Yo, what's up rockstars, good to see you or at least speak to you
from that rounds of the internet. So I was talking to Jacob over the internet,
email and talking about what I could offer the group in terms of wisdom.
Now, I don't know too much about wisdom, but I do have some techniques that I can share with
you. And today specifically, I'm going to talk about working through resistance with clients.
Now, my background is working in corrections. So rehabilitating criminal offenders. And pretty much
about 90% of them did not want to work with me. So I dealt with highly resistant clients, that people
whose behavior I had to try and help change without any support from the client themselves,
they just legally obligated to see me. And sometimes even that wasn't enough to
get them in the door. So to talk a little bit about what happens once they start resisting,
either overtly, or subtly, and some of the things that I found were most effective.
Before I even start this video, the best thing I think you can do is find a book on motivational
interviewing techniques, by Rolnick, and Miller, those two other powerhouses in
motivational interviewing. And that's the style of interviewing the naive Enquirer,
as it's called Socratic questioning, that is really effective for working with resistance.
There's a bit of a myth out there that someone has to want to change before they can change.
My personal experience tells me otherwise I have been able to help people change when they
didn't want to, I just had to understand how to respond to the part of the cycle of change,
though we're in the pre contemplative part where they don't want to change.
So checking on my TD, okay, so I'm gonna go through a few steps that worked really
well for me. And feel free to go and test them out and see how they work with your clients,
for the really resistant ones. So the first one is when you identify a resistance,
you need to slow down. Okay, this one might seem really obvious.
But resistance is kind of a an escalating thing, the more you push, the more that they will resist
to the point where they can actually hear that you might be making some really good arguments
might be made some really good points. But because their resistance is triggered, they're now backed
into a corner. And they feel that they must keep resisting. So they'll keep resisting
even when they don't want to anymore, if you keep pushing. So one of the key aspects to motivational
interviewing techniques is something called rolling with resistance. And the basic premise
behind this, don't worry about the techniques for now. But the basic premise is that you give
them nothing to resist against, you do not push at all, it doesn't mean you fall back and give it you
just give them nothing to fight against. And this has to be particularly in your emotional output.
You cannot become confrontational emotionally, because it will trigger it in them.
And they will lose all rationality, they will not be able to talk it through properly,
if they feel that they're having a fight with you. Okay. So slowing down spacing soon as you think,
yeah, they're getting his attempt. There's a year that's coming through and frowning. And
that sort of those early warning signs that they're not agreeing with what's being said
that they're not on board, that's when you really need to slow down and stopped caring for them.
Number two, and this is more of a mindset thing.
You need to assume that they know what's best for them. One of the reasons that we create resistance
with clients and we create the resistance, they don't create it, we the ones that trigger it.
Once we start creating that resistance, that's usually coming from a place where
we assume that we know what's best for them. And we're trying to impose that assumption on them.
And it's that that creates resistance just like it will create it with you. If you're watching this
video right now, and you don't agree with me, you will feel that I am imposing on you. And you will
start resistance. So no matter what I say, even if that sounds really reasonable to you, you'll feel
this really powerful urge to resist, because I've already triggered that in you if that's the case.
So just as if you can assume that a person always deep down somewhere in their mind
knows what's best for them better than you could ever know. You'll always come from a really good
place when you're working with their resistance. So always assume they know what's best for them.
They just they might have some blocks. Step number three is need to call it down to the
resistance cannot be dealt with in secrecy. You know, well it can be but it's not as effective.
So the best thing to do is actually call While the fact that they've been resistant, not as a kind
of, what would you call it, you're not accusing them of being resistant. Like if something bad,
you're just acknowledging that it's in the room, and you're making space for it.
Okay? So it's really as simple as just saying, hey, I can feel that you're not really,
you're not really getting into this, I can feel the resistance coming from me.
You know, tell me a bit more about that. So just acknowledge it. I used to do it with
all sorts of different manipulation techniques that I had to deal with,
with the offenders. So sometimes I might say, Hey, I feel like you're trying to flatter me,
you know, feel like you're trying to change my mind with flattery. What's that about? You know,
just calling it out in a non judgmental way. So I'd say something like, I feel that you're feeling
the resistance to this idea coming through, which is okay, that's fine. You know, let's talk it
through. But I don't want to go any further until we figured out what this resistance is about.
Okay. Once you've talked it through, so allow them to talk through the resistance, call it you know,
just elicit from them assume that that resistance is the most important thing in the world to you
right now, you're not going to try and fight against it, you're not going to try and avoid it,
or push it out and change the subject, you want to delve into it and you want to bring it out
into the open and hear all about it. Once you've done that, what I'd like to do is I like to do
a little stop and chicken type moment where we go, well, let's let's we've got the resistance,
we've talked about that we can see what that's coming from. Let's stop for a second. And
check in with you around your goals. So tell me what is it that you're trying to achieve here?
And get them to talk about the positive? So the the resistance has a relationship to something
that you're talking about in relation to their goals? Yeah, that resistance is related directly
to whether or not they achieve their goals, and they want you to help them see that.
So for example, they might be really Yeah, I'm just not feeling it. It's just doesn't
feel like me, this is, you know, it's not me to go out there and approach people blah, blah,
blah, you Okay, let's stop them and check them for a second. So what's the goal here? What are
we trying to work on? Trying to work on, you know, me getting a bigger social circle and
meeting new girls and blah, blah, blah. So that, obviously, I'm using my clients as an example.
So once you've got that, you've now got this thing, we're gonna start creating what's called
cognitive dissonance, which is that discomfort you feel in your mind when you want something,
and you're doing something that takes you away from that thing that you want, okay,
so you're unbalanced. And what I like to do as the two hands on like this, screaming
when it comes to stopping cheating, and so you get the goal, you know, okay, so on one hand,
you really want to find the girl of your dreams, you really want to create a big social circle,
and you want to be the socially confident guy. On the other hand, you're really resistant to
going out there and getting out of your comfort zone and trying some new things. So all you're
doing is pointing out these two discrepancies in a non judgmental way. This is that naive approach,
I wonder why you're doing that, you know, you have no judgment, no assumptions, you just noticed that
they've got a behavior that doesn't align to their goals. And you're just going to show that to them.
So on one hand, you want this and yet on the other hand, you're doing this. And what you're implying,
or saying quite directly, to be honest, is that this will not help them get this. So something has
to give, they can either keep doing this behavior, or they can have the goal but they can't do both.
So once you've done it, one hand through the other, I want you to get them to explain
how these two things fit together. So for example, I used to work with like gang
members. And of course, then say, walked into the gang is everything I want to patch blahdy blah,
you know, say oh, let's step back for a second. So tell me what you want in terms of
how your family turns out and so forth. You know, I want my son to not go into the gang and I want,
you know, my wife to love me more, and I want to provide for my family. Okay, so on one hand,
you want to be this really great role model, this father who takes care of his kids,
and provide some of the life that you could never have, because of your upbringing. You
want to break that cycle. You're on the other hand, you absolutely refuse to leave the game.
How do those two things line up and you get them to explain it? Okay. It's usually through this
conversation at the resistance will start to break down the important thing here is you do not give
advice especially not without asking permission first. When their resistance is triggered,
any advice you give will be seen as an attack that they will confront against, you know yourself when
somebody's trying to be be authoritative towards you, and you're really not in the mood to take
advice no matter what they say you resist against it. So don't be that person, right? Just keep
digging and digging, be naive, like, why would you do that if you want this, and I'm struggling
to understand, please make me understand. So, in summary, when you get resistance from the client,
that's when you stop whatever work you're doing on it, and you focus on the resistance, because
if you ignore it, you're going to just aggravate it. So one is slow down to assume they've got
the answers, you don't give them the answers, you elicit the answers from them through questioning.
Three, make sure we call it out. If you don't name the resistance, it will grow in the shadows. And
by the end of the session, they haven't listened to the last 45 minutes, because there's one thing
you said that puts them off, and you missed it, because you didn't deal with it directly.
Stop and check in with the goals. So once you've identified the resistance and talked it through,
try to identify what the overall arching goal or dream is, because they've lost sight of that once
they start resisting. So make sure you remind them what it is. And number five, weigh up the
two things. So this is the behavior. This is the goal. Tell me how these things line up because I
don't see you. Right. And the last thing is don't give advice. Let them tell you what they're going
to do differently. So if you want this and you're doing this, how are you going to balance there?
What needs to change? Do you want to change the goal? Or do you want to change the behavior?
Because it sounds like from what you're saying that you can't have both? So yeah,
so that's my little six step guide that has made up on the spot on how to deal with resistance.
Make sure you get in touch with me if you want any more tips and tricks or
resources. We've got plenty of good resources on this stuff.
And yeah, this thing is going to try it out. See how you go. Alright, catch you guys later. Cheers.