Resistance or Protection?

You hear the word resistance a lot in therapy and it always refers to the client, not the therapist. For me, it has a negative connotation, even if we don't verbalise it. This is particularly the case if we label a client as resistant, rather than saying some resistance is present. We send a negative message to the client about themselves if we call/think of them resistant, we don't even have to voice it, the client picks up all our communication, as Paul Wachtel writes in his book Therapeutic Communication. What he calls the meta message, I like to call the true message.  We're constantly sending and receiving information, most of it non verbal.

Who do you think most clients will trust? The therapist, a so-called expert, or themselves? That's why it's so important that we, as practitioners, own our stuff and don't project/transfer it, and if we do, we don't beat ourselves up but we do take responsibility for working on it. And we make it crystal clear to the client that it is not about them.

Resistance is almost always, in my experience, a protective part that doesn't feel safe moving forward, having things change or doesn't feel safe accessing a hurt inner child (called an exile in Internal Family Systems). These are some of the most common reasons but there can be many. The label 'resistant' is too easy. We need to look under the hood and find out what's really going on.

We can't fake feeling safe, well we can, but we'll pay for it. It's much easier and less exhausting to be honest about how we truly feel. Lack of safety is almost always the reason for 'resistance'.