Motivational Interviewing for Behavioral Health Clinicians: Engagement, Ambivalence, and Change Talk

Bring your toughest engagement challenges. Carrington answers participant questions throughout the webinar, so you leave with clarity on the ambivalent, resistant, or stuck clients that actually show up in your caseload rather than generic guidance.

Hear MI modeled through live demonstrations and work through realistic conversations as a group. Listening to how experienced clinicians roll with resistance and evoke change talk builds the clinical instinct that written materials alone cannot teach.

Complete a full 3.5 CE hours in one focused, structured session. Your live CE certificate is issued after the webinar, giving you a meaningful block of your renewal requirement in a single afternoon.

Counselors work daily with clients who feel stuck or ambivalent about change. This training helps counselors strengthen engagement, reduce dropout, and use MI processes and OARS skills to help clients move toward their own goals rather than pushing against resistance.

Social workers meet clients across diverse settings and stages of readiness. This ASWB ACE-approved webinar gives social workers a collaborative, strengths-based framework for building rapport, exploring ambivalence, and supporting client-driven change while honoring self-determination.

Family therapists often work with members at very different levels of motivation. This training provides MFTs with MI strategies for engaging reluctant participants, reducing conflict in the room, and helping individuals and families articulate their own reasons for change.

Motivational Interviewing has deep roots in addiction treatment, where ambivalence about change is often central. This NAADAC-approved webinar helps addiction professionals evoke change talk, roll with resistance, and support sustained recovery motivation across the stages of change.

Psychologists providing therapy, conducting assessments, or supervising trainees benefit from a well-established, evidence-based communication style. This webinar covers the spirit, processes, and skills of MI along with practical guidance for integrating it into varied psychological practice.

Build a foundation in the MI mindset: partnership, acceptance, compassion, and evocation. Explore how ambivalence functions in the change process, why the "righting reflex" often backfires, and how the spirit of MI shapes every skill and technique that follows.

Understand how the four MI processes build on one another, from establishing a working relationship, to clarifying a direction, to drawing out the client's own motivation, to developing a concrete plan. Learn how to move flexibly among the processes as a conversation unfolds.

Practice the foundational communication skills of MI: open questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summaries. Learn how simple and complex reflections deepen engagement and how skillful summaries pull change talk together and move the conversation forward.

Learn to hear the difference between change talk and sustain talk, recognize preparatory and mobilizing change talk, and use targeted questions and reflections to evoke and strengthen a client's own arguments for change without pressure or persuasion.

Develop practical strategies for responding to ambivalence, reluctance, and discord in the relationship. Learn how to roll with resistance, emphasize autonomy, and repair engagement rather than falling into confrontation or a cycle of arguing for change.

Explore how MI is applied across substance use, health behavior change, and general mental health work, and how it can be integrated with approaches such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. Close with ethical considerations, cultural responsiveness, and next steps for continued MI skill development.

1. Register. Reserve your spot for the August 20, 2027 webinar. Individual registration is $70 for all 3.5 CE hours, or attend at no additional cost with an Unlimited Plus membership.

2. Receive your access link. After you register, you will receive a confirmation email with the live webinar link and instructions for joining. A reminder is sent before the event.

3. Attend live. Join on Friday, August 20, 2027 from 12:00 PM to 3:45 PM EST. Attendance for the full session is required to earn your 3.5 live CE hours. Participate in the Q&A and case discussion throughout the session.

4. Complete the post-test and earn your CE certificate. Complete the post-test (required for all live webinars) and course evaluation to receive your 3.5-hour live CE certificate. Your certificate includes all information required by licensing boards.

Process 1: Engaging. Establish a trusting, collaborative working relationship. Engagement is the foundation; without it, the later processes stall. Reflective listening and genuine curiosity help the client feel heard and understood.

Process 2: Focusing. Clarify a direction and agree on what the conversation is about. Focusing helps identify a shared agenda and a specific change goal, balancing the client's priorities with the clinical context.

Process 3: Evoking. Draw out the client's own motivations and reasons for change. Evoking is the process most distinctive to MI: rather than supplying arguments, the clinician elicits and strengthens the client's own change talk.

Process 4: Planning. When the client shows readiness, collaboratively develop a concrete change plan and strengthen commitment, while continuing to honor the client's autonomy and pace.

The OARS Skills. Open questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries are the core communication skills used throughout all four processes to build engagement and surface motivation.

Recognizing Change Talk. Learn to distinguish change talk from sustain talk, notice preparatory and mobilizing change talk, and respond in ways that reinforce the client's own movement toward change.