When clients enter addiction treatment, they often have some mental resistance or ambivalence to the process. This is entirely normal, but it can still make the endeavor more difficult. For this reason, techniques like motivational enhancement therapy that directly address personal investment in healing can prove especially useful. If you’d like to learn more about addiction recovery in Ohio and the specific benefits of motivational enhancement therapy, contact Ray Recovery. Our caring team is available at 888.598.6299, and we look forward to connecting with you.
What Is Motivational Enhancement Therapy?
Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET) is a style of counseling that typically takes just a few weeks and can be completed as part of a more extensive addiction recovery program. Many types of substance use disorder respond well to MET, including addictions to heroin, prescription opioids, and alcohol. Essentially, MET can be thought of as a positivist approach in which the main goal is to cultivate a client’s inherent ability to create and stick to change for themselves.
MET’s basic strategy lies in the therapist addressing the client’s lack of certainty or investment in the process in a straightforward but non-argumentative manner. In this way, the therapist can ultimately help the client develop greater confidence and self-efficacy in their recovery journey.
MET therapists utilize several major techniques, including:
- Taking stock of each individual client’s preparedness for lasting behavioral change through a written assessment conducted before in-person sessions
- Collaborating with the client on examining any areas where they feel uncertainty or ambivalence about treatment
- Asking open-ended questions and then utilizing reflective listening and summaries to reflect back to the client what they’ve heard
- Giving the client an enormous amount of encouragement and positive affirmation by expressing empathy for challenging experiences and validating the client’s strength
What Are MET’s Benefits?
MET offers many benefits for people in substance use disorder treatment. Just a few of the potential gains include:
- It can make the rest of treatment more effective by reducing clients’ resistance. MET meets clients where they’re at and acknowledges that they likely aren’t 100% on board with treatment at the beginning of their program. Surprisingly, this very acknowledgment tends to help clients become more closely aligned with treatment rather than less. This helps them get more out of other rehab offerings.
- It’s relatively efficient in terms of time. Unlike many other therapeutic forms, MET tends to last just four to six sessions. While its practitioners certainly don’t claim the therapy is a cure-all, when used in combination with other techniques, it can make a huge positive impact.
- It’s very empowering. MET centralizes the client’s capacity to choose for themselves. While addiction can feel very isolating and disempowering, MET, by contrast, helps them align with their own deepest motivations for getting sober and regaining agency in their lives.
- It grows clients’ self-awareness and helps them cope with inner turmoil. While some level of cognitive dissonance is unavoidable in life, it can often get out of hand during substance use. Cognitive dissonance refers to the ability of the human brain to hold two contradictory beliefs. For instance, many clients understand they could live healthier lives if they get sober but simultaneously believe that they can’t cope without drugs. MET has a particularly strong ability to help clients untangle such cognitive dissonance.
- It provides the client with respect at a time when they may not feel seen or heard. MET centralizes empathy and non-argumentative communication. This can be a breath of fresh air to clients who may feel disempowered or rejected by family or society.
Learn More About the Benefits of MET at Ray Recovery Today
Why wait to get quality support for addiction recovery? At Ray Recovery in Hudson, Ohio, we strive to give you and your family the best odds of long-term success by using evidence-based treatments like motivational enhancement therapy. Call 888.598.6299 or reach out online to learn more.
