JOURNAL
When therapy feels stuck: Exploring resistance as wisdom
That moment when your therapist asks a question and every cell in your body screams "no." When you find yourself arriving late, canceling sessions, or suddenly having nothing to talk about despite coming with a list of concerns. When the conversation feels like you're dancing around something important, but you can't quite name what it is.
These moments are often labeled as "resistance" in therapy circles—as if you're being difficult or uncooperative. But what if that pushback isn't a problem to solve? What if it's actually wisdom trying to get your attention?
For historically marginalized groups, this pushback may be a honed survival mechanism, serving them in several ways: Protecting Boundaries: People from marginalized groups may have a heightened sense of needing to protect their physical and emotional boundaries due to past experiences of mistreatment. When we've learned through experience that sharing too much can lead to being judged, pathologized, or misunderstood, resistance becomes a form of protection.
Traditional therapy models often frame resistance as something to overcome—an obstacle standing between you and your healing. Sigmund Freud originally described psychological resistance as a phenomenon wherein patients unconsciously "cling to their disease" through "tenacious" and "critical objections" in order to repress distressing thoughts, emotions and experiences as they are raised by the therapist. This view positions the therapist as the expert who knows what's best, and the client as someone who simply needs to comply.
But narrative therapy offers a different understanding. Your resistance might be telling you something essential about your experience, your values, or what you need in that moment. Maybe you're not being difficult—maybe you're being discerning.
Sometimes the thing you're resisting isn't the hard work of healing—it's an approach that doesn't fit your story. When our client is attempting to do something that might contradict their family values, resistance can occur when that loss of connection is felt. Even the things we want to let go of, like anxiety, can cause us to experience a loss of identity, and this can catch the client off guard and result in resistance.
Your resistance might be protecting something precious: your cultural identity, your family connections, or parts of your story that others have tried to minimize. When therapy feels like it's asking you to become someone you're not, resistance makes complete sense.
Consider the client who goes quiet when their therapist suggests "letting go" of anger. That anger might be the very thing that helped them recognize they deserved better treatment. The person who resists homework assignments might be protecting their right to heal at their own pace, in their own way. The individual who changes the subject when certain topics arise might be honoring their readiness to engage with difficult material.
Resistance reveals information about the client, it is a window into a client's fears, values, and the strategies they use to guard themselves. When you notice yourself pushing back in therapy, it's worth getting curious about what that resistance is trying to tell you.
Maybe it's saying:
When a problem gets externalized, it enables us to identify the dominant and powerful ideas, beliefs, and practices that sustain the problem—and sometimes, what we're resisting isn't the problem itself, but the dominant ideas about how we should be dealing with it.
"I see resistance as a sign of survival and mental wellness," she explains. "It is pushback from mistreatment… we are talking about people who are historically marginalized…I wanna ask us as practitioners to think about what happens in our minds and our bodies when we interpret something as resistance."
When we view resistance through this lens, it becomes clear that what looks like "difficulty" might actually be strength. The client who questions their therapist's assumptions might be drawing on cultural wisdom that says their lived experience matters. The person who refuses to pathologize their natural responses to trauma isn't being stubborn—they're refusing to internalize shame.
Your resistance might be protecting knowledge that took years to develop: the understanding that your feelings are valid, that your story matters, that you don't have to shrink yourself to make others comfortable. These are hard-won insights, and it makes sense that part of you would resist giving them up, even in the name of healing.
I also checked in with my sense of pacing—we were limited in time, and I felt pressure to move fast. I pulled back to match her pace so that she could continue to feel in control of the process. Sometimes resistance is your internal wisdom saying "slow down." The pressure to make progress, to feel better quickly, to resolve complex experiences in neat timeframes—these external expectations can push against your natural healing rhythm.
Healing isn't linear, and it doesn't follow anyone else's timeline. When you find yourself resisting the pace of therapy, it might be because your story needs more time to unfold. Your experiences deserve to be witnessed fully, not rushed through to reach some predetermined destination.
Narrative conversations are interactive and always in collaboration with the people consulting the therapist. The therapist seeks to understand what is of interest to the people consulting them and how the journey is suiting their preferences. The goal isn't to eliminate resistance but to listen to what it's trying to tell you.
When therapy feels stuck, that's often the invitation to slow down and pay attention to what's happening in the relationship. By embracing diversity and demonstrating adaptation, therapists create a more inclusive and effective therapeutic environment. Cultural competence ensures that the therapy approach respects and aligns with the client's cultural identity, enhancing engagement and outcomes.
A therapist who understands resistance as wisdom will work with you to explore what your pushback might be protecting. They'll be curious about your experience rather than trying to overcome your defenses. They'll recognize that you are the expert on your own life, and that includes being the expert on what feels safe and helpful in your healing process.
When you notice resistance arising in therapy, these questions might help you understand what it's trying to communicate:
Your resistance isn't evidence that you're broken or difficult. It's not proof that you're not ready for therapy or that healing isn't possible for you. Resistance is often a protective response to a process that asks for vulnerability and change.
When therapy feels stuck, it might be time to honor what your resistance is teaching you. Maybe it's asking for a different approach, a slower pace, or more attention to the cultural and social context of your experience. Maybe it's protecting parts of your story that haven't felt safe to share yet.
The goal isn't to eliminate your defenses—they developed for good reasons. The goal is to understand them, honor what they've done for you, and make conscious choices about when and how to engage with the healing process.
Your resistance is part of your story, not an obstacle to it. And like every part of your story, it deserves to be witnessed with curiosity and respect, not overcome or pushed through. Sometimes the most healing thing we can do is listen to what our resistance is trying to tell us, and trust that it might know something important about what we need.