Helping Without Directing: Navigating Ambivalence with Neutrality

With some decisions and change goals clients are ambivalent about making there is a clear ethical need for the practitioner to intentionally guide a person’s thinking and motivation in a particular direction toward resolution of ambivalence. Motivational Interviewing is an evidenced-based method to achieve this.

There are however decisions and change goals people are ambivalent about making where it would be unethical for the practitioner to intentionally guide the person’s thinking and motivation in a particular direction. This could be because the practitioner has no opinion yet about what direction would be best for the person or because they think they should not influence the choice one way or the other even if they do have an opinion. In this situation the practitioner would adopt the practice of navigating change and ambivalence with neutrality.

This practical and interactive 2 day in-person training provides the inter-personal way of being and core skills when there is a conscious intentional decision not to use one’s professional presence and skills to guide a person toward making a specific decision or change, they are ambivalent about.

This course is aimed at practitioners who explore dilemmas about decision making or change with people who present as ambivalent.

By the end of the training, you will be able to:

• Discuss the nature of navigating change and ambivalence with neutrality
• Discuss the underlying inter-personal way of being and core skills when navigating with neutrality
• Discuss how to practice the decisional balance framework to explore ambivalence
• Discuss how to offer information using the Ask-Ask-Offer-Ask framework.

Informed Level:  The informed level specifies the baseline practice-specific knowledge and skills every worker in the drugs and alcohol sector should be developing upon entering employment. 

If interested in this course please contact us.