EHI Salon: The Many Faces of Resistance

Developed & Facilitated by: Sonja Saltman, EHI Core Instructor and Joshua Diliberto, EHI Teaching Assistant

Date: Thursday, February 26, 2026

Time: 11 am – 1 pm Pacific Time (2pm-4 pm ET; 7pm-9pm UTC)

Online: via Zoom. Link access is sent via your registration email.

Format: Group Discussion, demonstration, small group, or dyad engagement. This is not intended to teach specific skills like our Core Skills workshop, but there will be exposure to E-H skills used in the demos.

Cameras On Salon: We offer experiential humanistic engagement and ask that people who enroll attend with their cameras on. You do not have to engage, but we do ask you to have your camera on.

Fee: $25. We do not want a lack of funds to be an issue to your engagement. Please reach out to Michelle via program@ehinstitute.org to get a code for a $10 economic inequality or hardship registration. For anyone, no judgment. Michelle will assist you!

Continuing the Experiential Salons

On February 26, EHI is hosting a two-hour virtual community space for exploring The Many Faces of Resistance. We will spend the initial hour identifying the types of resistance and then demonstrate how to work with one or two of them, if anybody has an example they want to bring to us. There will be a group discussion, a practical demonstration, and we will stay flexible to follow emergent wishes from the group.

EHI is excited to continue the series of experiential salons into the new year. The intention for these salons is to honor EHI’s commitment to experiential learning as well as the time-honored group process of discussion and integration.

As we acknowledge that the word “salon” implies a more free-flowing structure this is a flexible outline that will be modified by Sonja and Josh to work with what is happening in the moment.

Conceptual frames for our topic, “The Many Faces of Resistance .”
Sonja and Josh offer conceptual definitions:
We use energy to make good contact with our environment. Without obstacles, this energetic effort results in positive outcomes. However, if this effort does not get the desired returns, we end up with a list of negative feelings, anger, confusion, resentment, disappointment, etc.

There are five major channels of resistant interactions:

• Introjection: Passively and indiscriminately absorbing the environment without explaining one’s preference.
• Projecting: Disowning parts of self and ascribing it to the other or the environment.
• Retroflection: Disowning parts of the environment by becoming a separate unit, investing energy back to an intrapersonal system.
• Deflecting: Investing energy without focus, getting little in return.
• Confluence: Means yielding energy to the environmental trend that carries little personal expenditure.

The identification of the various faces of resistance is the pathway to working with these resistances to restore good contact with the environment in which we live. In other words, these various types of resistance are for the therapist to utilize with our clients to tap into the many distressing feelings evoked when the client does not have unimpeded access to what he/she wants, such as anger, confusion, resentment, disappointment, etc. These feelings, expressed in resistance, reduce the possibilities of productive contactual interactions with the environment and express the powerlessness over the outcome of these interactions. Being fully present to these ways of avoiding the negative feelings when we are not getting what we want can restore ownership of these feelings without having to resist them. Awareness, acknowledgment, experiential exercises, and acceptance can begin the necessary healing process.

For a little more background on resistance in E-H therapy, Scott Gibbs has written two companion articles for this salon in our blog series, The Existential Moment, entitled “Why “Resistance” Matters—The Existential Cost and the Therapeutic Aim” and Working With Resistance.

General Outline (2 hours):

• Welcome and Introductions
• Introducing The Many Faces of Resistance
• Attendees are invited to share their own perspective.
• Demo — We may ask for a volunteer “client” for a demo. Guiding the client to the inevitable next moment, which can then unfold freely.
• Experiential Dyad Exercise, or Deepened Group Discussion: We will decide in the moment as a group
• Final Large Group Process

Who is This Event For?
Anyone with a foundation in clinical work or completing hours. MFTs, social workers, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, doctors, Master’s or Doctoral students in internships, and pre-licensed therapeutic professionals are all encouraged to attend! International practitioners are very welcome!

We always hope to create an intimate and safe space. Please do not enroll if you will not be able to attend the live event with your camera on. Naturally, we understand withdrawals will sometimes need to happen.

Recording? To encourage deeper engagement, this event will not be recorded.

Salon Host: Existential-Humanistic Institute (EHI) offers trainings, workshops and education in Existential-Humanistic approaches to psychotherapy. Formed in 1997, EHI continues to offer experiential training retreats, certificate programs, workshops, consultation groups, theory courses and community gatherings in the Bay Area with the goal of supporting existentially and humanistically informed psychologies and psychotherapies: approaches that focus on and nurture subjective experiential reflection of life’s deepest joys and predicaments.

Waiver
There is a required waiver for attending and participating in this salon due to both the topic and the format. This salon in general, and the break-out groups in particular, will include experiential exercises that might be more likely to evoke emotional – including difficult emotional – reactions than just presentational techniques.

Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get my Zoom link? Your Zoom link is included in your Registration Confirmation email that will arrive within minutes of your registration- please be sure to put in your correct email address!