Working With Resistance: 6 Ways Therapists and Coaches Can Help Clients Overcome Blocks to Healing
Most people who engage in healing work encounter resistance many times along the way. As we move closer and closer to the sources of our pain, fear, and anxiety, our protective mechanisms jump in to say, “Not so fast…”
Resistance likes to spout off all sorts of fearful ideas about the risks of healing…
What if things change?
What if I can’t handle it?
What if I learn things about myself that I don’t like?
Therapists, coaches, and other practitioners have a unique opportunity to help clients understand and work with the experience of resistance. But to do that, practitioners must first understand how to work with resistance themselves.
In this article, we’ll start by talking about what resistance is and where it comes from. Then, we’ll look at six key strategies practitioners can use to help clients work with and move through resistance to healing.
Resistance Is a Doorway — But It Feels Like a Wall
When we talk about resistance in therapy and self-development, we’re talking about the experience of avoiding, shying away from, or fearing certain aspects of the healing process. Depending on circumstances and past experiences, some clients might even feel resistant to the idea of healing altogether.
As an embodiment-based practitioner, I think about everything through the lens of the body. When a client experiences resistance, these are some of the things they might be feeling:
Tightness in the chest
A pit in their stomach
A racing heart
Brain fog or fatigue
Basically, when a client is expressing or showing the signs of resistance, it means they’re afraid.
In response to this fear, the brain and body work together to frantically build a wall to keep us from moving in a specific direction, thinking they’re protecting us from danger, harm, pain, discomfort, disappointment… the list goes on.
But while resistance looks and feels like a fortress wall, it’s actually a doorway.
Resistance shows us where our clients still feel the most vulnerable. It shows us where their pain resides, where their fear lives, and where they still struggle to trust that they can truly be safe in the world.
In short, resistance is a protective mechanism, beyond which our clients can find deeper levels of healing than they previously believed possible. To help them get there, we start by helping our clients build the skills they need to work with resistance.
6 Strategies to Help Clients Work With Resistance
Normalize Resistance
It’s easy to view resistance as a problem to overcome. We think we can climb over the roadblock or find an alternate route to circumvent our fear altogether.
But resistance is actually a completely normal part of change, especially when you're inviting your clients into work that feels vulnerable, unfamiliar, or uncomfortable.
Reframing resistance as a normal part of the healing process can help it feel less frustrating for both you and your clients.
When resistance shows up during a session with a client, don’t view it as a sign that you or your client are doing anything wrong. Instead, take it as a sign you’re moving in the right direction, as resistance tends to come up when we tap into the parts of ourselves that need the most attention.
Help your clients by reminding them resistance is nothing to feel ashamed of, and that their resistance and fear are safe in the room with you.
2. Greet Resistance With Compassion
Encountering resistance can feel frustrating, but resistance exists for a reason — to keep us safe from perceived dangers. Greeting resistance with compassion, understanding, and even gratitude can go a long way in helping the fearful and avoidant parts of our clients feel safer and more trusting in the healing process.
Any time resistance shows up in a client session, meet it with compassion and understanding, and encourage your client to show themselves compassion too. Avoid framing resistance as a problem or inconvenience, as this can leave clients feeling like they’re “doing healing wrong.”
By approaching resistance with gentleness, you can begin to help your clients soften, trust, and discover what’s beyond their fears.
3. Don’t Try to Push Past Resistance
Author, educator, and speaker Stephen Covey once said that “change happens at the speed of trust.” To truly help our clients, we must be willing to let them set the pace of their own healing journeys.
It’s easy to want to push past resistance, because we see it as a hurdle holding our clients back from the “real work.” You might feel the urge to push the resistance out of your client’s way for the sake of moving forward.
But by doing this, you risk making the avoidance mechanisms even stronger, which will make it more difficult to help your clients progress. After all, “what we resist persists,” according to influential psychologist Carl Jung.
Remember: Resistance is not an inconvenience to the healing process — It is a central part of the healing process.
4. Understand the Risks of Moving Too Fast
As a practitioner committed to helping your clients heal, you might find yourself feeling eager to help them dig into the deepest parts of themselves — but digging deep too quickly can end up doing more harm than good.
If you try to “get past” your clients' resistance, they may shut down or become overwhelmed. In some cases, a client may even feel retraumatized if you do too much too soon without connecting them with their own internal resources first. In short, pushing past resistance can actually move your client further away from their healing goals.
If a client isn’t feeling ready to dig into a certain area yet, work with that resistance, not against it.
5. View Resistance as Valuable Information
Once we move past the idea that resistance is a problem, we begin to recognize it as an extremely valuable source of information. It reveals where your client is in their process, what they are afraid of, and what parts of them still need the most care, patience, and support.
By paying attention to what our clients feel most resistant to, we can help them lay the groundwork they need before they can “go deeper.”
At Healing Embodied, we work with hundreds of clients who struggle with relationship anxiety. While our clients desperately want to heal and experience deeper connection with their partners, many of them also struggle with intense resistance.
For example, a client might feel resistant to healing their relationship anxiety because they’re afraid it might mean their relationship will have to change. Instead of trying to push them toward recovery, we get curious about their fear of change. Why is the idea of change in the relationship scary? Maybe they fear “having to break up” with their partner, which lets us know the client deeply values their relationship.
Simply by taking a closer look at the nature of resistance, we immediately understand more about what the client fears and values. These insights help us see our clients more holistically and develop a tailored approach to helping them heal.
6. Develop a Relationship With Your Own Resistance
If you’re struggling to help your clients work with resistance effectively, ask yourself about your own relationship to resistance.
How do you respond to yourself when resistance and avoidance show up?
Do you get frustrated?
Do you try to push it down or shove it away?
Do you shame yourself for not being healed “enough” or far along “enough” in your journey?
Being with resistance without trying to ignore or rush past it requires courage, patience, and the ability to tolerate discomfort. To help your clients do this, start by cultivating your own capacity to be with uncomfortable emotions and experiences.
Cultivating a more courageous and adaptable relationship to your own resistance can help you meet clients’ resistance with skill, presence, and courage.
Learn to Work With Resistance With Healing Embodied
At Healing Embodied, we help clients and practitioners alike befriend the experience of resistance and discover the healing, connection, love, and joy that exist beyond it.
In our practitioner training program — the first of its kind — we use somatic tools, shadow work, creative practices, and movement to help therapists and coaches learn to work with resistance and other uncomfortable emotions. By doing this, the practitioners who train with us can more effectively guide their own clients through the same life-changing work.
To learn more about the Healing Embodied Practitioner Training Program, visit the program page or schedule a free info call. You can also join our waitlist to find out how to apply for our next cohort, which begins February 2025.