Client-centered Direction: Or How to Get There When You’re Not Sure Where You’re Going

Change is broader than behavior, and often starts before a goal or plan is conceived, with clients first opening up to the vague possibility of betterness. Collaboration is a hallmark of MI spirit, and therapeutic direction can be developed collaboratively in MI through the process of evoking client values, desires, needs, hopes, and goals. Counselors may initially aspire to help clients find better lives, and narrow the focus to discrete change goals when specific client behaviors are collaboratively identified as obstacles to achieving a better life, or when absence of behaviors is identified as inhibiting progress toward it