Having started my humanistic counselling journey from a philosophical viewpoint (as per my course), and prior to that as a social psychology student, I nonetheless initially struggled to reconcile my previous studies rooted in quantitative analysis (dominated by p-values, statistically-significant differences, effect sizes, and the like) with humanistic philosophy’s emphasis on the qualitative (with hermeneutics, phenomenology, and themes being more prevalent). Indeed, I’m thankful my instructors gave me some warning (or at least, some information) regarding this challenge, to assist me in pondering a different way of learning and working in a therapeutic setting.
Post my PGDip, one of the ideas that intrigued me is William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick’s Motivational Interviewing (MI). I initially learned of this from colleagues specialising on supporting those looking to change harmful and addictive-type behaviour. While this push towards change sounds counter to humanistic philosophy’s ‘let someone be their best self’ mentality, I feel it supports the fundamentals, such as the Paradoxical Theory of Change. MI allows a therapist and client to reflect on the latter’s purpose and drive for making a change (or not), via a model contemplating the what’s, when’s, why’s, and how’s of a certain behaviour or thought.
Decisional balancing, for instance, asks the client to scrutinise the pluses and minuses of changing or not changing (ie. maintaining) a behaviour; if a client is exploring weight loss, a therapist might also help them ponder the reasons why they want to go to the gym (“I might lose weight quicker”, “I might feel more accomplished”, “I would have more energy”) and what is stopping them from doing so (“but I already walk a lot”, “the gym is costly”, “I have some equipment at home anyway”). The key is that this is still the individual’s own examination, answers and ultimately, their decision: it’s still very much focused on the unique history, experiences and perception of the client, as is core to humanistic therapy. Seeing words like model or behaviour change may send shivers to many budding humanistic therapists as they did to me originally, but as reviewed, MI involves a therapist being in a working relationship with a client as they discover, identify and honestly question what their own goals may be, what motivates them, what stops them and what is realistic about what they can and can’t (or want to or not want to) do.
Personally, I found MI to be a bridge between my previous learning involving process-driven results, to being in an individual therapeutic relationship with a person. While I appreciate having my roots in humanistic philosophy, I was comforted to find a connection between this foundation and the also-familiar ground of the more process-based offering of MI.
Coincidentally, and akin to a parallel process, I feel this linking of my own academic journeys has indeed helped me to discover my own self more as a therapist, and hoping that in doing so, I can better be with others to help them with their own discovery.
