There are two strategies for dealing with difficult situations: action or inaction.
If a person has no plans, then his energy drops. When a person with all his deeds is in anticipation of something more, from the expectation of what he really wants, then he is bursting with energy, he is charged with it. You want to be in his field, build your plans and vision.
When a crisis occurs in life or in a relationship, an energetically strong person understands that in such a turbulent and difficult time, there is no hope except for himself. Even large companies are reducing the number of their employees and are learning to work not at the expense of the number of employees, but by concentrating as much as possible on the quality and efficiency of everyone’s work. A person with vision also understands this perfectly and does not wait for external conditions. Most of us require external coercion; no one wants to become effective voluntarily.
For some reason, during difficult periods of life, some people begin to work, develop, look for reasons and increase their efficiency, thereby raising their energy, and, accordingly, their efficiency.
Others go into sleep mode, saving mode. They begin to save everything: money, feelings, energy. In such a situation, a person stops striving for anything. He came up with an ironclad excuse, saying, “I’m still in such a period in my life, you know,” and he begins to live half-heartedly, with minimal stress on himself and without a lack of vision. Which means a downward spiral. For such people there is no problem of motivation and achievement. Their main concern is to survive and ensure maximum safety of their stay. Change is the worst thing that can happen in life. As a consequence: a drop in energy and efficiency.
But your efficiency and energy are two communicating vessels; the more one quality you have, the more the other becomes. Efficiency is equal to the quotient of our actions to our resistance that we experience in relation to these actions. If the level of resistance is high, then the actions will be zero. This means there will be inaction. So we came to the conclusion that we need to consciously and persistently break down our resistance, increase resistance, i.e. act . And then, actions increase energy, and energy increases our efficiency.
Naturally, the decision comes to mind about the need to break into your limitations and launch an action mode within yourself, despite your fears. Wake up from sleep mode, rub your eyes and decide that our reality is the result of our action or inaction.
So now the time has come to act. In a year, we will greatly regret that we did not start today.
Psychological resistance
Psychological resistance is a trace of a dialogue interrupted in the middle of a sentence. Resistance shows us that there was a break in contact at some point and is a manifestation of how vulnerable a person feels. It shows a fear of taking risks and suggests that the individual has not found support in his experiences with other people. Psychological resistance is the basic basic form of self-defense of the individual, it is a two-sided wall: from an external point of view the person appears closed, but from his own point of view he avoids mental wound.
Resistance closes an early, deeply sensitive wound. The therapist's task is to help the client make this wall more permeable so that the personality opens up to more vibrant possibilities. For a person to be willing to open up, the therapist needs to recognize the wisdom of her resistance.
Since we remember that resistance manifests itself at the moment when the individual does not have internal support to cope with the situation, the individual acts very wisely by putting up a wall, a fence, fencing himself off from the threat. It is very wise to accumulate your resources to use them when ready. The problem with resistance is an anachronism. This is a response not to the current situation, but to the past. We made the decision to resist a long time ago. Now we cannot use external resources in a suitable manner, and our fear causes us to fall into inertia.
Psychological resistance may be a deep expression of something that the individual desperately needs. And the person knows the only way to take care of himself is to shut down and protect himself. Just as a child between 2-3 years old learns to say “NO”, and this “NO” becomes the first way in which the individual distinguishes himself from parental figures and insists on his identity.
Psychological resistance is an internalized nurturing force within us. She replaces us with parental figures who were supposed to protect the child and set clear boundaries. Unlike a truly caring figure, resistance is protection, but not care (covers, but does not nourish). Resistant behavior closes off the possibility of care that could come from other people.
When we resist, we protect ourselves from real and imagined threats and push away those who can best provide us with contact that nourishes and heals us. Resistance protects, but reliably protects the personality from growth, because it suspends the dialogue of the personality with the world. Of course, resistance originates in the openness and vulnerability of the individual in childhood. This leads us to the inevitable pain of misunderstanding, and in the worst case, malicious actions of parental figures due to their own pain and their hurtful experiences. This leads to the loss of the illusions of childhood, to the shocking realization that we are not accepted, something still needs to be done for this. This action is always associated with risk and fear that what you do will not be accepted. And you, because you do it poorly, will find yourself unloved. It is important to understand and accept this resistant part of the personality.
Also see the article “Internal resistance to change.”
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Therapy resistance
Resistance is all the forces in the client’s psyche that counteract the psychotherapeutic work associated with the inevitability of painful sensations. Any form of behavior can become resistance if it reaches a certain strength.
At first glance, resistance is the most paradoxical phenomenon in the counseling process. A person turned to a psychologist (psychotherapist) to deal with his problem and change something in his life. But when he is faced with the need to make these changes, he begins to resist it, finding countless reasons for returning to his previous position.
But in fact, this is a natural stage on the path of our development. Each of us resists significant change, whether it leads to success or failure. If you decide to make some changes, the unconscious produces anxiety and sends it as a warning signal. This is part of the self-preservation mechanism. If you make certain changes, it is possible that you will experience negative emotions and tension will accumulate, which is why the unconscious tries to protect you.
Psychologists of various directions agree that client resistance can be caused by internal or external reasons.
Intrapersonal reasons for resistance include the following.
Fear of change
Change and the mental pain associated with it often seem more frightening and difficult to a person than familiar conditions, even if they interfere with one's adaptation.
The fear that therapy will not only not help him, but will plunge him even deeper into an unknown area and completely cut the ground from under his feet, is one of the main reasons for resistance. Often, a person has the idea that psychotherapy is important only until it comes to the need to do it himself. The therapy is aimed at getting rid of neurotic tendencies, but they have “fused” with the person, and when you have to follow the instructions and tasks of the psychologist, it turns out that this is not as simple as it seemed. A person feels the need to protect himself from impulses, memories and sensations that could cause a painful experience. The closer the client comes to recognizing his repressed feelings, the more resistance increases. A person literally goes blind and deaf, not perceiving the obvious.
The period when something new has not yet become familiar is accompanied by great discomfort and causes a feeling of awkwardness, uncertainty, and anxiety. A person seeks to protect himself from this condition.
Intrapersonal changes occurring in the client can cause difficulties in his relationships with people who occupy an important place in his environment. These problems also require resolution, often immediately, and the client becomes overwhelmed. As a rule, those people with whom a person deals in everyday life do not help or sympathize with his work, often consider therapy stupid, laugh at him, or even resist his activities. Many cannot stand this emotional rejection from loved ones and retreat.
Some people feel so insecure that if they were to fail in the process of change, it would hurt them too much, causing them great pain. Thus, fear of possible failure can prevent the client from changing.
By changing himself or the circumstances of his life, a person may, not without reason, assume that he will have to endure the loss of significant relationships, usual work, etc. The fear of losing what is currently dear and a valuable part of his life can cause strong resistance and even refusal to change.
The fear of the consequences of change may be so great that the client may stop seeing his problem as such, believing that he has solved it, demonstrate achievements in resolving the problem, or simply stop visiting the consultant, stating that he is now all right, although objective facts with will clearly indicate otherwise.
Fear of expressing one's mental qualities may be based on the client's past negative experiences. For example, the client may also be afraid that the therapist, having gotten to know him better, will judge and reject him, as someone did in the past.
They provoke and intensify the client’s fear of change and his other negative feelings. It could be shame, guilt or anger at yourself. A person does not want to acknowledge the experience of his childhood, which he is ashamed of, or see in himself what causes disgust, shame, and condemnation in him.
Ambivalence (secondary gain)
Human behavior usually has a dual, ambivalent character. Any existing painful symptom or problem never carries only negative potential. Very often, a symptom allows one to solve, to some extent, the difficulties that arise in life, but in a far from optimal way. This feature of symptoms is called secondary (or implicit) benefit . The client does not want to give up his maladaptive behavior (eg, aggression) as long as the feeling of security it creates is stronger than the discomfort it causes.
As already mentioned, secondary benefit is a special case of the duality of internal motivations natural to human nature. This is a personality trait in which a person wants something and at the same time wants the opposite. He wants to move forward and at the same time wants to stay in place. The client both wants help and resists it.
For example, a person may resist getting rid of depression because... the position of “unfortunate” gives increased attention from relatives, psychologists and other people, and also helps to hide from oneself the unwillingness to take responsibility for one’s life, the fear of being unsuccessful, etc. Depression gives helplessness a completely “legal” explanation.
Ambivalence often manifests itself in the client in incongruence - inconsistency between individual statements, words and nonverbal behavior (facial expressions, gestures, etc.).
Autonomy
Another natural reason for resistance is the need of any person to take care of maintaining his own independence. This involves resisting external pressure, including the actions and words of a doctor or psychologist.
For example, a person may resist change if he suspects that the psychologist is manipulating him and wants to change him for some benefit for himself, i.e. feels like an object in the hands of a consultant. This may be due to a mistake by the psychologist, but more often it is a consequence of projection - attributing his attitude to other people.
During counseling, the client often falls into a transference - he experiences various emotions towards the therapist, relating significant people from his past to him: he idealizes the psychologist, feels sympathy or falling in love, and may also be annoyed with him, ashamed of him, feel guilty before him, etc. .P. The intensification of positive or negative transference to a certain strength leads to the impossibility of cooperation between the therapist and the client.
Striving for autonomy, the client does not want to be aware of his reactions towards the consultant or the reasons for these reactions. Instead, he puts forward various rationalizations - explanations for what is happening that obscure the problem itself.
One example of such a transfer will be the disappointment among clients when, some time after the start of therapy, a person discovers that the psychologist expects him to do difficult work, but he was hoping to get the opposite - to avoid it.
In a more favorable case, a person begins to see the prospect of his work, but the work looks too long and tedious for him. In other cases, a person first gets down to business, but then finds that he is trying, but the road is still long. This bores him. He may even experience anger or disdain towards the psychologist, or he feels resentful: it seems to him that the psychologist is not working with him well enough, so the result does not come for a long time, and he loses interest in working on himself, carelessly follows the recommendations of the psychotherapist, or does not doing nothing.
External causes of resistance include the specialist's lack of therapeutic skills, in particular his uncontrolled countertransference.
The patient's resistance may be caused by the professional providing psychotherapy or counseling. Some psychologists consider this the main reason for the emergence of resistance.
What specific behavior of a counselor or psychotherapist can provoke resistance? Conversation in a language that is incomprehensible to the client, perception of him not as a person, but as an object, disrespect towards the patient, imposing his opinion on him, excessive haste in the therapy process and demand for quick changes, etc.
The consultant may also experience various emotions towards the client, the so-called countertransference . The problem for therapeutic contact is the strong and uncontrollable reactions of the psychologist. They arise in response to client behavior that is difficult to tolerate (aggression, increased suspicion, narcissism, etc.), or based on existing stereotypes about a certain type of client (antisocial, depressive, homosexual, etc.). For example, the psychologist's lack of faith in his own abilities or that this particular client can be helped will be such a countertransference.
Some professionals who have worked with traumatized clients for long periods of time experience burnout. The usual countertransference of a psychologist in such a situation is a conscious and unconscious avoidance of unpleasant stories, an attempt to switch the topic. Activation of one’s own traumatic episodes in memory is possible. All this leads to a violation of the therapeutic alliance and the emergence of pronounced resistance in the client.
What is resistance in psychotherapy?
It happens that during psychotherapy, the relationship between the psychotherapist and the client suddenly becomes strained, and the sessions themselves are somehow tense.
The client seems to be late for meetings or completely forgets about them, and in some cases seeks to sabotage therapy. In this way resistance can be expressed. While undergoing a course of psychological counseling or psychotherapy, the client often has to return to unpleasant memories from his past or episodes from childhood that caused psychological trauma, and relive negative emotions. All this can lead to unconscious resistance to therapy.
Definition 1
Resistance is the actions that the client takes to protect himself from any painful or unpleasant emotions.
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It is unpleasant for a person to learn something shameful about himself, which he sees as bad and condemned by society. Often clients show resistance when a key topic for them is being explored, without touching on which there is no way to resolve the problem.
What does resistance look like?
Resistance can take different forms during operation:
- effective psychotherapy suddenly begins to seem completely useless;
- the client initiates a course of therapy with various psychotherapists, but, faced with the same experiences that cause painful emotions, stops the work begun;
- disappointment in the psychotherapist becomes similar to disappointment in other people who are significant to the client;
- successful psychotherapy after a certain time begins to seem too expensive and unproductive;
- the client has a desire to complete the course much earlier than planned by the psychotherapist;
- psychotherapy gives positive results, but it becomes unpleasant and difficult for the client to attend sessions.
- Often the client may have a desire to reschedule or even cancel an appointment that has already been scheduled.
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