The Four Processes of MI

Name: The Four Processes of MI
Uploaded: 2025-11-16T00:06:11.000Z
Description: Theresa Moyers distinguishes the four basic processes of MI.

Theresa Moyers distinguishes the four basic processes of MI.

From the course

Motivational Interviewing - Foundational

There are four basic processes in Motivational Interviewing. The first is engaging. And this is where the emphasis on building an alliance and a working relationship with your client. The first process in motivational interviewing is the foundation. Nothing else can happen. Until engaging is present. The important thing to remember is that engaging is where you ought to spend your time to get payoffs in the later processes in Motivational Interviewing. The second process is focusing. This is where you and your client come to a shared idea about what is the main focus of the time that you'll be spending together. You can spend a lot of time talking about one problem or concern or behavior after another, or even a desire change one after the other. And never really make progress moving towards any of them unless you eventually come to a shared focus. The third process is evoking. And this is where you, as the interviewer, will be taking a special emphasis on bringing out the clients own arguments for change, their own hopes for themselves. Clients speaking the reasons for change is the gold thread in motivational interviewing. And the evoking process is about finding that gold thread of change change talk and pulling on it until you hear more and more and more. And fourth, finally, we have planning. Planning is that process that occurs when the client is willing to envision an important change and how exactly they might go about making it. The important thing to remember is that in the planning process, we're going to carry through the spirit of motivational interviewing in that planning so that really, the client's autonomy is supported, and it's a collaborative power-sharing interaction that happens when the planning is done as opposed to an expert driven process that you might find in some other kinds of treatment approaches. We'll be examining each of these four processes in detail in our course. And you'll have plenty of time to get to know each one of them in detail.