Dr. Sarah Wakeman
speaker
484 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Sarah Wakeman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
You don't have, like, personal skin in the game about what choice they make, but you're really a partner with them and figuring out how is this thing causing problems to you and why might your life get better if you were to make changes to your alcohol use or your drinking or your substance use.
Yeah, very different. So in kind of like medical speak and therapy speak, we talked about something called motivational interviewing, which is it becomes almost like a mind trick. But it is basically a way of trying to identify from the person their reasons for change and reflecting it back to them.
And so it's not you telling them you think they should change, but you are trying to elicit their motivation and amplify it. And then at the end of the day, you're turning over the power back to them. So that might look like something someone says, you know.
It sounds like your alcohol use is causing some problems at work and in your relationships.
It sounds like you're worried about your safety at work and also how your drinking is starting to affect your job and your relationships.
Yeah, it sounds like that's really scary that you're really worried your alcohol use could cause even like a serious or life-threatening accident at work.
Yeah, and your job sounds really important to you.
Alcohol's starting to get in the way of that.
Yeah. And so what are your goals looking forward around your job or your relationship?
Yeah, it sounds like you're really committed to thinking about making a change to your drinking and that you're looking forward to finding a partner and family and you're worried that alcohol might get in the way of that.
Yeah, there's like a little bit of like a Jedi mind trick thing where you're... So essentially, it's actually really – it's a little tricky when you're first learning how to do it because what I'm trying to do is I'm listening for what's called change talk. So any little nugget you're giving me about making a change. So you're saying like, oh, I'm starting to get this misconduct.
I'm worried about this thing with safety at work. I want a partner. Those are like – it's a goldmine of little kernels of change. And I'm ignoring all of your sustained talk. So anything where you're arguing for the status quo, it's not a big deal. Drinking is not that big a deal. I can't make a change. I don't even acknowledge it or address it.
And that's actually hard because I think most of us pay attention to the negative stuff. So if you think about like a performance review at work or someone telling you any kind of feedback, we tend to amplify and remember like the one bad thing that someone said to us and forget the millions of good things. So you have to change.
You have to like train yourself to do the opposite, to hear those little kernels of change talk. And then I'm basically being a mirror, but I'm amplifying it. So I'm taking these little kernels of change talk. I'm reflecting back to your own words. So I'm not telling you that you should stop drinking because it's unsafe at work.
I'm reflecting to you like you're starting to get worried that you might have an accident at work and that's really serious. And that's kind of guiding the conversation forward. The other key is that if you meet a point of resistance, you want to pivot. Because once you start arguing, whether it's about politics or anything, people dig in.
So if you start arguing with someone, you got to find another way. You just got to pivot and roll to a different tactic. Because the more you argue, the more people dig in on their point of view. And it's more about like winning the argument than it is about moving forward.
That's what I say all the time. What's your why? I think that's so exciting. Like we all want to live our best lives, whatever that means to us. And so having a purpose, having a goal is probably the most important thing. Motivation is important. We talk a lot about motivation. But motivation is fleeting. It can slip and slide over the course of one day. So you may take kind of a mundane example.
You want to get in shape. And you're feeling super motivated one day. And then the next morning, your alarm clock goes off at like 5 in the morning. and you're tired and it's cozy in your bed and maybe you stayed up a little too late, your motivation's gonna be flagging, right?
So if you don't have a goal or a reason or a why or a purpose, it's gonna be really hard to actually get up the energy to get up. And so figuring out what that purpose is And then trying to find ways to enjoy the process, because if you're always working towards a future goal, some people are very goal-oriented and that works for them, but finding joy in the process will help you.
So I'll take alcohol, for example, like not an addiction issue, just like making changes to your drinking in your life. So if you're just like, oh, I should stop drinking because drinking is bad for me, that's like a relatively vague goal, right? It's not really about anything that matters specifically to you, and it's going to be hard to stick to that.
Showing 261–280 of 484 · page 14 of 25
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