Client Defenses & Clinical Blocks
Avoidance, intellectualization, and other defenses may protect clients from overwhelming feelings, but they also slow and prevent growth. Attuned therapists understand these defenses as adaptive strategies that once served survival. Navigating them well requires creativity, patience, and a willingness to explore what lies beneath protective patterns without forcing premature vulnerability. These articles offer insights into overcoming common defenses, like anger and chronic lateness, as well as other therapeutic impasses. Learn from therapy's leading voices about working skillfully with defenses.
The Case of the Late Client
Janina Fisher & Gabor Maté Tackle a Clinical Challenge
Push up against a resistant client, you get more resistance. Try a comforting, helpful approach, and you can undermine a client's motivation to act. So what's... Read more
John Norcross gives us a clear and compassionate take on reactance—what it is, how it’s different from resistance, and how to begin with each extreme. Read more
Terry talks about grandiosity and the destructive behaviors it leads to, thus making leverage a part of the therapeutic process. Read more
Using humor to help clients reconstruct their problems, even to the point of making parodies of their own dilemmas, can help some them get distance from their... Read more
When we find ourselves haunted by a particular case, it may mean that we’re more invested in the client making changes than the client is himself. Read more
Watch this clip to hear Courtney Armstrong talk about a specific client she saw who needed guidance more than she needed understanding. Read more
David Burns discusses the key to reaching resistant clients—and it's not a new technique. Read more
Psychotherapy too often fails to help clients like myself make changes in their lives because of the blind spot at its core—it undervalues the central role... Read more
Changes in the habitual attitudes and behaviors that shape our lives rarely happen as the result of psychological epiphanies or emotional catharsis. Most... Read more
With all the recent developments in research, theory, and practice, we have more treatment options to choose from than ever before. Why then do so many... Read more
Frederic Luskin has spent the last 20 years studying forgiveness and why achieving it can be so difficult. Read more
Resonating with clients’ inner experience is key to working effectively with emotion in therapy. With traumatized and shutdown clients, however, it is easy... Read more
That first session with a new client can be crucial to the success or failure of treatment. Read more
Far from being a relic of Psych 101, the theory of cognitive dissonance may have more relevance in understanding today's world than ever. Read more
When therapy stalls, it's usually time to investigate the undercurrents that nobody wants to talk about. Read more
In the fluid world of our practices, we must face the truth of opposing truths everyday. Read more
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