Topic: client engagement and motivation

It’s difficult to squeeze a lot of motivational work into the course of outpatient counseling. Clinicians are anxious to get to the behavior change part.

Some members are talkative enough, but others participate minimally and a couple are openly hostile and challenging.

With ‘coerced’ clients, it’s easy to fall into a little game with the client striving to appear in compliance while covertly doing whatever he wants.

My outpatients get discouraged very easily. They may actually be doing pretty well for somebody new to recovery, but they don’t seem to realize it.

Use examples. It’s hard for someone with alcoholism to grasp the idea that he or she can’t go back to drinking at some future point – after a year of abstinence, for instance. But the old saw that a pickle can’t go back to being a cucumber – that people seem to understand.

I wasn’t trained in how to incorporate material about faith and God into counseling. Most of my graduate school education was on traditional social work practice.