You’ve done the intake. The client is motivated. They want to change. They told you so, clearly, more than once.
Then the session starts and something gets in the way.
Maybe they can’t relax. Maybe they keep analyzing what you’re saying instead of receiving it. Maybe they go deep but nothing shifts. Maybe they come back the following week and report that “nothing happened.”
This is resistance. And the way most practitioners are trained to handle it, push through it, reframe it, try a different induction, misses what it’s actually telling you.
Resistance Is Not Opposition
The first thing to understand: resistance is not the client working against you.
The subconscious doesn’t hold onto patterns arbitrarily. It holds onto them because they worked, or because at some point, they were the most functional response available. What looks like resistance is often a coping mechanism that has been doing its job for years. It developed because it was the best adaptation to a real situation. The subconscious continues to maintain it because nothing has yet convinced it that the situation that created it has changed.
When you understand it this way, your response changes completely. You’re not trying to get past the resistance. You’re working with what the coping mechanism was designed to do, and figuring out what it needs before it will let go.
What Resistance Actually Looks Like
Practitioners often expect resistance to look like defiance. It rarely does. More often it looks like:
- Excessive analysis during induction (“I’m not sure I’m doing this right”)
- Shallow depth, where the client never quite lands
- Emotional flatness, words without charge
- Hypervigilance, one eye always open, literally or metaphorically
- Post-session reports of “nothing happened” despite observable change during the session
- A pattern of almost: getting close to the material, then deflecting
Resistance also shows up in the body, often before the client can articulate it. Watch for the breath quickening or a subtle hold. Jaw tension, facial tightening, a shift in posture. A client whose body has been deeply relaxed beginning to carry a different quality of tension. A sudden lightening or reawakening, the depth that had settled starting to unravel mid-session. These physical signals are often the clearest read you’ll get. The body communicates what the voice won’t.
Each of these is information. Not a problem to solve, but a signal to read.
Where to Look First
Before you try to work around resistance, get curious about what it’s maintaining.
Ask yourself: What is this coping mechanism protecting the client from having to face? Not what they say they want to address. What does the pattern of their resistance suggest the subconscious isn’t ready to release?
Sometimes it’s identity. A client who has defined themselves by their anxiety, their pattern, their story, faces a genuine existential question if that thing changes: Who am I without it? The coping mechanism isn’t stubbornness. It’s the subconscious holding onto something it has organized a significant portion of life around.
Sometimes it’s safety. The subconscious learned, often long ago, that the current pattern kept something worse at bay. The subconscious prioritizes safety. It does not release what it believes is keeping the system safe until there is clear evidence that the threat that created the pattern is no longer present. You can’t argue it out of that position. You have to work with it.
Sometimes it’s trust. Not in you specifically, but in the process, in the possibility of change, in their own capacity to hold something different. This one often shows up in the first few sessions and resolves as the relationship builds.
What to Do
Don’t push. Increasing pressure when resistance is present usually increases resistance. The subconscious does not respond well to force.
Name what you observe, without alarm. When you notice body-based resistance during a session, draw the client’s attention to it simply: I notice something came up just then. When you’re ready, what came up for you? You are not diagnosing or labeling. You are inviting them to access what their body already registered.
Pause, reassess, and reframe. If a suggestion isn’t landing, don’t deliver it again with more emphasis. Ask whether it felt threatening, incongruent, or too far outside what the client can accept at this point. Sometimes the issue isn’t the content. It’s the framing. Adjust the language, shift the imagery, and offer it from a different angle. Often that is enough.
Slow down. Resistance often increases when the pace is too fast. Clients who feel they’re being moved toward something before they’re ready will brace. Give the process more time. Slow your pace, soften your tone, and let the system settle before continuing.
Revisit the intake. Sometimes what the client said they wanted and what the subconscious is ready to work on are different things. Resistance can be the system telling you that the goal you’re working toward isn’t the right one yet, or that there’s a more foundational piece that needs to be addressed first.
What Resistance Tells You About the Work
A session with significant resistance is not a failed session. It is a session that revealed something, usually something more important than what you would have found if the client had gone deep easily.
The practitioners who struggle most with resistance are the ones who see it as an obstacle between them and their technique. The practitioners who work best with it are the ones who treat it as part of the client’s story, a chapter worth reading carefully before you try to write the next one.
This post draws on themes from Advanced Hypnosis by Alexandra Janelli, available now on Amazon.
