Topic 3: Respond to sustain talk: Roll with resistance
Roll with resistance
Evocative Questions
The use of Evocative questions is often helpful in working with clients showing resistance to change. The following are a few tips in this regard.
- Disadvantages of the status quo
- What worries you about your current situation?
- What makes you think that you need to do something about your blood pressure?
- What difficulties or hassles have you had in relation to your drug use?
- What is there about your drinking that you or other people might see as reasons for concern?
- In what ways does this concern you?
- How has this stopped you from doing what you want to do in life?
- What do you think will happen if you don’t change anything?
- Advantages of change
- How would you like for things to be different?
- What would be the good things about losing weight?
- What would you like your life to be like 5 years from now?
- If you could make this change immediately, by magic, how might things be better for you?
- The fact that you’re here indicates that at least part of you thinks it’s time to do something. What are the main reasons you see for making a change?
- What would be the advantages of making this change?
- Optimism about change
- What makes you think that if you did decide to make a change, you could do it?
- What encourages you that you can change if you want to?
- What do you think would work for you, if you decided to change?
- When else in your life have you made a significant change like this? How did you do it?
- How confident are you that you can make this change?
- Who could offer you helpful support in making this change?
- Intention to change
- What are you thinking about your gambling at this point?
- I can see that you’re feeling stuck at the moment. What’s going to have to change?
- What do you think you might do?
- How important is this to you? How much do you want to do this? What would you be willing to try?
- Of the options I’ve mentioned, which one sounds like it fits you best? Never mind the “how” for right now- what do you want to have happen? So what do you intend to do?
Process of Change Talk by Ms. Ashwathi P G
A brief summary of Handling Resistance during Change talk
Scaling questions
Scaling questions to elicit more change talk
Doctor/Counsellor: On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 not confident at all and 10 extremely confident, how confident are you that you can stop smoking?
Patient: Probably like a 6 or 7.
Doctor/Counsellor: A 6 or 7. What made you say this rather than a 2 or 3?
Patient: I don’t know, I guess I know it’s affecting my health and my wife would be happy.
Doctor/Counsellor: You know it will help improve your health and it will make the ones you love happy. What else?
Increasing commitment language and reducing sustain talk directly correlate to behavior change
