“Resistance means you did not do enough warm up.” Bill Coleman, Psychodrama Therapist

1. “Resistance is something that occurs only within the context of a relationship or a system.”Miller & Rollnick, 2002

2. “Resistance means you did not do enough warm up.”Bill Coleman, Psychodrama Therapist

3. Desire = ResistanceWhen you perceive resistance, what are you desiring for your client? What do you desire your client to do?

4. "Some therapists…are so eager to form a relationship that they do so on terms that forever destroy any therapeutic potential. Other therapists are so eager to force a client toward maturity that they bring pressures to bear on him that are beyond his ability to withstand; unwittingly they drive the client out of the relationship"Tate, 1967, as cited in Moursund, 1985

5. "Resistant client behavior seems…to conform to Newton’s third law of motion: For every force there is an equal and opposite counterforce. In a model in which overcoming resistance potentially becomes a contest, the client will often win.” Cowan and Presbury, 2000

6. Never try to teach a tiger to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the tiger. Chinese Proverb

7. “...resistance to counseling and to the counselor is not an inevitable part of psychotherapy, nor a desirable part, but it grows primarily out of poor techniques of handling the client’s expression of his problems and feelings…out of unwise attempts on the part of the counselor to short- cut the therapeutic process by bringing into discussion emotionalized attitudes which the client is not yet ready to face.” Carl Rogers, 1951

8. “The immature therapist has trouble backing off. Frustration comes easily and is usually answered with more technique and method. Stepping back is letting go of doing things and just taking a look at what's going on.” Ron Kurtz, 1990

9. “Experience in therapy is not about knowing, it is about being comfortable with what you don’t know.” J. Graham Disque

10. “If we become more concerned about the patient than she is, we neutralize their motivation; it becomes our problem. We are then in the same position as the parent who has taken responsibility for the child to practice the piano; love of music is sacrificed to the power struggle.”Felder & Weiss, 1991

11. “Engagement predicts outcome. Your job is to keep the client engaged.” Scott Miller

12. When you directly fight resistance, counseling becomes an act of veiled coercion. To prevent resistance, avoid any agenda that has a coercive component.

13. What you resist, persists. Carl Jung

14. “…resistance is evoked in the relationship between counselor and client when the client interprets the behavior of the counselor to mean that a repetition of injury may occur.” Cowan and Presbury, 2000

15. "There is a reason that clients are often called ‘patients’: one needs to cultivate one's ‘patience’ in order to work effectively with them! Like struggling in quicksand, pushing impatiently will only serve to further mire the process."Moursund & Kenny, 2002

16. “The moment you think that the client should be some way other than how they are you ruin contact.” J. Graham Disque

17. Resistance is perceived when the therapist fails to cooperate with the client.

18. “Perhaps resistance & defensiveness are often encouraged unwittingly by pessimistic therapists who never think of alternative views that might allow clients to save face and preserve what little self-esteem they have.” Hammond, Hepworth, & Smith, 1977

19. "…there are no resistant clients, only inflexible therapists."Bandler & Grinder, 1979, cited in Walter & Peller, 1992

20. Resistance is perceived when you use an inappropriate theoretical approach relative to the client’s personality and situation.

21. “What is often viewed as resistance may be merely the result of the therapist’s assuming that the client should accept an external narrative as if it were an empathic one.”Haim Omer, 1997

22. "You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go." Jeanette Rankin, pacifist & politician

23. “Resistance is all.”Anderson & Steward, 1983

24. "As long as people are going to resist you may as well ask them to do so." Milton Erickson, as cited in Haley, 1973

25. “You cannot embrace that which you are not free to reject.” J. Graham Disque

26. "We have trouble with the concept of resistance. It implies the therapist ought to do something about it." Whitaker & Keith, 1981, cited in Anderson & Steward, 1983

27. “…we change when we become aware of what we are as opposed to trying to become what we are not.” Beisser, 1970, cited in Corey, 2005

28. When it comes to therapeutic dialogue, its not just semantics, its all semantics.

29. "Words are our most precious natural resource." James Lipton, host, Inside the Actors Studio

30. "If you do not want to learn to use words carefully and accurately you should probably consider another profession." Baird, 1996

31. “When struggling with a client, you often think you are missing some complex skill you have not learned; in actuality, you have somehow failed to apply a fundamental skill.” Scott Miller

32. Resistance is typically perceived and presumed when the client does not respond the way the therapist expects or desires.