Have you ever had a client that doesn’t know what to talk about after you make your introduction? I can recall more than one bout of silence when I explained, “We will get to chat for 50-60 minutes in this appointment, so what do you want to talk about?” It is almost as there is so much to talk about, they don’t know where to begin.
Having too many options can be a source of ambivalence for both you and the client. This flood of possibilities makes it hard to identify the best direction to start. The Core Concepts in Mindful Eating: Professional Edition offers an activity called The Thought Compass, which can provide you and your clients with a way to pick the counseling direction.
How the activity works is you draw the compass shown in image 1, and then pick a topic to focus on which is written in the center of the compass. In the example below, shown in image 2, the individual choose Mindful Eating. Next, the individual wrote down four topics about mindful eating that are interesting to him and placed these on the North, South, East and West points. Each of this point can be explored in more and more detail to help your clients identify the many directions that you can explore in a session.
This activity is helpful because it promotes evocation. Evocation is one of four “spirits” of Motivational Interviewing that I try to hold in my heart when I provide mindful eating counseling. Evocation. The term means to “call forth.” Regarding counseling, it is the ability to call forth the wisdom, experience, and expertise of the client’s change process. Imagine thinking before you start a session with your client, “My client is fully able to change and has no deficit nor is lacking anything to change.” How might this thought shift your counseling energy? For me, it makes my job so much easier because I remember that my clients has to do the work, not me!
If you are thinking, Oh That Will Work! then please sign up for my newsletter! The Core Concepts of Mindful Eating: Professional Edition is available for preorder. The ebook will be available March 15 for $19.00, and the print book costs $29.00, and no joke will be shipped April 1, 2017. You can also check out other mindful eating learning options at Skelly Skills, or The Center for Mindful Eating.