Question

What are some red flags that would indicate client resistance? How can you most effectively deal with resistance? Will a client with substance use disorder be more resistant than a client with a general mental health disorder? What would be the impact in involving significant others in treatment? Explain your response.

Answer 1

• For every client who comes in ready to talk and dig through issues, there are as many clients who are resistant to initial or ongoing counseling efforts.
• Encountering resistance is a common experience for counselors. Clients naturally weigh trusting a perfect stranger with personal issues, as well as their fear of rejection. In some cases, such reluctance may be due to the level of trauma or physical and mental harm a client has sustained (as in cases of child or spousal abuse) increasing the difficulty for them to open up to a counselor.
• In other cases, what may look like resistance is actually a product of culture. Such behavior needs to be recognized by counselors as separate from resistance.
• Whether clients are resistant due to previous experiences or a lack of understanding of the benefits of counseling, such opposition to engagement can raise tremendous roadblocks for counselors.
• Resistance can also be a frustrating symptom of the root issue that’s brought a client in for counseling. Trying to get to the root cause is a challenging task for counselors who must work with clients in an attempt to have them interact and share more.
• Counselors must understand what leads to resistance in clients, what their own limitations as counselors are and what they can do to encourage clients to engage and express emotions in a healthy way.
• Counselors need to acknowledge that there is only so much within their power to combat client resistance. If a client does not want to change or is not ready to change, a counselor cannot force to change to occur.
• Exerting too much pressure during a session could further reinforce resistant behavior. The boundary line is not always clear, however, and in many cases is something counselors will have to figure out on their own, informed by years of experience.
• When faced with a resistant client, counselors should practice mindfulness toward this balance of change. Delineating between what is within a counselor’s control and what isn’t can help professionals retool approaches or recognize when a certain path of interaction isn’t worth pushing.
• There are many types of resistance:-
• 1.Response quality resistance: A form of resistance more to do with verbal cues than nonverbal ones, response quality resistance is typified by silence, indifference, noncompliance and minimal effort.
• This is done because a client wants to withhold or restrict information given to the counselor as a means of taking control of the session. Response quality resistance is most commonly seen in clients who are mandated to attend counseling (for court or disciplinary reasons).
• 2.Response content resistance: When a client does engage, but seemingly deflects direct questions or certain topics, they may be demonstrating response content resistance. For instance, small talk (about trivial topics like entertainment, rumors or the weather) may not be viewed as harmless in a counseling context, but rather a deliberate manipulation of the relationship.
• By diverting attention or overreacting, clients block the two-way street a session is intended to create, becoming more difficult for counselors to reach the underlying issues.
• 3.Response style resistance: Some clients are even savvier in their attempts to redirect or influence the client-counselor relationship. Response style resistance is a form whereby engaging clients may use flattery, charm or wit to disarm a counselor. Such tactics that indicate a response style resistance can include: “discounting, limit setting, thought censoring/editing, externalization, counselor stroking, seductiveness, forgetting, last minute disclosure, and false promising.”
• Clients exhibiting this resistant behavior use guile to avoid talking about sensitive topics and disincentivizing counselors to probe.
• 4.Logistic management resistance: This type of resistance doesn’t have to do with interactions in a session so much as the lengths to which some clients will avoid the situation. Logistic management resistance refers to a technical form of the behavior in which clients disrupt counseling by forgetting or ditching appointments, refusing to pay and asking personal favors of the counselor.
• Clients who want out of counseling try to create openings for themselves by “ignoring, and in some cases outright defying, established counseling guidelines.”
• The counselor-client relationship is key to helping the client move forward.Clients are less resistant if they feel connected with the counselor. If counseling is to be successful, the client must be willing to discuss the issue, examine it and make plans. If clients will not disclose their inner wants, actions, feelings and thinking, change is very difficult.
• But in the context of a safe, trusting relationship, they are more likely to disclose such information. After clients lower their defenses, they can then more freely discuss their inner thoughts and feelings. After this occurs, the counselor can help them conduct a more fearless self-evaluation.
• Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation