Coping with challenging client.

You can’t change your clients. You can only change how you interact with your clients and hope that change results. That’s all you get.

Here are some suggestions for dealing with resistance in a counselling relationship: -

1. ?"Stay out of the ’expert’ position." The more resistant the client, the less knowledge you should profess to know. The more motivated the client, the more knowledge you can express. "
2. ?"Don’t collude with clients’ excuses." Don’t buy into and encourage feelings of victimhood and powerlessness. Discussion of these perceptions are useful in the beginning of the counseling session, but the counselor needs to move beyond them and lead the client beyond them. Facilitating feelings of powerlessness only communicates to clients that they are powerless. This is a disservice to them. " Empathize, but don’t sympathize, he says. "Try to see the client’s point of view without communicating a sense of victimhood."
3. ?"When you encounter resistance, slow the pace." Trying to go too fast is a perfect way to increase resistance. Only take baby steps with resistant clients."
4. "Don’t argue. This creates more resistance. "
5. Focus on details. The devil is in the details, and so are all solutions. "Details create options. If you do not have enough options, you do not have enough details about what is occurring in the client’s situation. All therapeutic breakthroughs come from addressing and processing a detail in the client’s life that no one has ever discussed and processed before. "?Leave blames out of it.
6. "Don’t blame the client, and don’t blame the people they think are creating their problems."
7. Always treat the resistance with respect. The client has a reason for what they just said, (so) respect it.
8. "Seek emotionally compelling reasons for change." Do not waste time trying to create change through logic. If people changed because of logic, nobody would smoke or drink, and everyone would have an exercise program and get eight hours of sleep. When people make major changes in their lives, they don’t do it because of logic. They do it because they have an emotionally compelling reason.
9. Stay out of an excessive questioning mode of responding with resistant clients. Questions are micro-confrontations with resistant clients that invite unproductive answers. Excessive questioning is the primary means by which therapists get sucked into the client’s "stuckness." Learn to dialogue without questions.

Ultimately, all therapy comes down to the successful management of resistance.

The majority of therapists approach their clients with the goal of bringing about change. They would benefit enormously if they approached clients with the goal of avoiding resistance and allowing change to happen naturally as a result of the client's investigating his or her own environment.

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