5 Questions for Enhancing Physical Motivation | Motivational Interviewing Activities

Hey there everybody. Welcome back to the Addiction and Mental Health Disorders treatment manual. This is unit one, part ten, enhancing physical motivation. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. In this part, we're going to explore the first type of motivation and that's physical motivation. Physical motivation asks the question, how is making this change going to make you healthier or or feel better physically? So more specifically, how is the new behavior going to increase your energy, for example, reduce your pain, reduce your sickness or improve your immune system? Guess what? If you're not always stressed out, your immune system is going to be improved and so is your pain tolerance. How is it going to help you manage chronic conditions like autoimmune issues that are made worse with when you're under stress? How is it going to help you sleep better, for example, if you're not stressed out or if you're not angry or in pain or engaging in in behaviors that keep you from sleeping well, like napping all day long? How is that going to improve your sleep and stabilize your circadian and rhythms so you feel more energized and you can get better quality sleep. All things we're going to talk about in future units, but things to think about now. How does the old behavior make you feel bad physically? So whatever you're getting ready to change, whether it's your attitude or your communication style or your nutrition or setting boundaries, how does the way you're doing it right now make you feel bad physically? How does it impair your sleep, increase your stress levels, upset your stomach, maybe in even increase your pain or your sickness? What did the old behavior or what you're doing right now do for you? There's a reason that you're doing something. So if you're sleeping a lot, for example, if you're napping all the time, what is the function of that? You're probably either trying to avoid life or you're trying to find some energy that just doesn't seem to be fun findable at the moment. But you need to look at whatever the behavior is you're getting ready to change and what is its function? Maybe you're trying to manage pain in some way. Maybe you're sleeping a lot because when you're asleep you're not hurting. Or maybe you are drinking because when you are intoxicated you don't hurt so much. Only you can answer these questions. Maybe the old behavior helped you have increased energy and now this is especially true if you are abusing stimulants, for example, or helped you to go to sleep or relax. This would be more true for behaviors like substance addictions or sex addiction. How else could you achieve that benefit besides relapse or besides the old behavior? So how could it be you're were using it for pain management? How else could you more effectively manage your pain without engaging in that behavior that you're trying to change? And that may require some exploration, that may require some research or consulting with a physician about different ways to manage pain, non pharmacological ways or new medications that are out, I don't know. In what ways did your physical health issues, whether it's low energy or getting sick all the time, reduced immune system, difficulty sleeping, pain, etc, in what ways did your physical health cause or contribute to addictive behaviors, Anxiety, anger, grief, guilt or depression? Now remember, for each one of those you want to think about, you know, when I was feeling physically, and I'll just use the term global term, icky, when I was feeling physically bad and I didn't have energy, how did it increase my anxiety? How did it cause me to worry about rejection, worry about people being angry at me, for example, or how did increase my anger because people didn't understand, or my grief because there were things that I really wanted to do and my physical ill health was keeping me from being the person I wanted to be? And that kind of goes along with guilt. How is it? Or when you were experiencing physical ill health, how was it that that pain or low energy or whatever kept you from doing things that you thought you should or and contributed to guilt or caused you to do things? You know, engaging in that behavior was something that you feel guilty about. Spend about 45, 50 minutes answering each of those questions in order to increase your physical motivation, in order to help you see how even though it ain't going to be easy, this new behavior that you're choosing will help you physically feel better and more energized.