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22 June 2014 ProQuest
Table of contents
1. Rethinking Client Resistance: A Narrative Approach to Integrating Resistance Into the Relationship-
Building Stage of Counseling.......................................................................................................................... 1
Bibliography...................................................................................................................................................... 12
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Document 1 of 1

Rethinking Client Resistance: A Narrative Approach to Integrating Resistance Into the Relationship-
Building Stage of Counseling
Author: Gold, Joshua M

ProQuest document link
Abstract: This article presents a review of traditional definitions of resistance and then presents a
conceptualization of client resistance from a narrative perspective. The author makes recommendations for
using techniques consistent with narrative therapy to address client resistance during the relationship-building
stage. These recommendations are illustrated through 2 case examples. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Full text: Headnote
This article presents a review of traditional definitions of resistance and then presents a conceptualization of
client resistance from a narrative perspective. The author makes recommendations for using techniques
consistent with narrative therapy to address client resistance during the relationship-building stage. These
recommendations are illustrated through 2 case examples.
The potential for client resistance has been acknowledged for as long as the practice of counseling has existed.
The evolution of counseling or the "talking cure" has been paced by differing explanations for the client's
unwillingness to talk or participate in that process-what has been labeled client resistance (Seibel &Dowd,
2001). Originating in Freudian analysis, resistance was thought to signal a particularly sensitive area of the
client's history protected by layers of defense mechanisms (Brems, 1999; Butler &Bird, 2000; Freud,
1914/1957). Congruent with this notion, resistance symbolized the client's recollections of particularly painful
events from which the client sought emotional protection (Cowan &Presbury, 2000; Wolf, 1988). Because most
clients come to counseling with pain in some aspect of their lives, it logically follows that a counselor can usually
expect a client to exhibit some form of resistance early in the counseling relationship.
The counselor must then decide how to conceptualize, or make sense of, the client's resistance (Karon
&Widener, 1994; Mahalik, 2002; Vernon, 2004). A counselor's inattention to the client's resistance may be
viewed as a covert alliance with the client to protect both counselor and client from the explosive emotionality of
past issues (Newman, 1994). Attempting to address the presenting problem without attention to the resistance
could undermine the therapeutic intent (Otani, 1989). In this article, I discuss current definitions of resistance
and then offer a narrative framework for intentionally integrating the client's resistance into the relationship-
building stage.
CURRENT DEFINITIONS OF CLIENT RESISTANCE
In this section, I present differing theoretical perspectives on resistance to create a context for exploring
resistance from the perspective of narrative theory. More specifically, I am presenting theoretical perspectives
supporting five primary tenets of the narrative approach to working with client resistance that I recommend.
These tenets represent conceptualizations of resistance found within the client-centered, cognitive, behavioral,
and systemic schools of thought. These five tenets are as follow:
1. Resistance reflects a specific client script encompassing the roles of the helper and the person being helped.
Consequently, the client enters the counseling relationship with preferences regarding the nature of these roles.

2. Because each client presents for counseling with such scripts, and the preferences of the counselor and
client differ as a result of the client's personal experiences with being helped and the counselor's professional
training in helping, resistance is an expected component of the relationship-building process. Accordingly,
counselors should openly acknowledge resistance as a normal client response.
3. Such scripts may also reflect the behavioral limitations that interfere with a client's ability to fully participate in
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counseling.
4. Overt exploration of these helping scripts may direct the counselor to validate the client's past experiences in
being helped and facilitate a negotiation of the present therapeutic helping relationship.
5. An inability to reauthor the client's narrative related to being helped and the counselor's narrative related to
being an effective helper is a sound rationale for a client referral.
In the following text, I discuss these tenets in more detail, including support from the literature on the concept of
client resistance.
Regarding the first tenet, I am proposing that resistance results from and reflects unmet client preferences for
specific roles for the helper and the person being helped. Support for this tenet comes from the client-centered
theoretical perspective of counseling. For example, Patterson and Hidore (1997) claimed that client resistance
is a symptom of the client's fear related to negotiating the counseling relationship with the therapist. Client
resistance may represent a client's attempt to impose a familiar style of interaction on the therapy relationship
based on the client's comfort level in dealing with imagined authority figures. For example, clients who both fear
and expect criticism from authority figures will endeavor to manipulate the therapeutic interaction so that the
counselor may be viewed as a replication of previous critical authority figures. The client's mental distortion, in
turn, legitimizes her or his responses of anger and disappointment, thereby validating her or his resistance.
Regarding the second tenet, support for the importance of openly acknowledging resistance as a normal client
response comes from the cognitive and cognitive-behavioral theoretical perspectives of counseling. From a
cognitive perspective, resistance may be seen as protecting the structural determinism of the client's ego, which
includes those elements of the client's personality integral to the definition of self (Cowan &Presbury, 2000;
Cramer, 2000; Newman, 1994). Consistent with this cognitive perspective is that of the cognitive-behavioral
approach known as motivational interviewing (Miller &Rollnick, 2002). Motivational interviewing is a popular
counseling approach for helping clients change addictive behaviors, and its proponents contend that
ambivalence and accompanying resistance are a normal part of the behavior change process. Consequently,
Miller and Rollnick recommended that counselors anticipate and openly reflect clients' feelings of ambivalence.
They contended that if client ambivalence is openly addressed, it is more likely to be resolved, which in turn will
lead to reduced resistance. Thus, Miller and Rollnick placed the primary responsibility for recognizing and
openly responding to client resistance squarely on the shoulders of the counselor.
Regarding the third tenet, the behavioral theoretical perspective provides two views of client resistance. First,
client resistance can be indicative of a lack of client skill within the therapeutic context (Otani, 1989). For
example, clients may be so unfamiliar with using "I" messages that their omission in counseling reflects a lack of
practice on their part. second, resistance may indicate incongruence between the therapeutic messages the
client receives in session and the messages that the client receives in her or his unique social context (Harris,
1996). Compared with the client's long-standing familial and social networks, the fledgling therapeutic
relationship may lack the reinforcement power of the client's other social support systems (Brems, 1999). For
example, approval from the counselor would seem inadequate when compared with the approval of one's
spouse. Between these two competing sources of feedback to the client, it seems predictable that the client
would opt for the more familiar and more powerful reinforcement patterns of the noncounseling systems. For
example, a counselor might reinforce client disclosure in session through application of minimal encouragers
and verbal praise. However, in the family context, a client's attempts at self-disclosure are met by family scorn
and emotional isolation. Given these opposing tensions, the family's reinforcement pattern will very likely prove
more powerful for the client than that of the counselor, negating whatever progress the client had attained in
session.
Regarding the fourth tenet, client resistance may reflect client scripts encompassing beliefs about the nature of
appropriate client and counselor roles in counseling. Support for this proposition comes from the school of
therapy known as transactional analysis (Berne, 1964). Berne wrote of the "game" of counseling, in which
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clients "play" at both accepting counseling and refuting the feasibility of any possible change-what is known as
the "yes, but..." response. Watzlawick, Weakland, and Fisch (1974) saw client resistance as a battle for
dominance within the counseling relationship. In this conflict, both counselor and client try to convince the other
participant of what the client needs from counseling, with the result that nothing is accomplished. This battle
may involve the choice of client change techniques; the focus of the counseling (the client or the other people
with whom the client is in conflict); or even the question of whether the client needs to be in counseling, a battle
often experienced with mandated clients.
In addition to transactional analysis, support for the idea that counselors should conduct assessments of life
scripts relevant to preferred roles for the person being helped and the helper also comes from the perspective of
family systems theory. Previous conceptualizations of client resistance focus on an individual theoretical
perspective. However, counselors with a systemic theoretical orientation may view resistance differently
(Nichols &Schwartz, 2004). In their view, the question to be answered involves what function the resistance
serves in the relationship between client and counselor (Cowan &Presbury, 2000). Resistance may signal a fear
of the clinical direction or a tacit conflict between client and clinician as to therapeutic direction (Butler &Bird,
2000). The counselor wishes to focus on, for example, family-of-origin issues, whereas the client prefers to
discuss current job stress. Along with conflicting preferences for client and counselor roles, these potential
differences in client and counselor preferences regarding the nature of counseling pose significant challenges
with regard to negotiating a mutually agreed-upon counseling relationship.
Fifth, the inability of the counselor and client to reach a mutual agreement regarding the roles they will enact as
helper and the person being helped has a significant potential to undermine the counselor's ability to contribute
to the growth and welfare of the client. Therefore, in situations in which mutual agreement cannot be reached, I
believe that the client would be better served by a referral to a counselor with a helping style more compatible
with the client's needs.
In summary, the thesis of this article focuses on client resistance. This resistance is conceptualized as resulting
from unmet client preferences regarding the roles and activities associated with the process of being helped.
Such a process focus is compatible with the perspective of narrative counseling theory.
AN OVERVIEW OF NARRATIVE THEORY
In addition to the previously discussed theoretical perspectives, narrative theory provides a conceptual
foundation supporting my proposed model for working with client resistance. Conceptually, narrative theory
advocates that "truth" is negotiated in social contexts (Freedman &Combs, 1996). Narrative therapy is a
collaborative approach with a "special interest in listening to the client's stories" (Corey, 2005, p. 397), and
attention to these stories helps the counselor to understand the behaviors that stem from these personal client
realities. Narrative therapy seeks to direct clients' attention to the narratives, or stories, through which they
define their lives (Simon, 2003). This understanding is based on the importance of client insight into and
evaluation of past learning and patterns (Deacon, 1999; Halevy, 1998). The intent of this intervention is for the
client to choose to re-create a current belief system that may be interfering with her or his growth. As a result,
the client experiences a renewed sense of freedom necessary for discovering a more authentic self (White
&Epston, 1990). Individuals tend to incorporate their life experiences and events into the creation of a unique
sense of reality. This personal reality directs how individuals make sense of their lives. In addition, this reality
becomes a life story and a basis for interpreting and evaluating future experiences (White &Epston, 1990). The
exploration of the past is used to explain, but not to justify, the present. Narrative therapy concentrates on
collaboration between the therapist and the client or clients to search for possible exceptions to the problematic
situations occurring in their lives. The counselor calls attention to the potential solutions as well as client
strengths inherent in the exceptions to problematic situations described by the client. Through the therapeutic
relationship, individuals learn to focus on the strengths, rather than limitations, of their life experiences in order
to reauthor, or re-create, their life stories (White &Epston, 1990).
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Seeking to help clients make new meaning from existing stories, the counselor works from a position of not
knowing so that the client, rather than the counselor, provides the meaningful explanations (Winslade &Monk,
1999). Furthermore, the counselor seeks to facilitate a power-sharing dialogue (Winslade &Monk, 1999) and to
work from a position of coauthoring or shared authority (Winslade, Crocket, &Monk, 1997). Questions are used
to generate a new client experience (Monk, 1997) of the presenting issue as a vehicle toward reauthoring.
Although Corey (2005) has cited numerous presenting client issues that may have been helped through
narrative therapy, this approach has not been applied directly to the process of the counseling relationship itself.

A narrative orientation allows the clinician to frame the client's resistance as a natural part of the counseling
process. Intentionally exploring a client's resistance helps to build rapport and also clarifies the client's
narratives of being the recipient of help, described as the client's preferred role as the person being helped. This
preferred role can be defined as those interpersonal behaviors of the client that emerge in situations in which
the client is the intended recipient of help (e.g., passive, argumentative, or challenging recipient). Clients may
be less conscious of these behaviors than they are of the pain or the issue that brings them to counseling.
However, these interpersonal behaviors will influence the counselor's ability to develop a solid working
relationship with the client and may continue to interfere in that process until overtly discussed. If the existing
client narratives related to her or his "role as the person being helped" can be verbalized, then the counselor
and client can reauthor the client's views of being helped and, in so doing, legitimize the process of counseling.
The term process level entails the preexisting receptivity and expectations or preferences that the client brings
to counseling and to the counseling relationship. Commonly, the client is mainly unaware of her or his
expectations. However, expectations exert a powerful influence on the client's behavior in counseling. For
example, a client who presents her problem with flat affect (i.e., lack of emotional responsiveness) may be
accustomed to having her affective response drawn out by a caring family member. As a result, she may expect
and prefer this same response from her counselor. If the counselor does not meet her helper role expectations,
she may feel that the counselor is uncaring and flee from the counseling relationship. In this case, the client's
resistance to counseling is based on her lack of awareness of her own expectations of the counselor and in the
counselor's inattention to this aspect of the client's phenomenology.
Clients come to counseling adhering to stories about themselves, their world, and their problem that are not of
current help to them (Teyber, 2006; West &Bubenzer, 2002). Clients also present in counseling with a
"narrative" about helping experiences. As a natural aspect of growing up within a home environment, each
family transmits to each child a code of beliefs and expectations related to helping and being helped. Each
family authors distinct covert rules about the legitimacy of seeking and receiving help. Such rules may be
thought of as gender-specific, age-specific, issue-specific, boundary-specific, or characteristics-of-helper-
specific.
Client resistance can then be viewed as an indication of the client's emotional commitment to family stories and,
more important, to the family script encompassing issues (Teyber, 2006) such as disclosure, admission of
dysfunction, reluctance to surrender old belief systems, or tests of an individual's loyalty to family history. The
recognition of family resistance then confronts the counselor with the family's sense of structural determinism.
Structural determinism refers to those family stories that are essential to the integrity of the specific family.
Hence, disrupting one of those stories may threaten the core identity of the family. Therefore, the family's
preference to avoid these issues can be seen as reflecting both family loyalty and a commitment to family
identity (Nichols &Schwartz, 2004). Adopting this view allows the counselor to reconceptualize resistance as an
expected part of counseling. In addition, those themes of loyalty and dedication can be used with the client to
support family cohesion and the process of healthy individuation.
Resistance may serve as a demonstration of loyalty to family mandates involving the very characteristics that
underlie a successful therapeutic contact. Deacon (1999) advised of "a tendency that people have to repeat in
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every system in which they operate the patterns they learned in their original system" (p. 87). This tendency
would then repeat itself in terms of receptivity to counseling and the dynamics that constitute effective helping.
Families and counselors may not be in accord on issues such as (a) appropriate ownership of presenting
relational problems, (b) relative preferences for stability versus change (Simon, 2003), (c) openness to external
assistance, (d) investment in the change process, (e) willingness to consider alternative explanations of the
presenting problem, and (f) relative preferences for focusing on the actions and motivations of the client versus
those of others (Butler &Bird, 2000; Robbins, Alexander, Newell, &Turner, 1996). Therefore, the client's in-
session behaviors represent the enactment of family scripts regarding being helped. Although the issue itself
may seem crucial, it is this scripting and its presence in counseling that, by its primary nature, has the potential
to defeat any attempt to resolve the presenting client issue or complaint.
From yet another perspective, a client's resistance may indicate incongruence between the therapeutic direction
being offered by the counselor and the family's covert yet cogent style of being helped by outsiders (Robbins et
al., 1996). The family's receptivity to assistance regarding this specific issue offers the counselor access to
family narratives related to external assistance of any sort. Family exploration and evaluation of these narratives
is crucial to their progress in any sort of situation that requires family members to consider alternative points of
view from nonfamily members, such as that offered in counseling. For example, families who have been
mandated to receive treatment come to counseling ready to convince the counselor that they do not need
treatment. The naive counselor begins by setting goals for client change, ignoring the client goal of not
acknowledging a need for family change. In this "battle" for direction, the counselor cannot win, given that
counseling cannot be accomplished without active client participation. The client resistance should be
anticipated, honored, and integrated into the rapport-building process. Although narrative therapy has garnered
significant attention as an approach to counseling, to date, its application to addressing client resistance has not
been considered in the literature.
A MODEL FORWORKING WITH RESISTANCE FROM A NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Again, my proposed model emphasizes intentional counselor attention to client resistance and includes the
following five primary recommendations for working with clients in the relationship-building stage:
1. Openly acknowledge, reflect, and normalize client resistance.
2. Assess the client's life scripts that may provide clues to her or his preferences regarding the roles of the
person being helped and the helper.
3. On the basis of the client's preferred role, negotiate with the client how the counselor can integrate the client's
preferred style of being helped with the counselor's preferred style of helping.
4. Assess and, if necessary, facilitate the development of skills that the client may need to develop or learn in
order to effectively enact her or his newly authored role of the person being helped.
5. If deemed necessary on the basis of the degree of success of the first four steps of this model, discuss with
the client whether it may be more beneficial to seek a referral to another helping professional.
This narrative theoretical perspective is proposed as a way for the counselor to direct her or his thinking and
interventions in a manner that anticipates, acknowledges, and then purposefully deals with client resistance
during the relationship-building process. Use of this approach presumes the existence of two types of client
issues: (a) the content issues that the client presents and (b) the process issues encompassing the client's
usual style of being helped that has proved ineffective in facilitating the resolution of the content issues. If
counselors attend to the content issues, without attention to the process issues, the counseling process will
often move less smoothly. Difficulties with the relationship-building process are commonly attributable to a
counselor's lack of understanding of the client's process issues. Therefore, in this section, I discuss the
importance of intentionally anticipating, honoring, and integrating the client's resistance into the relationship-
building process. This discussion also provides a context for appreciating the two case studies that follow.
Anticipating Client Resistance
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Counselor anticipation of client resistance is founded in an acknowledgment that all clients must present with
personal narratives related to the helping process. Any individual's experience of the dependence of childhood
plus the ongoing process of interdependence through life creates foundational beliefs about the process of
helping and being helped. These narratives may include, but are not limited to, beliefs about the legitimacy of
seeking help, the appropriateness of self-disclosure, stigma attached to vocalizing one's as-yet-unsolved
issues, and notions of problem solving with another as opposed to problem solving independently. In addition,
clients present for counseling with personal, yet usually unspoken, beliefs regarding seeking help outside the
family. These beliefs may entail preferences for counselor characteristics such as age, gender, and ethnicity, to
name only a few. All of these preferences have the potential to influence a client's receptivity to a particular
counselor within the context of counseling. Most clients also present with preconceived narratives about the
nature of counseling itself. Consequently, an individual's receptiveness to a relative focus on thoughts, feelings,
or actions may vary from client to client. Many clients present with an expressed desire to understand others in
their life, rather than themselves. Either through firsthand experience or vicarious learning, most have some
notion of what to expect in a counseling session or relationship, which may trigger behavior that is either
conducive to counseling or detrimental to that process. It may be safe to assume that the client and the
counselor hold distinctly different views on all these issues. One useful exercise to use during the relationship-
building stage of counseling involves the development of a helping genogram through which issues of client
receptivity, style, and response to help from members of each gender and from helpers of differing ages can be
illustrated. Such an experience makes this facet of client history overt and visible, allowing both counselor and
client to examine and evaluate how past experiences of being helped are contributing to, or detracting from, the
current experience in counseling.
Honoring Client Resistance
The process of honoring client resistance represents the counselor's intent to ask the client to verbalize those
narratives within the relationship-building process of the initial sessions. In my experience, clients are receptive
to the development of an empathie understanding of their helping process as a prelude to an empathie
understanding of their problem. When counselors initiate an exploratory dialogue on the very suppositions
involving clients' personal narratives listed in the previous paragraph, clients begin to share easily their own
belief systems regarding the helping process. Once clients have had the opportunity to reflect on this
exploratory dialogue, I have been told that clients liken the experience to being reassured that their preferred
style will be part of the counseling. Furthermore, if the counselor holds a differing view of how to proceed, a
process of open negotiation and consensus building will provide a means to meld the two preferred styles into
one service delivery modality. On a related note, this exploration, which in itself produces startling insights for
clients, leaves the emotionally laden discussion of "The Issue" (i.e., the client's presenting issue) until later in
the first session, when the collaborative relationship has already been established.
Integrating Client Resistance
In the process of integration, the client's narratives and the counselor's expectations provide two equally valid
foundations for a process of negotiation about how the client can receive help and how the counselor can
provide help. This practice would be consistent with the narrative technique of coauthoring, albeit specific to the
process of counseling rather than to the client's presenting issue. These two individuals forge a conjoint notion
of how to be in counseling together and provide a guideline for how the counselor can successfully foster a
positive counseling relationship and progress into and through the working stages of counseling. This open
discussion from both perspectives, that of the client and of the counselor, and the resultant negotiation then
become a basis for the counseling that ensues. The style of helping is not overlooked or imposed but rather, as
much as possible, is tailor-made to suit the needs of the client, to provide a healthier help-receiving
environment, and to address the clinical strengths of the counselor.
As mentioned previously, a counselor may realize that the client lacks requisite skills for enacting the mutually
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agreed-upon client role. If this is the case, the counselor may need to facilitate the client's acquisition of these
requisite skills before moving on to working on counseling goals.
The final stage of my proposed model involves an open exploration of the feasibility of this client and this
counselor coauthoring a helping narrative to serve as a process map for addressing the client's presenting
issue. For example, questions on client history may or may not be included; attention to client affect, cognition,
and behavior may all be addressed together or selectively considered; and discussion of family of origin may or
may not be included. If the client and counselor can arrive at a tentative agenda for how to proceed, then
content-focused counseling can ensue. If not, then perhaps the client would be better served by another
counselor whose professional helping style is more compatible with the style of the client.
CASE EXAMPLES
In this section, I present two case examples to illustrate how this model has been effectively applied when
working with actual clients. The responsibility for exploring, legitimizing, and adapting her or his counseling style
rests wholly with the counselor. Although the client may amend her or his personal scripts regarding the various
ways of perceiving the roles of helper and person being helped, the counselor must demonstrate the
professional curiosity and flexibility required by this model.
Case Example 1
Marissa is a counselor for seniors in high school. She had been helping students finalize postgraduation
education and career plans and was puzzled by Aaron's nonparticipation in their work together. Marissa had
previously helped Aaron deal with his father's death, his mother's remarriage, and the presence of a new
stepfather, and Aaron had eagerly followed Marissa's therapeutic lead and seemed much happier after
counseling. Thus, his new in-session behavior was disconcerting. Marissa decided to set aside her counseling
agenda and focus on the change in Aaron's investment in counseling. Using her previously established rapport
as a basis for exploration, Marissa asked how Aaron and his new stepfather were getting along. Aaron talked
about how his new stepfather expected him to be more "mature" than his mother did and continually
admonished Aaron, saying that he was now a grown man like him and that grown men make their own
decisions and do not ask for help. Aaron worried that his coming to counseling might be seen as a statement of
disloyalty to his new stepfather and an indication of his weakness as a man.
Marissa verbalized her disagreement with that view, stating that asking for help is a sign of strength in that it is a
recognition of one's need in a situation and an honest evaluation of one's level of knowledge or competence. If
these are sufficient, one may proceed independently; if found lacking, one may seek help to provide the needed
knowledge or abilities. Further discussion explored some of the messages about being an adult that Aaron was
receiving from his new stepparent and how to integrate those messages with his memories of his father's view
on adulthood and that of his mother, who had supported his previous counseling. Aaron recognized that he was
confused about whom to ask for help and had to begin to decide who had been helpful in the past for him. He
also began to understand that his stepfather's mandate for not asking for help reflected the stepfather's attempt
to help Aaron trust his own judgment and become more self-reliant. This agenda Marissa heartily supported,
given that Aaron was preparing to graduate not only from high school but also from home life to college and that
this ability was indeed important. She echoed the idea that part of self-reliance involves recognizing when to ask
for help and being wise enough to choose helpers well.
Further exploration in counseling addressed how Aaron could articulate his needs at this stage in his life and
what he hoped to receive from counseling related to this specific issue. Once Aaron was able to view his
concern regarding postgraduation education or career choices as a transitional issue, he worried less about any
possible stigma of reporting on his counseling to his stepfather and saw Marissa more as a consultant who
would assist him to make sure that he had attended to all the necessary tasks to ensure a smooth transition to
college. After two sessions that focused on exploring these competing narratives, Aaron was more settled about
how he felt about counseling with Marissa and his attention returned to his post-high school plans.
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Case Example 2
Tammy and Greg presented at a community mental health center with concerns about a growing "lack of
communication" in their 2-year-old marriage. The couple had recently moved to the area and were struggling to
re-create the social support network from their home community. Both Tammy and Greg reported that Tammy
felt increasingly isolated from Greg and was spending long hours on telephone calls to female friends "back
home." In session, the counselor, Sam, felt only slightly more of a therapeutic connection with Greg than with
Tammy and originally ascribed that difference to the issue of gender similarity and difference. However,
because subsequent sessions and purposive attempts on Sam's part to join more effectively with Tammy had
no impact, he decided to explore issues of caring by asking the couple to each share her or his narratives
related to confiding in men and women. The narratives of Tammy and Greg revealed similar stories about
"distant" male figures and more nurturing and supportive female figures. Sam used a helping genogram to
demonstrate the similarities of Greg's and Tammy's individual histories of being helped. The creation of the
genogram revealed that both Greg and Tammy realized that they each believed that nurturance and caring
could only come from female figures, a belief that was coloring their marital dynamics and the interaction in
counseling. Tammy was reaching out to distant friends rather than her husband, and both individuals were
unable to see the counselor as someone who might provide therapeutic caring for each of them individually and
as a couple.
Using the self-of-the-therapist as the "exception," Sam initiated a discussion of components of caring that one
expected from members of each gender. He then worked with the couple to create a model of expression of
caring that would allow Greg to demonstrate his caring for Tammy. Through counseling, Sam offered a different
experience of a male figure than the one with which the couple had presented. This exploration and experience
generated the joining of counselor and clients that Sam sought and, isomorphically, directly addressed the
identified problem between the spouses.
CASE EXAMPLE ANALYSIS
In this section, I offer an evaluation of the use of the proposed narrative approach to intentionally involve a
discussion of the client's narratives regarding the preferred role of the person being helped in the
relationshipbuilding process. With each case example, the counselor demonstrated the professional curiosity
and flexibility required to apply this model successfully.
In the case of Aaron, the client's lack of participation in counseling reflected his attempt to conform to his new
stepfather's notions of maturity. By overtly asking Aaron to explore the competing narratives from his mother
and stepfather, in addition to that of his deceased father, the counselor, Marissa, helped Aaron to recognize the
inconsistent messages that contributed to his present narrative about being inactive in counseling. He could
then reauthor what he decided was important and helpful to him in his relationship with Marissa. In this case,
Aaron chose to revert to his original beliefs regarding the legitimacy of seeking help from Marissa and reflected
on the past success of that experience for him. That change of Aaron's openness toward counseling facilitated
the transition into dealing with Aaron's presenting concern regarding his career plans. This exploration also
allowed Marissa to identify a means through which to offer counseling as a transitional check-in, thereby making
the service more acceptable to Aaron's new stepfather and preventing any possible further conflict between
Aaron and his stepfather.
In the case of Tammy and Greg, both clients discovered their patterns of accepting help and support only from
female figures, a shared belief that influenced both the marital relationship and the counseling relationship. Male
figures (fathers and brothers) were revealed through both sides of the helping genogram to be less tolerant of
emotional need and more invested in stressing self-reliance than healthy interdependence and connection.
Through the use of the helping genogram, which overtly illustrated this client script, and by exploring this
narrative, the clients could recognize its harmful impact both on their marriage and on working with their
counselor, Sam. The exploration of these narratives that were related to the preferred role of the person being
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helped clarified for each client her or his beliefs and attitudes that interfered with the closeness each expected
of the marriage and the psychological connection that Sam sought to create in counseling. Through the choice
each made to reauthor those narratives, Tammy and Greg redefined their openness to connect not only with
Sam, the counselor, but also with each other.
These case examples illustrate the principles and practices directing the counselor to attend to client resistance
through an exploration of narratives regarding the helping process. Although effective in both scenarios,
perhaps anticipation of this incongruence in perspective between counselor and client could direct attention to
this dynamic earlier in counseling so that the intervention serves a preventive rather than remedial function for
the therapeutic relationship.
CONCLUSION
I have presented a model for counseling that includes recommendations for working with client resistance in the
relationship-building stage. My model is primarily based on a narrative approach; however, I provided
theoretical support for my recommendations from a variety of perspectives, including psychoanalytic, client-
centered, cognitive-behavioral, and family systems approaches. Limited support for my proposed model comes
from my own experience with clients and with students who have applied this model of relationship building in
their practicum settings, reporting strong anecdotal success.
I encourage researchers to conduct more formal investigations of the effectiveness of the overall model and the
individual recommendations. For example, investigators might further explore two related avenues of study.
One venue might include feedback from practicing clinicians about how they connect with clients and how this
proposed practice might have strengthened their relationship-building practices. Similar to this suggestion would
be specific attention to integrating this model in counselor training programs and seeking qualitative feedback
from students as to its utility and efficacy. In addition, future studies could concentrate on measures of client
satisfaction with counseling services that integrate this model (using either standard measures of client
satisfaction or measures such as client return rate) into postintake counseling, client punctuality, or
perseverance in counseling.
Although each theory of counseling offers a distinct view of client resistance, the counselor must determine how
best to address that relational dynamic in counseling. In this article, I have offered a view of client resistance as
a natural component of counseling that can be integrated into the rapport-building process through the use of a
narrative approach to client resistance.
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AuthorAffiliation
Joshua M. Gold, Educational Studies, The University of South Carolina. Correspondence concerning this article
should be addressed to Joshua M. Gold, Educational Studies, 253 Wardlaw College, The University of South
Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 (e-mail: josgold@sc.edu).
Subject: Guidelines; Social networks; Scripts; Roles; Narratives; Defense mechanisms; Counseling services;
Behavior;
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Publication title: Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education and Development
Volume: 47
Issue: 1
Pages: 56-70
Number of pages: 15
Publication year: 2008
Publication date: Spring 2008
Year: 2008
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Place of publication: Alexandria
Country of publication: United Kingdom
Publication subject: Education, Psychology
ISSN: 19310293
Source type: Scholarly Journals
Language of publication: English
Document type: Feature
Document feature: Photographs
ProQuest document ID: 212447322
Document URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/212447322?accountid=25704
Copyright: Copyright American Counseling Association Spring 2008
Last updated: 2011-09-19
Database: ProQuest Education Journals
22 June 2014 Page 11 of 12 ProQuest
Bibliography
Citation style: APA 6th - American Psychological Association, 6th Edition
Joshua, M. G. (2008). Rethinking client resistance: A narrative approach to integrating resistance into the
relationship-building stage of counseling. Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education and Development, 47(1),
56-70. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/212447322?accountid=25704

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