Metaphor, Myth, Story, and Meaning-Making in Clinical Practice: Using MI Spirit to Explore How Clients Make Meaning
Friday, December 4, 2026
9:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. MT | 8:00–11:15 a.m. PT | 10:00 a.m.–1:15 p.m. CT | 11:00 a.m.–2:15 p.m. ET
3 Cultural CE Hours
Approved through the New Mexico Counseling & Therapy Practice Board and New Mexico Social Work Board.
This 3-hour interactive training explores how clinicians can use the Spirit and skills of Motivational Interviewing to work with metaphor, myth, story, and meaning-making while preserving client autonomy and authorship.
Participants will be introduced to metaphor stewardship: noticing, honoring, and carefully tending to client-generated metaphors without taking ownership of them or deciding what they mean. Through clinical vignettes and experiential practice, we will use reflective listening and evocative questions to explore metaphor as a pathway into ambivalence, values, identity, culture, and change.
We will also explore how cultural and intergenerational stories shape meaning and use the Hero’s Journey as one example of an archetypal narrative for understanding struggle, transition, transformation, and return. Throughout, MI Spirit and cultural humility will guide our attention to change talk, stories of resilience, the fixing reflex, and the risk of colonizing meaning.
Sliding-scale registration is available if cost is a barrier.
