6 Unconscious Reasons Why A Client Is Holding Back Their Own Therapy Progress

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-12 20:57

Sigmund Freud saw resistance as anything that prevents successful therapeutic work.

In this article, I will provide some of the unconscious reasons that lead clients to resist personal change despite their request for the change.

This is not about the therapist trying to impose on the client something that he does not need, his own vision of the problem, but about when the therapist acts directly at the client's request, but then suddenly receives a rebuff, explicit or implicit.

Let's consider these reasons.

1. Resistance-suppression

With this type of resistance, the client tries to prevent thoughts from entering his mind that can cause painful experiences (for example, the client does not dare to admit the thought that the spouse does not love him or as a result, he tries to divert the conversation from the topic of personal relationships, if not completely interrupt therapy).

2. Resistance-transfer

With this type of resistance, the client does not dare, for one reason or another, to voice his attitude towards him to the therapist.

As you know, with more or less long-term therapy, the client's childhood experiences come to life and become aggravated. Observant clients report the effect of déjà vu, an influx of the same emotional states that they experienced in their childhood relationships with their loved ones.

In the words of one client: “I had an ear ache, I went up to my husband and asked to go to the pharmacy for drops. I go up to my mother and ask her to put drops in my ear, my mother gets angry, drives me away and tells me to wait until the morning when the clinic opens. I understood that my mother could not do anything, but I wanted her to feel sorry for me."

Often, the client transfers claims, unfulfilled expectations in relation to parents, brothers, sisters, former partners to the therapist. He has aggressive or libidinal impulses, but there is no determination to talk about them out of fear of rejection, shame …

An unresolved ambiguous attitude towards the therapist also hinders the client's progress.

3. Resistance associated with unwillingness to part with the secondary benefit of the symptom

For example, the client may deny a clear improvement in his condition or claim that it is temporary, because the previous state helps him to retain the attention of others, to influence their behavior, to receive support, sympathy and other preferences.

4. Resistance of the super-ego

For example, a client cannot discuss his partner's behavior with a psychologist, because feels guilty about it. Or the client does not dare to talk about his desires (flirt with others, say, yell at someone), because he is convinced that this is unacceptable, will cause condemnation of the therapist, or that thoughts and fantasies are equivalent to committing an act, and he will have to bear for them punishment.

5. Resistance associated with the results of change

For example, a client's request for therapy was to get rid of the victim's complex. However, when the client began broadcasting assertive behavior in the relationship with his narcissistic partner, he did not like it, the relationship was threatened, and the client chose to return to his previous role.

6. Resistance due to the threat of termination of therapy

It also happens that the client and the therapist successfully cooperate on the topic of the request, but as soon as the client feels that the therapist is ready to raise the issue of completing the therapy, he immediately regresses: a nervous breakdown, suicidal thoughts, a quarrel with his parents, etc. …

Such repetitions can speak of the client's formed dependence on the support of the therapist, on communication with him, or rather not only with him, but in general from significant people.

If the client chooses supportive therapy and seeks a therapist from time to time after the request has been worked through, this is normal. If the client cannot feel calm outside the sessions and his whole life is locked in communication with the therapist and thoughts about him, this is an alarming sign. It is necessary to investigate this pattern, perhaps the client has attitudes about personal insolvency outside the support of the significant person.

Be that as it may, behind each type of resistance, there are stable attitudes of clients that must be brought to their awareness in order to come to a result.