How to Deal with a “Resistant” Therapy Client

This week during the Low Country Mental Health Conference in South Carolina, I was asked a question that I honestly hear a lot in the field. That question was “What do you do with a Resistant?” And, to be honest, I don’t feel like there’s such a thing as a Resistant Client! Let’s talk about why a client might feel “Resistant”, and how it might have everything to do with us.

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There is no such thing as a resistant client. And if you think there is, you’re the problem. And I’m about to tell you why.

So I’m here in Charleston, South Carolina. I just got done speaking at a conference called the Low Country Mental Health Conference. Super amazing experience. They’re going to have me back. It was so awesome. And I spoke in this amazing auditorium, and then they asked me to do a breakout session in this smaller room.

Now, while I was teaching that smaller room, there was this wonderful woman named Cynthia. She was sitting over to my left, and she said, “I have a question. What do you do with resistant clients?” And I honestly, really, really struggle to answer that question, because I don’t perceive any of my clients as resistant. And the reason why is because it is our job to cooperate with the client’s reality, and we have to accept the truth. Therapy is a very hard place to be.

It’s very difficult for a client to make the decision to come to therapy. So if the client is there and their body language looks like they don’t want to be there, or they’re struggling to talk to you because they really don’t know, I mean, think about it.

You’re a complete and total stranger to them. They’re only in therapy because they got caught for the 50th time drinking alcohol, or they got addicted to some sort of drug substance, and their spouse is threatened to leave them, or they got fired from their job, or they’re suicidal, they had an affair. These are really hard things to talk to a complete and total stranger about.

So forgive your clients if they’re not super excited to talk to you. And also understand that if your client is being resistant, perhaps that means you’re not talking about a subject that has enough hope in it, or that’s connected to what the client wants to get from the therapy.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve talked to therapists, and they tell me, they’re really struggling to get [this] client to talk about [this]. And I always say to myself, “Maybe they don’t want to talk to you about it.”

Perhaps if you talk about something else that they feel safe enough to talk about, they will eventually begin to trust you, and then they’ll talk about it. That’s not a resistant client. That’s a client who’s realizing you’re a complete and total stranger. And maybe I don’t feel comfortable sharing the topic that you keep wanting to dig into. That’s not on the client. That’s on you.

I don’t care what therapy model you’re using. Of course, you guys probably know I practice Solution Focused Brief Therapy. And there’s tons of other therapy approaches out there. Doesn’t really matter to me which one you practice. But whatever you are practicing, you have to know that it is your job to cooperate with your client.

And there truly is no such thing as a resistant client.

There are only resistant therapists.