How to Work with Resistant Clients

Have you ever felt stuck with a client—like you're working so much harder than they are, circling in the same emotional loops? Often we see resistance as a barrier: defiance, avoidance, lack of readiness. But what if everything we've been taught about resistance is wrong? This transformative course, led by Dr. Scott Lyons, founder of the Embody Lab, offers a radical reframe that changes everything about how we practice.

The Truth About Resistance:

Resistance is rarely a sign of unwillingness. Instead, it's a strategy for safety. These behaviors, movements, and patterns were adaptive when they originally came into being—they helped clients survive. The environment may have changed, relationships may have evolved, but we're creatures of habit. These patterns aren't wrong or bad; they're just outdated. And that part of the client doesn't yet know it's safe to let go, to cry, to express, to change.

When we realize this, everything shifts: we move from confrontation to curiosity, from frustration to compassion, from blame to understanding. Resistance isn't a block—it's a message. And when we learn to listen, healing begins.

A Powerful Perspective Shift:

Dr. Pat Ogden challenges us: "I hate that word. I really think it's insulting." When we call clients resistant, we're often blaming them because our techniques aren't working. Instead, we should ask: Why are my interventions not reaching them? What am I not in contact with? Where don't they feel safe enough?

If you believe clients are resistant, there's something you're missing—they don't feel safe enough, or you're on the wrong track. The solution isn't to push harder but to stop, talk with them, and wonder together: "Are you getting what you need here? Are we on the right track?"

The Fundamental Belief:

At the heart of this work is a profound truth: People are always doing their best, no matter what their circumstances, no matter what their actions. Of course people can do better, but given everything—their history, resources, nervous system capacity, learned patterns—we're all doing our best in each moment.

This belief changes everything. When clients feel that you believe they have intelligence inside them to change, they feel it—and it helps the therapy. When you think you have to push them to change because they don't have it in them, it creates an entirely different therapeutic relationship, an entirely different therapy.

What You'll Learn:

Through four comprehensive modules from expert faculty, you'll discover how to:

Module 1: Embracing Resistance with Jessica Montgomery

Reframing Resistance:

• Reflect on personal experiences with resistance in practice
• Identify patterns in how you respond to resistance
• Explore your own biases and preferences around client engagement
• Understand resistance as natural part of change process

Complex Systems Perspective:

• View self as complex emergent system
• Understand resistance within systems framework
• See resistance as opportunity for deeper understanding and intimacy
• Recognize patterns as part of emergent complexity

The JOOTS Technique: Jumping Out of the System (from Hakomi):

• Naming: Identify and name the resistance pattern
• Claiming: Take responsibility for your part in the dynamic
• Gaming: Experiment with playful engagement
• Reframing: Transform the therapeutic process
• Invite collaboration with client around stuck patterns
• Experiment with new ways of interacting

Sources of Resistance:

• Client behaviors and protective patterns
• Therapist reactions and countertransference
• Aspects of therapeutic relationship itself
• Interactive dynamics between client and therapist

Module 2: How to Work with Resistance with Manuela Mischke-Reeds

Resistance as Intelligence:

• Understand resistance as intelligent expression of client, not problem
• Recognize wisdom in protective mechanisms
• Honor resistance as information about client's needs
• Shift from viewing resistance as obstacle to seeing it as guide

Manifestations of Resistance:

• Emotional resistance: Avoiding or flooding with emotion
• Somatic resistance: Body tension, holding, disconnection
• Relational resistance: Distance, compliance, caretaking of therapist
• Track resistance across multiple domains

The Power of Therapist Attitude:

• Cultivate openness toward resistance
• Bring curiosity about its function and meaning
• Maintain compassionate stance
• Shift away from confrontation and judgment
• Recognize your own relationship with resistance

Yielding to Resistance:

• Practice "yielding" rather than confronting
• Create safe space for protective mechanisms to reveal themselves
• Allow resistance to be present without needing to change it immediately
• Explore resistance with client as ally
• Uncover core beliefs beneath protective patterns
• Build intimacy through honoring protection

Module 3: Working with Resistance with Karee Powers

Defining and Understanding:

• Define resistance as client's obstruction of therapist's methods
• Recognize this definition itself reveals power dynamic
• Understand various forms and their underlying causes

Types of Resistance:

• Realistic resistance: Valid concerns about therapy approach or safety
• Collusive resistance: Unconscious agreements between client and therapist
• Resistance as avoidance: Protection from overwhelming material
• Analyze potential underlying causes for each type

Consequences of Unacknowledged Resistance:

• Impact on therapeutic alliance
• Effects on client engagement and trust
• Damage to relationship when resistance isn't addressed
• Risk of premature termination

Tools for Empowerment:

• Address resistance directly and transparently
• Cultivate genuinely safe therapeutic relationship
• Use motivational interviewing techniques:
  • Explore ambivalence about change
  • Roll with resistance rather than confront it
  • Support self-efficacy and autonomy
  • Elicit change talk
• Understand client's perspective on resistance
• Use resistance as opportunity for growth and empowerment
• Shift power dynamic toward collaboration

Module 4: Resistance with Morgan Starr-Riestis

Protective Purpose of Resistance:

• Understand resistance as protecting underlying needs
• Recognize positive intentions beneath seeming obstruction
• See resistance as having inherent purpose
• Honor what resistance is safeguarding

The Log in the River Analogy:

• Current coping mechanisms once provided safety (the log kept them afloat)
• Though perhaps limiting now, they served crucial protective function
• Can't let go of log until there's new raft (new sense of safety and resources)
• Need to build new structure before releasing old one
• Change feels threatening without alternative safety

Building Safety Before Change:

• Identify physical safety cues (body sensations of safety)
• Recognize emotional safety cues (feelings that signal security)
• Notice mental safety cues (thoughts that support change)
• Build comprehensive sense of safety across domains
• Understand brain is designed to save energy and avoid risk

Working Through Fear:

• Use top-down approach with worst-case scenarios
• Explore: "What's the worst that could happen?"
• Assess reality of feared outcome on scale of 1-10
• Distinguish realistic concerns from catastrophic thinking
• Build capacity to tolerate uncertainty

Values Alignment:

• Link goals with top 3-5 core values
• Enhance motivation through values connection
• Prevent internal conflict between competing values
• Ask "why" questions to uncover deeper needs
• Differentiate surface desires from underlying needs

SMARTER Goal-Setting:

• Specific: Clear, well-defined goals
• Measurable: Track progress concretely
• Attainable: Realistic given current resources
• Relevant: Aligned with values and deeper needs
• Timely: Appropriate pacing for this client
• Evaluated: Regular review and adjustment
• Reward/Revise: Celebrate progress, adjust as needed
• Foster achievable steps toward change

Stages of Change:

• Precontemplation: Not yet considering change
• Contemplation: Thinking about change
• Preparation: Getting ready to change
• Action: Actively changing
• Maintenance: Sustaining change
• Understand where client is in process
• Tailor interventions to stage

Importance and Readiness Rulers:

• Assess importance: "How important is this change to you?" (1-10)
• Assess readiness: "How ready are you to make this change?" (1-10)
• Explore discrepancies between importance and readiness
• Use to tailor appropriate interventions
• Foster self-compassion about ambivalence

Core Competencies Developed Across All Modules:

Fundamental Mindset Shifts:

• Move from seeing resistance as problem to seeing it as protection
• Shift from confrontation to curiosity
• Transform frustration into compassion
• Change from blaming client to examining interventions
• Believe clients are always doing their best

Understanding Resistance:

• Recognize resistance as adaptive behavior from past
• See patterns as outdated survival strategies
• Understand resistance protects positive intentions and needs
• Honor that "letting go" requires new safety structure first
• Recognize resistance as intelligent expression

Creating Safety:

• Build safe therapeutic relationship as foundation
• Identify and strengthen multiple forms of safety cues
• Recognize when clients don't feel safe enough
• Create conditions where old patterns can be released
• Develop "new raft" before expecting client to let go of "log"

Therapeutic Stance:

• Cultivate openness, curiosity, compassion toward resistance
• Practice yielding rather than confronting
• Stop and check in when feeling stuck
• Ask: "Are you getting what you need here?"
• Examine your own interventions before labeling client resistant

Working With Resistance:

• Name and claim patterns (JOOTS technique)
• Make unconscious resistance conscious
• Explore with playfulness and collaboration
• Address directly and transparently
• Roll with resistance in motivational interviewing style

Assessment and Intervention:

• Identify type of resistance (realistic, collusive, avoidance)
• Distinguish emotional, somatic, and relational resistance
• Assess stage of change
• Use importance and readiness rulers
• Tailor interventions to client's actual readiness

Values and Goals:

• Link goals with core values for motivation
• Use SMARTER framework for achievable change
• Work through worst-case scenarios realistically
• Support autonomy and self-efficacy
• Differentiate surface wants from deeper needs

Relational Dynamics:

• Recognize resistance in therapeutic relationship itself
• Examine collusive agreements
• Address power dynamics openly
• Invite genuine collaboration
• Use resistance as opportunity for deeper intimacy

Expert Faculty:

Learn from Jessica Montgomery (Hakomi practitioner and trainer), Manuela Mischke-Reeds (somatic psychotherapist and Hakomi trainer), Karee Powers (licensed clinical social worker), and Morgan Starr-Riestis, with golden nuggets of wisdom from special guests Deb Dana, Dr. Pat Ogden, Dr. Richard Schwartz, and Dr. Scott Lyons.

The Power of Language:

This course acknowledges the problematic nature of the term "resistance" itself. As Dr. Pat Ogden emphasizes, calling clients "resistant" can be demeaning and insulting—it often reflects our own frustration when techniques don't work rather than the client's actual experience. Yet because the term is so prevalent in our field, we use it while simultaneously challenging and reframing it.

What we call "resistance" is actually:

• Adaptive behavior that once ensured survival
• Intelligent protection of vulnerable needs
• The part that doesn't yet know it's safe to change
• A message about where safety hasn't been established
• The system's wisdom about pacing and readiness

From Multiple Perspectives:

This course is unique in offering four distinct yet complementary approaches:

• Hakomi perspective (Montgomery, Mischke-Reeds): Systems thinking, yielding, mindfulness
• Social work perspective (Powers): Types of resistance, empowerment, practical tools
• Coaching perspective (Starr-Riestis): Stages of change, values, goal-setting
• Somatic perspective (throughout): Body-based understanding of safety and protection

Together, they create a comprehensive framework for understanding and working skillfully with what we call resistance.

A Different Therapeutic Relationship:

At the core of this work is a belief that fundamentally changes the therapeutic relationship: people are always doing their best given their circumstances. This isn't naive—it's profound. It means:

• No one is "resistant" on purpose
• Protective patterns served a crucial function
• The intelligence to change exists within the client
• Our job is to create conditions where that intelligence can emerge
• When clients feel believed in, they can access their own capacity

This belief creates a different kind of therapy—one where:

• Clients feel understood, not judged
• Stuck patterns are honored, not pushed against
• Safety is built before change is expected
• Resistance becomes a collaborative exploration
• Healing happens through relationship, not despite it

Transformation Through Understanding:

This course supports professionals in helping clients by:

• Reframing "resistance" as protection and wisdom
• Creating genuine safety before expecting change
• Building "new rafts" of resources and support
• Honoring the intelligence in protective patterns
• Linking change to deep values and meaning
• Assessing and working with actual readiness
• Yielding to rather than confronting protection
• Examining our own interventions when feeling stuck
• Cultivating curiosity instead of frustration
• Trusting clients' inherent capacity for growth

Who This Is For:

Essential training for:

• Therapists feeling stuck with "resistant" clients
• Practitioners frustrated by lack of client progress
• Clinicians who find themselves working harder than clients
• Anyone who's blamed clients for not changing
• Therapists wanting to examine their own stance toward resistance
• Practitioners using motivational interviewing or Hakomi
• Clinicians working with ambivalence about change
• Anyone interested in collaborative, non-confrontational approaches
• Professionals wanting to create more effective therapeutic relationships

What Makes This Course Essential:

Most training teaches you techniques to overcome resistance. This course teaches you that resistance isn't the problem—it's the protector. It's not something to overcome but something to understand, honor, and work with. This fundamental shift transforms everything:

• How you feel when sessions feel stuck
• How clients experience your presence
• How much progress becomes possible
• How the therapeutic relationship deepens
• How healing actually occurs

The Core Truth:

Resistance isn't a block—it's a message. It's the system saying: "I don't feel safe enough yet." "I need more resources before I let go." "This old pattern kept me alive." "I have good reasons for holding on."

When we stop fighting resistance and start listening to it, when we yield instead of confront, when we build safety instead of pushing change, when we believe clients are doing their best—everything changes. We move from confrontation to curiosity, from frustration to compassion, from stuck to spacious.

And in that spaciousness, with attunement and skill, healing begins. Not despite resistance, but through it. Not by overcoming protection, but by honoring it until it's safe enough to soften. Not by working harder than the client, but by creating conditions where their own intelligence and capacity for change can emerge.

This is the art of working with resistance: meeting it with curiosity, understanding its wisdom, and trusting that when people feel truly safe and understood, they naturally move toward growth. Because people aren't resistant—they're protecting something precious. And when that protection is finally honored, transformation becomes possible.