Practically Speaking: Behind the Episode - “Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Ears: The Real Deal With the Righting Reflex”
How much advice should a provider provide, if the provider could provide advice? As behavioral health providers we often, with good intentions, get swept up in a mission of change with (for?) our clients. A client states problems they are experiencing and we clearly see what needs to be “fixed” and jump in with our EBP guns blazing. But perhaps, at times, we are a little too quick on the draw.
Listen to the full discussion here: Shut Your Mouth & Open Your Ears - The Real Deal with the Righting Reflex
In this episode of Practical for Your Practice, we are joined by motivational interviewing maven and one of our USU colleague besties, Dr. Abby Diehl, who challenges us to become more aware of our righting reflex - or this tendency, as behavioral health providers, to jump in with immediate solutions to fix said problem(s). Sometimes easier said than done when one tries to operate in the larger (quick) “fix it” culture that many of us find ourselves in. Diehl explains, “for me, the fix it culture really is this tendency where we want to find the problem and then immediately offer the solution and move to the next thing. So I'm a problem detector and then I need to have the best tool to then eradicate it. And so this idea that we want a quick fix, so I want a med that will get rid of my sadness. There's this idea in our culture, I think, that there's something fundamentally wrong with us if we feel bad, and everything around us is designed to help us not feel bad.”
This righting reflex has a cost both for us and our clients. It robs us of a more complete and full understanding of our client’s experience - who is the human in front of us? What is their mindset and understanding? What are their emotions, thoughts, motivations and desires? And it denies our clients of the critical experience Diehl describes as “the key healing process in therapy, which is showing up, being real, connecting, listening, and not immediately trying to be like, ‘There's something wrong with you and it needs to go away’."
So what are we to do? How do we protect against this righting reflex? A first step is to begin to recognize this urge to jump in and “fix”. Awareness is key. Another helpful suggestion is to increase training and experience in motivational interviewing, a conversation style that emphasizes listening to understand. “Part of why I like motivational interviewing so much is that it really does focus on coming to understand someone's inner world about change in a way that is not telling them who they are, not putting them in this box, but allowing them for that space and that opportunity to be who they are,” Diehl explains.
Her distilled down advice? Shut your mouth and open your ears and listen to understand. You might just be surprised how simply being with people and actually listening can lead to deeper connection and ultimately profound change. You’ll definitely want to keep YOUR ears open for this not to miss episode. Take a listen on your favorite podcast platform and please subscribe, like and share. If you have any reactions or suggestions for future podcast topics, we love hearing from our listeners. Leave us a voicemail on speakpipe https://www.speakpipe.com/cdpp4p or send us an email to cdp-podcast.ggg@usuhs.edu
Until next time...
Listen to the full discussion here: Shut Your Mouth & Open Your Ears - The Real Deal with the Righting ReflexThe opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Jenna Ermold, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist working as the Associate Director of Online Training, Technology and Telehealth for the Center for Deployment Psychology at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland.
How much advice should a provider provide, if the provider could provide advice? As behavioral health providers we often, with good intentions, get swept up in a mission of change with (for?) our clients. A client states problems they are experiencing and we clearly see what needs to be “fixed” and jump in with our EBP guns blazing. But perhaps, at times, we are a little too quick on the draw.
Listen to the full discussion here: Shut Your Mouth & Open Your Ears - The Real Deal with the Righting Reflex
In this episode of Practical for Your Practice, we are joined by motivational interviewing maven and one of our USU colleague besties, Dr. Abby Diehl, who challenges us to become more aware of our righting reflex - or this tendency, as behavioral health providers, to jump in with immediate solutions to fix said problem(s). Sometimes easier said than done when one tries to operate in the larger (quick) “fix it” culture that many of us find ourselves in. Diehl explains, “for me, the fix it culture really is this tendency where we want to find the problem and then immediately offer the solution and move to the next thing. So I'm a problem detector and then I need to have the best tool to then eradicate it. And so this idea that we want a quick fix, so I want a med that will get rid of my sadness. There's this idea in our culture, I think, that there's something fundamentally wrong with us if we feel bad, and everything around us is designed to help us not feel bad.”
This righting reflex has a cost both for us and our clients. It robs us of a more complete and full understanding of our client’s experience - who is the human in front of us? What is their mindset and understanding? What are their emotions, thoughts, motivations and desires? And it denies our clients of the critical experience Diehl describes as “the key healing process in therapy, which is showing up, being real, connecting, listening, and not immediately trying to be like, ‘There's something wrong with you and it needs to go away’."
So what are we to do? How do we protect against this righting reflex? A first step is to begin to recognize this urge to jump in and “fix”. Awareness is key. Another helpful suggestion is to increase training and experience in motivational interviewing, a conversation style that emphasizes listening to understand. “Part of why I like motivational interviewing so much is that it really does focus on coming to understand someone's inner world about change in a way that is not telling them who they are, not putting them in this box, but allowing them for that space and that opportunity to be who they are,” Diehl explains.
Her distilled down advice? Shut your mouth and open your ears and listen to understand. You might just be surprised how simply being with people and actually listening can lead to deeper connection and ultimately profound change. You’ll definitely want to keep YOUR ears open for this not to miss episode. Take a listen on your favorite podcast platform and please subscribe, like and share. If you have any reactions or suggestions for future podcast topics, we love hearing from our listeners. Leave us a voicemail on speakpipe https://www.speakpipe.com/cdpp4p or send us an email to cdp-podcast.ggg@usuhs.edu
Until next time...
Listen to the full discussion here: Shut Your Mouth & Open Your Ears - The Real Deal with the Righting ReflexThe opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Jenna Ermold, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist working as the Associate Director of Online Training, Technology and Telehealth for the Center for Deployment Psychology at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland.