Working with mistrust and ambivalence in helping services: an introduction to motivational interviewing and mentalizing

About this training

This training consists of an engaging combination of live teaching, group discussion, skills practice, and interactive online activities. Opportunities to practice new skills in a supportive environment and practical tools you can use straight away in your work.

This training brings together two evidence-based approaches:

Motivational Interviewing (MI): A respectful, person-centered way of talking that helps people explore their own reasons for change without pressure or judgment. Which focuses on learning about the cycle of change and how this can help you to better recognise and work with ambivalence to support change.

Mentalizing (MZ): Mentalizing is the human capacity for making sense of behaviour by considering the mind that is driving the behaviour. We can mentalize ourselves and mentalize others. Mentalizing capacity is fragile, however - both in those we try to help and in us as workers. Under conditions of stress or distress, we struggle to mentalize.

Aims of this training

This training will give you the tools to:

• Build stronger, more trusting relationships with clients who may have good reasons to mistrust.

• Develop skills that address ambivalence and elicit clients’ own motivation to change.

• Respond more effectively and collaboratively to change and sustain talk.

• Help your clients to understand their own emotional temperature and be able to reflect on their thoughts and feelings and how this influences their behaviour.

• Support motivation for change.

Who is this training for?

This training is for frontline workers and practitioners supporting young people or adults from a wide range of roles and settings, including:

• Mental and physical health services

• Substance use services

• Youth work and family support

• Social work and safeguarding

• Housing and homelessness services

• Primary care

• Criminal justice and probation

• Education and pastoral care

No prior experience with MI or mentalizing is required, just a willingness to learn and reflect.