Resistance does not exist

Often when people don't want to cooperate, we say they go into resistance. You see that happen in therapy land, too. Johnny doesn't cooperate, so Johnny has resistance.

Pete doesn't do what he's told, so Pete has resistance. It doesn't work with Annie, no because Annie has resistance.

First, resistance is not a thing someone has, but something they do. This is already an important difference, because by calling out that someone has resistance I can easily shrug it off of course.

There are no people with resistance. There are none. But there are people who do resistance. And why, for example, do they not cooperate? Because the therapist is not skilled enough to get them to cooperate.

That's what you get with protocols. When everyone has to fit into a box, schedule or booklet, you have a challenge. You can still get a lot of people in, but not everyone. It's as simple as that.

You see it happening with girls who do anorexia. Some of those girls who are admitted who are immediately cured. Those are torn away from their parents, put in a clinic, and that transition is so shocking and painful that they heal themselves right away. That pain is worse than the anorexia itself and because of that it works.

What do counselors think? That their therapy works. Well... The rest who stay in there who have a long journey ahead of them with all kinds of bad suggestions like "you're sick," "you'll never get rid of this," and more of that kind of wonderful suggestion.

Some of them survive and are able to resume her or his life. One in ten do not survive and may even euthanize if nothing turns out to work.

Nothing in this case is "regular therapy. Not the 500 other alternative ways you could also do it.

Why it didn't work? They had too much resistance. It wasn't coming in.

Resistance does not exist, that is simply another hypnosis. You weren't skilled enough to get that person to go along with you. That's how it is. That's not a bad thing, but don't shrug it off.

A person has all sides and their own unique color. When pain is great, he is going to protect the color he still has with a side he creates. You could call it resistance, but you could also call it color preservation.

If you realize that, then your job is precisely to go and find all those other sides, and especially the side that protects "the resistance. That side feels and does the real problem. The more you try to fight with the resistance side, the more it fails. The more you try to bring that other side forward, the better it is.

How do you make someone happy? By being happy yourself.

How do you get someone to show their pain? By going into the pain yourself....

And the latter is often the missing link in therapy land....

In Love ❤️