Where is your resistance stopping you?

Where is your resistance stopping you?

Not so long ago a woman sent me an email asking for my help.  She said she had found my site and totally resonated with me and what I was saying.  But the place of grief she was coming from was around a divorce rather than a death.  She asked if this is an area I worked in, saying she was desperately looking for help, and was very much hoping I could help her.

I wrote back to her explaining that this is not an area I work in and why, BUT that I happen to know 3 different women personally who all work around divorce/relationship ends.  Each are very different from the other in how they do what they do but all came from very difficult divorces and healed totally from them and now do amazing work with others.  I didn’t give her any details at this stage but just said that each of them do what I do with death but in the relationship arena.  I offered to send her details of each one’s site so that she could check them out if she wanted to and see if any resonated with her.

Her response was interesting.  She thanked me for responding. She reiterated that she really wanted help and was “open to anything that might help” her…and then came the ‘but’.  She said that she believes lots of coaches out there aren’t doing their work for the right reasons and only care about money. Some are doing it because they truly care and help others, but some only have a financial goal in mind….and if this was the case with these 3 then she would ‘politely decline’.  Before even getting their first names, let alone knowing a thing about them or looking at their sites, she was ready to say no, despite saying she was desperate for help and open to anything that might.

This was resistance talking.

Now it’s a valid concern she had.  If you are going to invest your money and, more importantly, your time and energy with someone to help you, then you want to make sure they are the right person. That they are committed to working with you and that you trust them.  But you at least find out something about them before you can make a call either way.

Also she wouldn’t be one of those people who believe all of this type of help should be given for free…..as she was a counsellor herself and was paid for her own work.

That wasn’t what the issue was.

For someone who wanted help so badly, something in her objected immediately to actually taking a step forward.  It stopped her from even looking at their sites.  Yes, she had contacted me…which was a first step. But maybe it was the only step she was able to make before massive resistance kicked in.  Something in her wanted help to change…and something else didn’t.

Resistance.

I’m going to guess at some of the reasons for that resistance for the sake of example. Perhaps she had a fear of being without the pain as, once that was gone there would be no excuse to not step out into the big wide world of her new life – the unknown can be very scary and often people can take shelter in their pain as it’s ‘safe’ and familiar, compared to the great unknown.  Better the devil you know.

Another reason could be that she was still really hoping this person would come back to her…which would again be a reason why she wouldn’t truly want to move past her pain and be ‘over’ it.  Maybe she just wasn’t quite ready or maybe she still had things to learn from the space she was currently in.

Resistance isn’t a bad thing. It’s perfectly natural.  We all feel resistance at different times.  Resistance is just our own way of trying to protect ourselves. As far as I can see there are 2 main reasons we will experience resistance. One is that we are trying to force ourselves to do something we don’t actually want to do, something that isn’t actually in our values to do, often because of some form of social pressure or expectation.  The other is when it is something we do truly want to do but we have fear attached to it, believing that doing the thing will bring us more negatives than positives.

I feel the first type of resistance when I try to do yoga.  I don’t know what my thing is with yoga – it’s actually kinda ridiculous.  I have nothing against it, the opposite actually – it’s brilliant, healthy, wonderful to do…if yoga is your thing.  Yoga is not my thing but every couple of years I convince myself again that I ought to be doing yoga. So I try for a while and encounter massive resistance…until I admit to myself again that I actually don’t enjoy yoga one bit.  In terms of exercise there are loads of other options I do enjoy…and in terms of spiritual practices again there are loads of other options.  So yoga is the thing I try to do when actually I don’t really want to but I’ve convinced myself I ‘should’……voila = resistance!

The second type I get when I blog.  You get positive and negative feedback in equal measure, so while I’ll get really lovely and grateful comments and emails from people who have been helped by my words…I also get emails telling me….how do I put this…completely the opposite.  And the more I write, the more of both I get. Now I love writing and it’s very important to me to be sharing ….but I do feel resistance as writing and putting it out there publicly draws responses.  Receiving both is important as it teaches me to be less sensitive and less hung up on the praise and also on the feedback in general. The more criticism I get the more I learn just to do what I’m doing.  But this is a work in progress – saying clearly and consistently what I know to be true around death still proves challenging for me – and it still makes me nervous and sometimes delays me from posting something important. Resistance.  But I know what it is.  I see it for what it is. So I don’t let it stop me the way it used to.

So in a nutshell, resistance happens when you think you want to do a thing but you really don’t…or when you want to do a thing but you are, for some reason, afraid to do the thing.

Resistance itself isn’t an issue. The issue is when the resistance is unconscious, it blocks us from doing something we want to do, and we then blame it on something else.  Like if I didn’t blog…and then said it was because I don’t have the time.  There is a chance that should the woman who wrote to me not acknowledge her own resistance in seeking help, somewhere down the line when very little has changed for her she may well be one of those people believing and telling others that you can’t ‘get over’ things, that you can’t heal, that you can only wait for time and hope to slowly feel better (but never all the way better)…when all the time it was her own resistance that stopped her from taking any of the steps forward that would have help her to heal.

If you can’t even see the resistance then you aren’t in a great position to do anything about it.

This happens within bereavement a lot.  A whole lot. I see massive resistance every day and have stories of resistance shared with me about people’s interactions with those grieving.  And it makes sense – people believe they can’t heal and often don’t want to look at anything that can help them get there…because we have all (falsely) been told that grief is love, that grief is connection, that staying in pain is right if you love someone, that you aren’t meant to be happy etc, etc.  These beliefs will stop many people from ever getting near a healing path…and then have them telling themselves and others that there is no way to heal.

But it doesn’t just apply here in grief.  It can apply anywhere in your life.

Where in your life is there something that you wish to do or change…but haven’t?  Remember, the resistance isn’t the issue…the issue is when it is unconscious and controlling you.  Whatever that thing or those things are that you haven’t been able to do or change…take a close look at them and ask yourself why you are resistant.  Is it that you actually don’t really want to do that thing or change that thing? Or you don’t want to do it right now? Or you don’t want it enough to do anything about it? If that’s the case then that’s fine…admit it to yourself, let go of an intention or goal that was probably from the external world rather than your own heart…and move on.  But if this isn’t the case and it’s something you do want but haven’t done anything about…then investigate your resistance.  Because it is this that will stop you in your tracks and have you believing that things that are possible are impossible for you. What is it you’re afraid of having happen if you do this thing? What is the resistance about?

Every aspect of life, every single area and every single trauma, can be totally transformed. I have seen it in others – from death, to relationship end, to bankruptcy, to rape….you name it. Whatever it is there are people out there who have totally transformed this for themselves. If you feel like you want to (and if you don’t then again that’s fine, admit that to yourself) but have somehow always found a reason not to do anything about it or believe you can’t….then it’s time to look at your resistance and what it is really about.

Remember, resistance isn’t the enemy. It’s just you trying to protect yourself.  Overall, it’s not a bad system it’s just that it often doesn’t have all the facts straight.

The point here is to investigate what the resistance is trying to protect you from and why, admit what you find, and to see what you can do about it.

Kristie

xx