Group Success, Practice Success and What If it Feels Like Selling? ..... Resisting Resistance

No doubt about it, group works. I am just reflecting back on the last few months in some of our professional peer supervision and consultation groups. We have indeed been busy. Connecting, talking, analyzing, laughing, schmoozing. Presenting issues, cases and new ideas. And we have been progressing. Somehow, someway, group works.

What we have been doing: We have been talking about everything. And we have been studying what we want, professionally, personally, sometimes, and what's in the way of getting it. We have been talking about cases, and about what feelings come up, and what to do with them.

We help each other talk. Together we worry. We find relief. We wonder if feelings are contagious. Is ambivalence solvable. What are we afraid of and why. Can we, do we, how do we, know what feelings are in the room, whose are they, and what do we do with them? We are never out of things to talk about. We are awake, interested and engaged. Okay, sometimes we are not, but then we talk about that too.

Some participants have doubled their practice. Some have started groups of their own, for sufferers of chronic illness, for women in midlife transitions, for women considering divorce, for parents of special needs children. And more.

We have moved forward through ambivalence, resistance, fear, edgy feelings, and even good ones, that might get in the way of us connecting and growing.

What happens if we ourselves don't know if we should stay or go, in our groups? Or join one? Or start our own therapy or supervision. And how does this translate into our work?

So this is what's come up recently: If we help a client to stay with us, are we selling? And by the way, if we were, what are we selling, and what would be wrong with that? Why do some of us feel like we should not "sell" therapy? And why do some go so far as to readily agree with clients or group members who want to leave? To defend against their own wish that the client stay?

What's the problem really? One therapist I work with tells me that she is so fearful that if one person leaves her practice, everyone will leave. That leaving is contagious. She says that the moment a client talks about leaving, she feels panic. First, she feels that she needs the money, and then she feels guilty for that feeling. Then she feels that she must not being doing a good job, and she feels bad about that. And then she feels that she should take care of the client and ignore her feelings. And she thinks she should be supportive of the client. So she goes along with the client's statement about leaving and the therapy ends.

Too bad, really. Maybe, of course, it was time to end. But we don't know. We don't know what was really bothering the client. We don't know if the client really wanted to feel wanted, and wanted to be helped to stay. We don't know if the client leaves other situations abruptly, without warning or discussion. We don't know if there is something amiss with the treatment that talking about would benefit the client enormously, helping the client to express discomfort safely and honestly, and be well received. And even to effect change and feel effective.

If we agree readily with resistance and go along with it too quickly because we don't know enough about our feelings and thoughts, we all miss out. We are selling, I suppose. We are selling life, and progress, recovery, maybe even intimacy, self knowledge, resiliency and substance.

But not everyone wants this, or is ready for it. Some folks need to stay where they are, for a while, maybe a long while. And then we can study that too. But we don't have to go along with the ending. We can hold out, even against our own feelings, or theirs, of wanting to bolt. We can check in about it.

And we can take ourselves to group, to therapy, to supervision and let ourselves be sold.

For your reading enjoyment, on treatment destructive resistance, and other good words, check out this blog by Jim.