Working With Resistances
A PAGE FROM A GESTALT COACH
Understanding resistance in oneself and others is critical for professional coaches as well as for those leading teams and organizations. Working with resistance requires exceptional self and social awareness, a deft touch to engage with the energy of individuals and groups, and a healthy sense of humor regarding oneself.
You might want to resist to…
Protect yourself from the unknown Keep yourself safe
Communicate “no”
Because it’s a habit
Avoid your fear of new possibilities
Keep things the same
We begin by stating that resistances can be both helpful and unhelpful. Resistance creates boundaries, it’s a way of defining ourselves in relationship to others and our environment. I like this. I don’t like that. I’m drawn to this. I’m not attracted to that. This interests me. This bores me. It can be seen as a healthy response to one’s environment, a way to solve a problem, manage or cope with potentially difficult, even dangerous, situations.
Yet, we are often taught at an early age that resistance is a negative thing. Good children don’t do this or, don’t do that, don’t say this, or don’t say that. Early psychoanalytic therapy was designed to help people give up resisting.
Resistances are, quite often, over-developed patterns of people doing the best they could. That resistance often stems from habitual behavior once useful in solving a problem or handling a difficult situation. Problems arise when fixed patterns or habits become overdeveloped and out of our awareness and bring us into conflict with others. This is true for individuals, couples, families, groups, teams or organizations.
And these same patterns help us creatively adjust to life’s twists and turns.
Resistance most often arises between people. It happens when people are experiencing different realities. Given that our values, prior experiences, and beliefs are often different, a particular situation will cause varied responses in people. While resistances can be very personal, we are all responsible for what happens between us.
• • • • • •
Gestalt theory and practice encourages us to move toward differences, to get curious and interested in our differences and to engage with resistance. If you avoid these differences you will miss out on vital energy that facilitates change in companies or in your clients. The first step to being able to identify resistances in your team or your clients is to know the types. Furthermore, developing awareness of these styles in yourself first, can help you to better identify and understand them in other people.
6 Resistance Styles:
1) Introjection: Taking in or swallowing an experience “whole” without question.
You’ll know these because they often have a “should” in front of them.
Positive example: You should always update staff when operating procedures change.
Less than positive example: You should never interrupt people, it’s rude. Let others go first and learn to wait your turn.
If we allow team members to swallow their opinions, we miss out on diverse ideas and valuable perspectives that may move us all forward.
2) Projection: Blaming another, or attributing one’s disowned feelings, desires, or characteristics to another.
Positive example: He looks just like my grandfather- I bet he doesn’t charge us for the damage.
Less than positive example: He’s going to attack me the minute I open my mouth. (Spoken by someone who sees other’s disagreement as an attack because he cannot own his own hostility.)
As a leader, owning your own biases and mistakes can provide psychological safety for others on the team to do the same. This promotes accurate critical thinking and analysis of team effectiveness.
3) Retroflection: Doing to oneself what you want to do to others, or what you want others to do to you.
Positive example: I give myself a little neck rub when I need some extra tender loving care.
Negative example: I bite my tongue and yell at myself in my head for being stupid when my boss has seriously misstepped.
Such behavior cuts us off from others and from other parts of ourselves. Organizationally this type of behavior leads to unhealthy and unproductive company culture. To bite our tongues when others are open to hearing our opinions, diminishes possibilities for growth and relationship.
This one can be difficult to identify, but a leader or coach can mitigate risk of retroflection by understanding the communication style and organizational “love languages” of team members or clients.
4) Deflection: Avoiding direct contact by breaking the mood, shifting attention, or changing the subject.
Positive example: Using a joke or sarcasm to diffuse a serious situation.
Negative example: Ignoring or refusing a compliment.
When you recognize deflection, there is usually something being left unsaid. This is an opportunity to pause and inquire about what the resistance may really be about.
5) Confluence: “Going along to get along.” Agreeing with others to avoid conflict or because one is unable to differentiate oneself and still feel valued or accepted.
Positive example: Looking past the cups littering the living room end tables because you know it doesn’t bother your spouse.
Negative example: Agreeing with other’s opinions to avoid having to take a position.
Without awareness, this may look like things are going well. In teams, any time there is too much unanimous agreement, there is likely some confluence going on. This may be an indication that there is a lack of engagement or motivation, bullying in the group or lack of safety for new ideas. These factors can squash innovation and creativity in a team. If this is happening, encourage individuals to submit their ideas anonymously or separately to provide safety.
6) Desensitization: “Numbing out.” Feeling nothing as a way to avoid dealing with difficult or painful issues. Dissociating or avoiding direct contact physically, emotionally, or mentally.
Positive example: Distracting yourself to drown out the chatting of your cubicle neighbors.
Negative example: Adopting a cynical attitude in the face of real pain.
In groups, this may result in lack of engagement and a holding back of ideas which, again, may limit the creativity of the group.
• • • • • •
Finally, we understand that what we call resisting often happens when people are having different experiences and different realities than ours. The issue is not whether resistance is generated, it always is, simply because people’s values, experience and behavior are different. Resistances occur as a normal part of the relationships both within and between people. The challenge and the way forward comes in taking the time to understand the root of the resistances in others and addressing the underlying concerns.
By learning to identify these factors in yourself, your team and your clients, you will be better equipped to facilitate improved communication, increase motivation and cooperation within teams and move through conflicts with greater ease.
Perhaps the last word comes from my long-term teacher Sonia Nevis. Sonia would say that when you boil it down resistance is either useful or useless, and that it can take a lot of work to come to the place of understanding.
This article is a compilation of my work and the writings of Joseph Melnick and Sonia March Nevis from their book The Evolution of the Cape Cod Model, Gestalt Conversations, Theory and Practice.