Four Different Types Of Resistance Therapy

Resistance therapy is a form of behavior, cognition or emotion that a patient presents and which is an obstacle to their improvement. In fact, the range of resistance is as varied as the people who go to therapy. Read more about resistance therapy in this article.

Similarly, although not all of them show resistance, there may be times when you may find that your patient seems stagnant. That they refuse to inform you about certain issues, or just do not do the previously agreed tasks.

The different psychological models do not place equal emphasis on resistance. However, everyone insists on the need to solve them, give them the attention they deserve, to expose them in the session and ask the patient assertive questions about any difficulties they may encounter.

Here are some techniques that can be helpful in effectively breaking resistance in the session. They are suitable for any type of therapy. In this case, let’s focus on those who are rooted in positive psychology.

Positive psychology

Positive psychology is a psychological school of thought that focuses primarily on strengths, not weaknesses. Instead, it goes for the resources and potential of an individual. Many believe this approach originated in 1998, promoted by the president of the American Psychological Association (APA) .

The basis for positive psychology in resistance therapy is to strengthen strengths and promote growth and human development. For example, the model of health and well-being, framed in this movement, seeks the psychological well-being of individuals in matters such as independence and autonomy. It also tries to find the most favorable environments to satisfy desires and needs and develop potential or vital purposes.

For this reason, it is useful to include tasks that are typical of this psychological approach, regardless of methodological cuts in therapy. This is because it is useful not only to stop resistance, but also to promote change in a person and to improve their abilities.

Resistance therapy – Negative, intrusive and obsessive thoughts

There are many recurring thoughts in a large number of pathologies, and people are unable to stop them. When you are in a cognitive behavioral context, stopping a thought through self-instruction does not seem helpful. These are some useful techniques for pursuing the type of cognitive adjustment that lasts longer:

• Techniques derived from mindfulness (the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to experiences that occur in the moment). Performing a non-evaluative contemplation of experiences without getting caught up in them is helpful when you cannot suppress your thoughts. Mindfulness does not seek to eliminate them, but to weaken the self-identification of a person with their subjective experiences.

• Well-being therapy. This seeks to increase well-being and self-efficacy, not just a reduction in symptoms. Because obsessive thoughts are often negative, it is certainly helpful to increase a person’s well-being. You can use techniques that are as easy to implement as pointing out weekly wellness episodes at the beginning of a session and not just asking for periods of discomfort.
• Narrative techniques about positive events. Rewriting past events helps a person cope with negative thoughts. It helps to generate positive emotions from a past that some may perceive as completely negative. The task is to write about the happiest moments in one’s life and the feelings they gave.

Resistance therapy: Pathology identification as something natural in a person

Many people undergo therapy when they are completely overwhelmed by their condition. So much so that most of them have a hard time not identifying with it. It often happens with anxiety. People with these disorders usually define themselves with that label and rarely detach from it.

In fact, they think they have always had anxiety, they have it at the moment, and they always want it. The depatologization of anxiety and other disorders helps to remove that “power” and helps the person to find other adjectives that are more suitable for describing themselves:

• Re-perception of the term “anxiety”. Explaining the evolutionary function of anxiety is helpful while not exaggerating. This seeks to eliminate the negative assessment at the end. It is useful to differentiate between the terms “stress” and “anxiety”. The first is a term used in many contexts that does not involve a pathology. The second is a term that corresponds to illness. A patient should realize that they are not too different.
• Empowerment or model of competition (Costa and López, 1986). This emphasizes the strengths, competencies, skills and abilities a person can identify with. This is useful when a person continues to view anxiety as a pathology because it is still identified with something derogatory in their eyes. You should try to show them other adjectives that can also describe them.

• Interventions based on strengths (Seligman, 2005). Find assignments such as writing memories of a time when they were at their best and reading them every night. The goal of this technique is to enrich the social circle of a patient.

Resistance therapy – expectation and anxiety

When embracing resistance to anxiety disorders, cognitive restructuring can be a difficult task. Therefore, the Socratic debate on irrational thoughts can be mixed with tasks that help a person to find positive meanings for his problems. This is because their expectation usually causes discomfort:

• Open the future. Discuss the benefits of waiting for life with open arms, with curiosity and interest.
• Vital imprints and progress. Look for traces of positive and negative experiences that are still present in a person, so that they can choose the ones they want to keep.

Attribution of therapeutic change to medication

People who initiate a medicated psychiatric treatment can attribute any established positive change to the medicine itself. Since it is not possible to withdraw from the medicine at once and it is counterproductive at times, the person should be aware of the full range of positive changes they have made. In addition, use Socratic interrogations to dismantle such an idea.

You can use graphs that record mood swings that are thought to be exponential. In turn, also look for and alert them to any translating signs of improvement in each session. These types of exercises and techniques are part of the range of options that a therapist can rely on to solve resistance therapy.

You can also use other positive interventions, always with the ultimate goal of empowerment and depatologization. These are the mainstays of positive psychology.