One of the most important challenges for a group facilitator is dealing with resistance.
Participants in a group experience ambivalence.
They want change, but they also struggle against it.
Resistance in a group is a phenomenon that can make it difficult to achieve the group’s goals and can be an expression of difficulty, distress, anxiety, and the activation of defense mechanisms that prevent contact with the original emotion.
Typical behaviors of resistance in a group are varied and include argumentativeness, polarity and disagreements between participants and the facilitator and among participants themselves. Expressions of anger, accusations directed at the facilitator, repeated demands to understand the group’s goals
prolonged silences, absence, or abandonment of the facilitator and engagement in external content such as academic discussion, reading a newspaper, and similar behaviors.
One of the central issues in group work is the acceptance of authority or resistance to it while searching for personal identity and clarifying the boundaries of the self.
Behind resistance there is fear of being hurt, experiencing frustration, or a threat to an issue of great value.
Ignoring resistance or confronting it directly will lead to an escalation of behavior that interferes with the development of the entire group.
Resistance in a group can be directed toward change, toward the facilitator, resistance to the expression of painful emotion, or resistance to insight.
Resistance in a group, especially resistance expressed through hostile behavior toward group members or the facilitator, may constitute an obstacle to the development of both the group and the individual.
At the same time, many clinicians relate to resistance as a positive phenomenon that indicates the patient’s healthy strengths.
Resistance may slow the pace of treatment temporarily, but it expresses a defense that the patient finds difficult to explain verbally.
The forces that stop the patient from progressing in treatment are the same forces that provide stability in the world.
Possible reasons for resistance in a group
There are various reasons for the appearance of resistance in a group.
A central reason for resistance is when group participants are required to make changes in their behavior.
Resistance can be expressed openly through lateness or absence.
However, it is usually expressed covertly through failure to share relevant information with the therapist or group members, an apparent inability to understand the facilitator’s comments, or persistent resistance to giving up previous behavioral patterns.
Resistance serves as a defense mechanism whose role is to keep threatening content in the subconscious.
Resistance is necessary for a person’s psychological balance and appears as a response to a threat that includes anxiety.
It may stem from fear of change, a sense of helplessness, a lack of desire to create change, as well as difficulty in forming a relationship with the therapist.
The patient is in conflict between the desire to avoid pain and the demands of treatment to touch the pain.
Additional reasons for resistance include fear of emotional flooding of unpleasant feelings following disclosure and insight in the group, an effort to maintain stability, and concern that group processes will arouse changes in attitudes and changes in life as well.
There is also fear of harm to self worth.
The facilitator in the face of resistance
One of the most important challenges for a group facilitator is dealing with resistance.
Resistance is a phenomenon that threatens every group facilitator.
Behind resistance there is fear of being hurt, frustration, or threat.
Ignoring resistance or confronting it directly will lead to an escalation of behavior that interferes with the development of the entire group.
The role of the facilitator is to identify the resistance and its intensity, to be aware of countertransference processes, to identify reactions of anger, guilt, anxiety, and helplessness, and to work them into a place of dialogue.
It is important that the facilitator identify what the resistance evokes within them and not act from a regressive position.
A facilitator can seek supervision in order to work on the unconscious processes of the resistance itself and their reactions to it.
Another way to work with resistance in a group is through the group voice.
The resisting voice expresses anxiety about change or a sense of inferiority in the face of professional authority, but it expresses similar feelings on behalf of additional participants.
Another possibility is to connect the here and now processes in the group to the resistance.
It should be expected that the more emotional and turbulent the topic, the more intense the dynamic processes and resistance will be.
The facilitator can connect the emotional message within the resistance to the content and characteristics of the group and attempt to understand the parallel processes between the resistance and the group process.
Patients want help, but are also ambivalent toward it.
Resistance is unavoidable between group members and the facilitator and among the group members themselves.
Resistance occurs in every group and is more intense compared to individual therapy.
This is a universal process that the facilitator must identify and assess in terms of its intensity. Resistance evokes fear and is sometimes experienced as destructive, but it also contains an opportunity for change, reflection, and growth.
