5 Types of Motivation | Motivational Interviewing Activities

Hey there, everybody. Welcome back to the addictions and Mental Health disorders treatment manual. This is unit one, part nine. Today we're talking about motivational enhancement. And I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this part, we're going to explore PACER motivation and how to enhance it. And PACER is a mnemonic device that stands for physical, affective, cognitive, environmental, and relational. So let's start out with the principles of motivation. Motivation is essential for change. You're not going to do something if you're not motivated to do it. Change is hard, so you need to be motivated. There needs to be something in your gut, in your heart that's saying, you know what? I want to use my energy and I want to push through this. Motivation helps you identify why it's worth the effort to make a change. And I will note that one of your main motivation chemicals is, guess what? Dopamine. And for a lot of people in early recovery, and for a lot of people with mood and mental health issues, dopamine tends to be low. So enhancing motivation is something that you may have to work at a little bit more than you probably would like. Motivation helps you get keep going when the going gets tough. Remember, change can be hard and uncomfortable. It's a lot easier to keep doing the same thing that you're in the routine of doing than it is to change. Think about how much more energy or how much more gas it takes when you're driving in the city, when you go fast and then you stop, and then you go fast and then you stop. Or if you're exercising and you're doing one activity and then you're switching to a different activity, that change requires more energy than continuing to do the same thing. Once your body gets into a rhythm or your brain gets into a rhythm, it takes less energy because you don't have to concentrate on it as much. So recognizing that change can be hard and uncomfortable. However, once you push through it, a lot of times that goal at the end is something that is really rewarding. Motivation is also different for different goals. For example, in addictions recovery, we talk about changing people, places and things. A lot of people that I've worked with in recovery, they may be willing and really motivated. They're like, okay, I can change places, no problem. I won't go back to those places. Things, well, okay, I can change some of those things and activities that I used to do. But people, you know, I'm not. I don't know if I'm ready to change the people in my life, and that's okay. Recognizing where your level of motivation is for each individual goal or sub goal is really important because then you can work to enhance it appropriately. Motivation also may decrease over time unless you actively maintain it. For example, going to meetings or counseling when you're doing these things, if everything's going well, then doing these things may seem kind of pointless. You may feel like you're not getting as much benefit as you did out of it at the beginning. And that may be true sometimes. Sometimes we hit what we call a plateau and that's okay. But it's important to maintain your motivation and recognize, okay, why is it important that I continue to do these things? And a lot of times it's the same reason why you started. You, you want to make a change. And by continuing to do these things, like go to meetings or work out or whatever it is that you're doing, you're maintaining those gains that you worked so hard to achieve. And placing a priority on adequate quality sleep and stress management is also essential for maintaining motivation. If you are exhausted, you're going to have less energy to spend to do anything. And since, like I said, change requires effort, and maintaining these changes once you make them until they become habit requires a lot of effort and requires more energy. So if you don't have that energy, it's going to be harder to stay motivated to do it. As I mentioned, PACER stands for physical affective, which it means emotional cognitive, which means which is how you think environmental and relationships. And each one of those aspects of your life contributes to your motivation to do things. We're going to go through in the next few units, each one of these things individually. So spend about 50 minutes, 45 minutes thinking about what things in your life and maybe people in places do you currently need to change? And this means what things do you need to change for your mental and physical health, for your happiness, so you can move toward what you envision for a rich and meaningful life? Don't just focus on one aspect, like addiction or depression, but what things really need to change for you to be living that rich and meaningful life that you want? Do you need to change habits like your nutrition, your sleep habits, your communication patterns, your coping styles, time management, or even your hobbies. And maybe your hobbies are unhealthy, or maybe you just don't have any, but that's something to consider. Do you need to change your attitude and expectations of yourself and others? Do you need to change people in your lives and think about which ones in your life are Supportive and in a healthy way. There hopefully are a few people that you can identify that are supportive in a healthy way. You may not have the best relationship with them right now, or you may, but you know that those, those are people that you can nurture a healthy relationship with. Which people do you need to set better boundaries with places? When you think about different places that you go, what things do you need to change about those places? Either not going there because the places themselves are toxic. They trigger grief or depression or anxiety or stress, or the desire to use. And in the places that you choose to go, how can you change the triggers in the environment so they're are not things in the environment that are triggering you to want to use that are triggering your anxiety or your depression. And how can you add things to that environment? Even if it means bringing your own rescue pack, how can you add things to that environment that are going to trigger your desire to continue to do the hard work that you're. You're undertaking right now? And finally, what things do you need to change about yourself, about your self esteem? And you may feel really bad about yourself right now. You may feel hopeless, helpless, depressed. You may or you may not, but think about what things about yourself need to change. And this in order for you to build a strong self esteem. Once you have that list and it's probably going to be a pretty long list, no doubt Rome was not built in a day. And so it's going to take a little bit of time, it's going to take a minute in order to achieve that rich and meaningful life. So take that list and rank them in order of which ones you're most motivated to change. And then pick one thing. Pick one of those things that you are willing to do the hard work to change. And how are you going to increase your motivation to change those things you're going to. We're going to talk about that in the next few parts. So in the next few parts think about that one thing that you want to change and how you're going to increase your different types of motivation so you're just really charged and ready to do what needs to be done to achieve your goal.