resistance

For a variety of reasons, the Cycle of Experience may be interrupted, whether intentionally to manage an in-the-moment choice or without awareness, whether sporadically or chronically. Setting boundaries in choosing what to engage in and with is an important life competency. Any change provokes resistance as a natural response to being influenced, co-opted, drained, or irreversibly changed. Resistance is thus a healthy and creative integral aspect of self-regulation, and is one of the essential reasons that the Gestalt approach to learning and change is so powerful.

  

 

As Gestalt coaches, we seek to work with the natural force imbedded in people’s or human systems’ resistance to change, which we recognize as their way of maintaining their integrity. Resistance is a natural life process, and we are interested in when people are choicefully using resistance to satisfy their goals or objectives. The value and significance of resistance for Gestalt coaching lies in its adaptive and protective powers. Only when a pattern of resistance no longer serves active choice, can it become obsolete and nonproductive.