One of our Healthy Grieving trainers recently made a presentation about resistance. She explained resistance as a negative reaction to anything that threatens how we see and experience ourselves or how we see and experience the world — that which shakes the foundation of how we understand things and how we believe or want to believe things actually are. Resistance is our unwillingness to know the truth of a situation or feel our feelings.

She said that in her experience there are two types of resistance, which she named Big R Resistance and little r resistance.

In her definition, Big R Resistance describes people who are close-minded, entrenched in their opinions, perspective, beliefs and world views. They are not open to the possibility of seeing things in new ways or to the possibility that their views might be limited or wrong.  Their need to maintain their reality is stronger than the desire to know the truth, stronger than their desire to heal or change; indeed they are afraid of change and perceive change as a threat. Any push or challenge causes them to shut down, become defensive or lash out. For people who are generally resistant to change, the Healthy Grieving process is not a good fit because the process engenders a profound change – a shift in one’s experience of oneself.

On the other hand, the experience of resistance with a little “r” is often part and parcel of the Healthy Grieving experience. This is to be expected because the Healthy Grieving process works at the level of self-identity, and when people feel their self-identity is at risk, resistance is a normal response.

The last blog is a good example of resistance with a little “r” – wherein a sincere, open-minded person who was willing — indeed seeking – change, experienced resistance in the face of a big self-identity being threatened and exposed.

For people who are open to change, the experience of resistance with a small “r”  feels more like, “I’m really scared about looking at what’s coming up for me. I don’t know what to anticipate; I’m kind of freaked out and my instinct is to go into protection mode.” However, at the same time, there is a willingness – even in the face of the fear – to face what is coming up.

It is not whether one has resistance that dictates whether one can do the deep work of the Healthy Grieving Process, but rather how big and how entrenched the resistance is. Underneath the resistance is there a willingness to move forward or is one generally threatened by and averse to change?”

When asked what to do in the face of resistance, the trainer responded from her own experience. “When I am in resistance but somewhere in me I have a desire to move through it to see the underlying truth (in other words, it’s little r resistance), the first step is that I have to be willing to be aware that I am feeling threatened, to know that that is my discomfort and that is why I am reactive. Next I have to be willing to admit that I am in resistance and to recognize that for what it is: my unwillingness to see, feel or know something.

If I am not willing to do those two things, I am going to be so wrapped up in my own story, defensiveness and projection – or whatever mechanism I am using to protect and shelter myself – that I won’t be able to move beyond that.

For me, the next step in overcoming resistance is  to be willing to accept that I feel threatened – to be honest about that piece of it – and to be willing to look into why and investigate what is so threatening to me.

And then it’s a choice I have to make, “Am I willing to be open to facing whatever it is I absolutely don’t want to see? Am I willing to explore, with an open mind, whether or not there is truth in what I am avoiding and am I open to letting go of my position and opening up to the possibility of having a different experience of myself?  Am I willing to move past the stuck-ness and discomfort of where I am now to get to something else, something new?

“Also what really helps me move through resistance is that I know I have been in this situation before. If I can remember that every time I’ve been willing to face whatever it is I am avoiding, I always come out the other side and find myself freer, more grounded, more expansive.  I discover that the very thing (thought, position, self-identity, desire, belief, etc.)  I thought was protecting me was actually keeping me trapped.”

When asked how she handles resistance when she encounters it in a client, the trainer said the following:

• Since I have done the work on myself (which is imperative with this modality) and know resistance so well as my own experience, I can clearly recognize it in a client.
• Because I have been there, I come from a place of understanding and empathy.
• My approach is to help the client understand that what s/he is experiencing is resistance –which is very easy for the client to lose sight of because the nature of resistance is that you don’t have awareness.
• I assure them that what they are feeling is normal; that resistance often shows up in the Healthy Grieving Process because it is such deep work and because a self-identity is always at stake in letting go of something we have been holding onto.
• I remind them that this is the process of getting free. This is how it unfolds. We start by feeling/fearing that our self is at stake — and we want to protect it at all costs — so we resist.       I help them understand that resistance is just one of the steps or stages in the process and this is what it feels like . . . and we can make the choice to move through it. To keep going.”

Asked if resistance ever goes away, the trainer answered, “The truth is, it can come up at any time, depending on how big a self-identity is at stake in the letting go process.  Rather than looking for resistance to go away, a healthier approach is to understand our own relationship to resistance and how we respond to it when it arises. Then we can recognize it for what it is, recognize our own pattern in relation to it and choose how we will respond.

It is important to recognize that it is a choice.  Because often, we don’t even realize we have a choice… until we choose.

Last week’s blog was a perfect illustration of this dynamic. The subject was stuck and lost and resistant and angry and confused  . . . until something in him wanted to know what was underneath his reaction more than he didn’t want to know.

At which point he chose to see and feel what he had been avoiding.

And was able to set himself free.

Resistance is our mind’s reaction to being confronted with something we don’t want to see, feel, look at, or know.

Resistance shows up in a number of ways: shutting down, arguing, denial, blaming, lashing out, distraction, anger, confusion, and variously disguised grown-up versions of tantrums.

Resistance is a common reaction with the Healthy Grieving Process for the simple reason that the process is designed to take us directly to what we have been avoiding — to exactly what we don’t want to see and feel.  Although at some level we understand that feeling these feelings is precisely what we need to do in order to let go of the grief or wound that is negatively impacting our lives, we still want to avoid going there, and resistance is how we do so.

One of the things that makes the Healthy Grieving process unique is that it recognizes resistance as a constructive process because it directs us to the very place that the mind resists us seeing. While many therapeutic and healing modalities “honor” resistance and take it as a sign to go a different direction, in the Healthy Grieving process we view resistance as a signpost that tells us that this is exactly the direction to pursue.  When we don’t allow the mind to prevent the opportunity to see what we are avoiding, great things can result; you will see this dynamic illustrated in the example below. Resistance can be a positive experience because it opens the opportunity to see what’s really going on, to see the truth of who we are – and it’s only from that place that we can be set free.

Recently one of the Healthy Grieving training graduates went through an intense resistance experience, and he did a great job of describing how it showed up for him and how it resolved itself. Although his process was not related to grieving the loss of a loved one, a big self-identity was at stake for him, (which is what causes resistance), so his experience is instructive about how the mechanism of resistance works. It also illustrates the enormous benefits of working through resistance because without his persistence, he never would have seen the significant dichotomy and deeply-held beliefs operating in his life. Here is his description of his experience:

“Resistance first came up for me when I was on a Healthy Grieving video conference call about self blame. I sat through the entire hour unable to understand what the class was trying to get across. I could hear the words, and the concept wasn’t that difficult, but I could not wrap my head around it, either during the meeting or when I sat with it after. It was clear that there was something meaningful there, and it was a simple enough concept — why couldn’t I get it?

I knew this meant there was something I didn’t want to see. This is what resistance is – when our mind won’t let us grasp something, and it steps in to prevent us from seeing or knowing what it is. When this happens, it is the mind trying to protect us against something huge.

What I was struggling with was the concept that self blame is actually blaming something outside of yourself, but for some reason, you can’t accept blaming whatever the external thing is, so you turn it inward and blame yourself instead. But I couldn’t get that. I reached out for some help with trying to understand the concept, and the instructor suggested that I just sit with it – give it a little time — and see what the mind does and where it takes me. I sat with it for about a day and it was eating away at me the whole time. Why couldn’t I understand the concept of self blame?

Instead of sitting with it any longer, I decided to do a victim worksheet. Of course, in my triggered and resistant state, I did not do it right. I brought my work to the teacher and he said, You’re still missing the point; the idea once again is that self blame is an attempt to not acknowledge what you’re actually blaming, which is something outside of yourself. The question when dealing with self blame is, Who do you really want to blame? Who do you actually blame for the problems in your life?

We went through all the possibilities, Do I blame my father, my mother, my wife? — but none of them landed. Then it came to me, I blame God. When that came out of my mouth, it didn’t sit well with me. I couldn’t accept it, so I came up against another aspect of the resistance, against something else I didn’t want to see, which is how I was thinking and feeling about God. It came out of my mouth, so I couldn’t really deny it, but I couldn’t see it or understand what it was trying to tell me. I knew I said it, but I did not want to go there.

I was advised not to do anything right away in response to my statement that I blame God, to just let the truth of my experience of God come to me. I was very unclear, extremely cloudy. I couldn’t see or understand my relationship with God. I came up against resistance again. No matter how I tried to sit with it, meditate on it, focus my energy, explore some questions, nothing was coming. My head was totally murky with no clarity. Nothing made sense to me.

Four or five days later, I was at work and I started feeling upset. My stomach wasn’t right and I was really really angry, yet I couldn’t identify the source of the feeling. I ended up driving home because I had worked myself up into a really intense state. I wondered if I was losing my mind. I wasn’t even thinking about God, I was just trying to figure out what was going on with me. I felt like I was falling apart. As I started walking into my house, the words “God punishes me” came out of my mouth. And that’s when it finally broke open in a very emotional reaction.

All of a sudden, I was ready to see all of it. All this clarity came to me. I sat with pen and paper and wrote all these surprising things. What I discovered was that I hold two different concepts of God. I have my ideal, all-encompassing, beautiful, glorious, one with creation, deeply wise and compassionate God — and that’s the god I want to believe in, but lurking underneath this is an older belief, which is what God really means to me – which is a harsh, controlling punishing God.  It doesn’t matter what I pretend I think. I was pretending so thoroughly that I believed in my new version of God, that I didn’t even realize that I still believed in this other God just waiting to punish me and I did not want to know that. This is what resistance is about . . . it keeps us from the things we do not want to know.

From a place of total resistance and a completely clouded and confused mind where I couldn’t understand what was going on or what I was feeling, suddenly I was able to see what I really believe about God. The clarity I gained after the resistance broke was absolutely amazing. Nothing made any sense and then bam, it all came clear.

I couldn’t see any of this until I was ready, until those parts of my mind that were protecting me from knowing and understanding this experience broke down. It took something deep inside of me that wanted to see it in order to break through the control of the mind that didn’t want to see it. When the fear falls away and you feel ready, the part of you that really wants to know the truth comes online, it becomes stronger than the resistance. Finally, I was ready to see what I couldn’t look at before.

Once we become willing to look at resistance rather than run from it, we have the wonderful opportunity to see and let go of the destructive patterns running our lives.