Ambivalence Blocks Advice

Name: Ambivalence Blocks Advice
Uploaded: 2025-11-02T00:06:27.000Z
Description: Theresa Moyers talks about the challenge of offering people advice when they are ambivalent.

Theresa Moyers talks about the challenge of offering people advice when they are ambivalent.

From the course

Motivational Interviewing - Foundational

Cast your mind back to the last time you had a friend who was involved in a passionate, but crazy relationship with someone else. And your friend says something to you that sounds like this. Yeah. I met this person. They're my soulmate. I really love them. I love everything about them. Except for the part where they're kind of following me and keeping track of me and they don't want me to see my friends anymore. Except for that, I really liked them a lot. This is really working out. Now your response to this might be something like what's the matter with you, run, get away from that person as fast as you can. And if you say that, what are you very likely to hear in response? Well, what you're not likely to hear is thank you for that advice. Instead, you're going to hear yes... but! When you say get away from this person, get away from the relationship, They're gonna say to you. Yes! But! Didn't you hear me say this person is so wonderful and I I love almost everything about them? If on the other hand, you were to say, you know, every relationship has problems. I think you can work it out. Stick with it. The person's gonna say to you what? Yes! But... But they're gonna tell you the opposite. They're gonna say, haven't you heard me say, this person is driving me crazy, they're keeping me away from my friends? The point of this is that when a person is ambivalent, they're an particularly unreceptive to direction and advice from us. And what we pull from them instead is the "Yes... but! " response.