Ep. 219: Dr. Michelle Drapkin — Therapy 3. How to Overcome Common Barriers to Behavior Change

My guest this week is Dr. Michelle Drapkin, a clinical psychologist, therapist, and author of an excellent new workbook called The Motivational Interviewing Path to Personal Change: The Essential Workbook for Creating the Life You Want (affiliate link).

Topics we discussed included:

• What motivational interviewing (MI) is and why the name is misleading
• Ambivalence toward change and how it’s addressed with MI
• Living our values in the midst of our ambivalence
• Finding different and more productive avenues to pursue our values
• Prochaska and DiClemente and the Stages of Change model
  • Pre-contemplation
  • Contemplation
  • Preparation
  • Action
  • Maintenance
• Why change is not a completely linear process
• How much of our behavior is conscious and intentional vs. automatic
• Realizing that it’s normal for the mind to think of off-the-wall things
• The meaning (or meaninglessness) of dreams
• The book The Alchemist
• What led Michelle to adapt MI for a self-help workbook
• The practice of “rolling with resistance,” now renamed “dancing with discord”
• Encouraging change talk vs. trying to convince someone they have to change

Michelle Drapkin, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified psychologist who owns and operates the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center, and has worked in behavioral science for over 20 years.

She has held various roles as a behavioral scientist in industry, including leading the development and deployment of behavior change interventions at Johnson & Johnson.

Michelle was a national motivational interviewing (MI) trainer at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and was on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.

She completed her PhD in clinical psychology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; and joined the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) in 2008. She has trained thousands of health care professionals and industry leaders in MI.

Find Michelle online at her website and on LinkedIn.