Haven’t we all pushed harder and harder on a door that would not open, only to pause, look at the handle, or see the sign “pull,” realizing then it was never meant to be pushed at all?
Existential-Humanistic (E-H) therapy is experiential and relational. Working with “resistance,” therefore, does not mean overcoming an obstacle or dismantling a defense. It means meeting protective ways of being as they emerge in the living encounter. Rather than searching for resistance in a client’s history or explanations, E-H therapists attend to how protection is enacted in the present, through shifts in tone, pacing, affect, posture, and so on. The work privileges process over content, treating the here-and-now as the primary site where resistance becomes visible.
The central intervention in this work is presence. Protections often harden or soften in direct relation to the therapist’s availability, attunement, and willingness to stay with what is emotionally alive. From this stance, therapists vivify protections, gently illuminating them, before ever confronting them. Vivifying brings patterns into awareness without interpretation or force, and seeks to deepen this awareness, allowing clients to see what they are doing rather than feel corrected. This work unfolds within the therapeutic relationship itself, where new ways of being can be directly felt, tested, and lived rather than merely understood.
Protections guard the core wounds and consequent decisions once made to subsist. The aim of working with them, therefore, is not to remove but to restore contact with what has been disowned. As presence expands, clients gain greater freedom to choose how they live within real limits. Resistance loosens not because it is defeated, but because it is no longer needed in the same way. In the process, a door opens.
Related Blog Posts:
Read other Existential Moment posts on Existential-Humanistic practice.
Explore core wounds, protections, and protective patterns in E-H therapy in previous posts.
Read more about working with resistance in the therapeutic relationship in the here-and-now.
View all the Existential Moment series posts on EHI’s blog.
Existential Moment Author: Scott Gibbs, LMFT, EHI Board Member-at-Large | Website: www.mscottgibbs.com | Twitter: @Novum_Organum
