Microaggressions, Microaffirmations, and Motivational Interviewing

​I recently attended a training where we talked a lot about micro-aggressions on college campuses (Dela Pena, Travers, Welch, 2017). It was during this training that I first learned of the term micro-affirmations. In the world of Motivational Interviewing (MI) we talk a lot about intentional affirmations as statements highlighting a person’s characteristics, values, and hard work. Unlike these “macro affirmations” offered in MI, micro affirmations are more nuanced and subtle and they aim to validate experiences of others within a power structure. Since attending this training and learning a bit more about micro affirmations and micro aggressions, I think that those of us practicing MI and other helping strategies would do well to consider using some of these ideas in our approaches. In this article I will discuss the idea of micro-aggressions. Then I will focus a bit on what micro-affirmations are and some ways to use them. Finally, I will discuss some ways that these ideas may be included in an MI training.

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