the same for if a partner will just be preoccupied for a while), that they parameter that, for example:

• Not: “Don’t worry, I just need some space for now, that’s all” (à la “I am just going outside and may be some time“)
• But: “I need to be undisturbed for a bit, but let’s schedule some me-and-you-time for [specific scheduled time]”.

Want to learn more about addressing attachment issues?

Psychology Today: Ten Ways to Heal Your Attachment Issues

You also might enjoy such articles such as:

• Nurturing secure attachment: building healthy relationships
• Why anxious and avoidant often attracted each other
• How to help an insecurely attached partner feel loved
• How to cope with a dismissive-avoidant partner

Lastly, to end on a light note…