Back to the Basics

I wanted to make a few posts about the topics we have covered in my program to get a glimpse into what I have been learning this semester. I hope you enjoy!

I was introduced to motivational interviewing (MI) last semester in one of my classes at Oxy as a way for health care providers to interact with patients. MI is essentially a collaborative conversation to help people find and strengthen a person’s own motivation and commitment to change when they are stuck in mentalities of ambivalence. The basics of how to engage in MI are summarized by a nifty acronym: OARS. This stands for Open-ended questions, Affirmations, Reflections, and Summaries. MI is characterized by empathy, collaboration, non-judgment, positivity, hope, honor, and autonomy. But the key element of MI that should be applied throughout these four main elements is reflective listening. As I discovered from an in-class activity at Oxy last semester, reflective listening takes much more than simply following the content of what someone is saying because it has much to do with how you react to what your conversational partner is saying while they are talking and how you respond verbally. After learning about MI in class last semester, I immediately tried to use it in my conversations with my friends when they confided in me their personal issues. It was a fantastic exercise for me because it required that I be reflective not only about what my friends were saying to me bust also about what I say back to them. It helped me be much more mindful about the advice that I give friends and how I attempted to help them achieve some sort of change (be it literal or a change in mentality). While this is not the intended application of MI, I think it’s crucial to engage in these habits when one is having conversations with people about life troubles.

Listening sounds so simple – after all we are taught since pre-school to be good listeners… or so we think. The reality is that listening is much more difficult and requires a huge amount of applied energy, especially when it comes to more global concerns that we have been discussing in my classes herein Switzerland. I spent a lot of timing thinking about constructive conversations in another one of my classes last semester at Oxy where we talked about interreligious dialogue. While conversations based on the theory of interreligious dialogue are not for the purpose of constructive political change, I value the elements of interreligious dialogue and believe they can still be applied to conversations to foster tangible, constructive change within and between nations and groups. This ended up being the inspiring theory behind my culminating junior paper in my major, which I hope to expand upon for my senior thesis. With interreligious dialogue, conversations must be continuous; people must begin with a mutual understanding of not only one’s self but also of the other; there must be equal power dynamics; and actors must constantly engage in self-reflection and self criticism. Ultimately, the goal is understanding, tolerance, and respect, not necessarily compromise.

The conclusion of almost every lecture we have had here has emphasized how imperative multi-sectoral, interdisciplinary cooperation and partnerships are required for any sort of improvement in our world to come. Of course we did actually have an entire lecture on exactly the opposite topic, advocating against any sort of partnerships because of the dangers of conflicts of interest and coercion, but besides this one lecture, cooperation has been the name of the game. Cooperation and collaboration is no easy feat, especially in polarized political and interpersonal contexts restricted by ignorance and intolerance, which seems increasingly prevalent, especially in the US. But I think that if the effort is made to understand the “other” and to really listen, a true difference could be made. This is something that I explored in my junior seminar paper as well as the huge research paper I did this semester and what I plan to look into for my senior thesis. While these papers are all very theoretical, hopefully some concrete action and differences can come of all this. Working together and listening to one another sounds like such simple tasks that we're taught since a young age, yet we must work at these constantly as we grow.