wellpdx

Somehow in the counseling field, the word “resistance” seems to have become a catchall term for all the unhelpful things that interfere with therapy. Perhaps the client is late, forgets to bring up important topics until the very end of session, doesn’t practice her new skills at home, or is flat out non-compliant. We see that the client isn’t making the progress we’d hoped for, or maybe not in the planned number of sessions.

With my clients who are getting or staying clean & sober, there is often resistant self-talk like: “it’s not a problem;” “the problem isn’t that serious;” or “I can’t do anything about the problem.” This resistance is generally seen as something to see through or get past.

But as I work with clients in helping them find their own voice, listen to their body and trust their gut, the more I wonder about the nature of these resistances. I find a tension between supporting a client to find their own timetable and

meanwhile encouraging goal-setting and accountability in the change process.

If a client is resistant, it seems patronizing to put my counselor intuition above theirs and push them faster and further than they are ready for. There is a fine line between being presumptuous and being wise. Somehow I want to help them go from doing the same old things yet wanting different results, to a mindset where they actually want to do things differently to get those new results.

So now more and more I find myself also trying to help clients really explore their resistance, to find those delays, listen to their fear and trust their reluctance. I want to sit with the resistance and find out what it is trying to teach us. I think we can learn a lot as we bring the resistance out of the below-conscious dark and into a place of awareness and purpose.