Resistance, *by Jessie Moncrief and Alan Brenner

The Rifleman’s House (1808) stands as a reminder that structures—internal and external—are built for protection.
Like these old fortifications, our resistance forms to keep us safe in environments that feel threatening or overwhelming. When we understand the purpose of the structure, we can honor it instead of demolishing it.

Symbols of Endurance, Adaptation, and Creative Adjustment are ubiquitous
Humans make meaning of what they see, hear, taste, feel and touch. What meaning did you make when you first saw this picture? What about after you read it’s reference.

Standing inside the opening of the Rifleman’s House at Fort Sewall, it is impossible not to feel the echo of what this structure once protected. Built in 1808 on the edge of a wind-beaten coastline, the house was designed to shield a single rifleman—a human being—tasked with watching for danger long before anyone else could see it coming. Its walls were thick. Its windows narrow. Its purpose is unmistakable: protection first, everything else second.

Our resistance works in the same way.

Like the Rifleman’s House, our internal defenses are constructed at the precise moments when life feels unpredictable or unsafe. They rise to guard us—sometimes quietly, sometimes urgently—against emotional storms we are not equipped to face. The architecture may be old, the threat long gone, yet the structure remains. Not because it is flawed, but because it once kept us alive.

The Rifleman’s House does not apologize for its design. It does not try to become something more open, more modern, or more aesthetically pleasing. It stands as it was built: purposeful, resilient, and honest.

What if we regarded our resistance with the same dignity?

What if, instead of trying to demolish our inner fortifications, we paused to understand why they were built, what they were protecting, and how they helped us survive the landscape of our own history?

Seen this way, resistance is not an obstacle to change—it is the doorway into the deeper terrain of the self. A marker that says:
“Something mattered here. Somthing needed protection.”

And like standing in the frame of that old fortified house, when we look through our resistances rather than at them, we begin to see not just the wall—but the view beyond it. The path inward. The field behind the defense. The human being who built it, did their best, and is still here.

Resistance forms when something in us is trying to protect, fortify, or endure. Resistance is ubiquitous. Like the Riflehouse picture, resistance is both hard, fortified and downright ugly, but also beautiful, carrying messages of hope and change.

Honoring Resistance — An adaptive response.

Resistance is one of the most powerful—and misunderstood—forces in human change. Whether we’re working

at the personal, interpersonal, organizational, or cultural level, resistance is often treated as a problem to eliminate or a barrier to push through.

But how have most of us actually learned to relate to resistance—our own and others’?

How often do we take inventory of our resistance instead of fixating on someone else’s?

In reality, resistance is a protective mechanism and a source of valuable information about what matters most. Understanding how to honor, rather than fight, resistance is one of the most essential skills for anyone facilitating change.

What is Resistance?

Resistance includes any behavior, emotion, or thought pattern that slows or interrupts a change process. It can appear as avoidance, deflection, minimizing, intellectualizing, withdrawing, shifting topics, or even excessive compliance.

On a personal level, it might look like choosing to stay on the couch scrolling on your phone on a cold winter night instead of driving to a social event. Interpersonally, consider how many children eat their vegetables first without a fight. In work settings, resistance might emerge in response to a new boss, a new policy, or an unfamiliar procedure.

Despite its negative connotation—the “ground,” in Gestalt terms—resistance is not bad. Like a fox in sheep’s clothing, it can be subtle at first. We must learn to identify it, stop battling it, and begin listening to what it is trying to communicate.

Only then does real transformation become possible.

Gestalt Somatic & Embodied Experiential Exercise: Exploring Resistance

In true Gestalt fashion, take a few moments to put others things aside and sit with the idea of resistance. Literally, sit down, feel your feet on the ground, your back against the chair, take a few deep breaths and relax.

● Recall a time when you experienced resistance—your own or someone else’s.
What behaviors, reactions, or patterns were present?

● What images arise as you remember it? How do those images sit with you right now?

● Gently “try it on” again—as if slipping into a familiar posture.
What do you notice?

Now bring to mind a moment when someone else’s resistance felt like a thorn in your side:
a point of tension, something hard to name, or a stream of facts, arguments, or detours that left you stuck or frustrated.

As you reflect, simply allow whatever emerges to be there.
What do you feel now as you recall that moment?
How do you sense it in your body—tension, pressure, collapse, heat, distance, holding your breath, or something else?

Finally, notice what is happening in your body right now, as you read these words.
Where do you feel resonance with the earlier experience?\
What shifts when you bring awareness to it?

The Hidden Wisdom of Resistance

This idea is ancient. The 2,500-year-old tradition of Taoism shares the same philosophical DNA. Taoism teaches the

importance of moving with what is, rather than against it. The Taoist principle closest to honoring resistance is Wu Wei—“non-doing,” “non-forcing,” or “effortless action.”

Western idioms echo this wisdom: “go with the flow,” “let it be,” or “don’t rock the boat.” While simplified, these phrases point to a deeper truth: forcing change rarely works—and often backfires.

Gestalt Embraces Resistance

If you’ve guessed that resistance is a form of defense, you’re right. Like psychoanalysis, the Gestalt Approach has been

studying protective patterns of behavior for over a century. Gestalt simply has a more embodied, accessible way of naming them: creative adjustments or creative adaptations.

A creative adjustment is a behavior that emerges to help us survive or manage the environment as best we can. In Gestalt terms, resistance is a creative adaptation, a creative adjustment, or a contact style (Wheeler).

There is energy in resistance.

I witnessed this vividly when my five-year-old son entered kindergarten. He didn’t receive the warm-and-fuzzy orientation many kids have today. It wasn’t abuse—but it wasn’t optimal for his nervous system, preferences, or temperament.

On his first day, he was forced to walk into a new school, a new classroom, and a new developmental expectation—all at once. He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t run. He was scared.

So he adapted:

● He became overly compliant to avoid punishment.
● His father minimized the situation.
● His mother oscillated between intellectualizing and deflection.
● The principal avoided my concerns.

The Costly Consequences of Ignoring Resistance

In our change-driven culture, resistance is often dismissed as noncompliance, lack of motivation, or sabotage. Approaching it this way blinds us to its deeper wisdom—and, staying with the driving metaphor, leaves us spinning our wheels in the mud.

Research consistently demonstrates that failing to address resistance leads to significant negative outcomes across all systems.

Avoidance amplifies emotional load, disrupts connection, and reinforces stuck patterns:

● Emotions: Unspoken grief, anger, or fear intensify when ignored.
● Conflict: Tensions deepen the longer they go unacknowledged.
● Resistance: Avoiding it allows it to solidify into more complex forms.
● Defenses: Minimizing, deflecting, or shutting down becomes automatic.

Honoring Resistance: The Key to Successful Change in Individuals, Couples, Organizations and Society

Personal Resistance: Pop Bottle Effect

A metaphor I often use is the shaken pop bottle.
If you keep tightening the cap—and keep shaking—what happens?

The pressure builds.
And builds.
And builds.

For many people, what we call “symptoms” are simply pressure that never had a safe place to release. Resistance, in this frame, isn’t a flaw. It’s a lid doing its best to keep everything intact.

Can you think of a person, a personal relationship, or a work situation where this was true?
Where pressure kept accumulating because there was no room for honesty, emotion, or rupture-and-repair?

Research shows that suppressing or avoiding emotions increases internal distress—leading to anxiety, depression, and substance use.

When resistance is ignored or pushed through, people often experience fragmentation and symptom substitution, where new behaviors appear to stand in for the unaddressed underlying need.

Personal Example: I saw this unfold in my son.

He made it through kindergarten, but then developed somatic complaints in first grade, covert avoidance in later years, and eventually panic attacks and suicidal ideation in his freshman year of college. Not because he was weak, but because he didn’t know how to honor his resistance to four major changes: a new house, a full school day, a forever sibling, and a new way of sharing his parents.

He learned—like many boys—to push his feelings down. He moved through a culture that equates emotional expression with weakness. He got through school, but the emotional experience stayed unfinished and became part of a habitual pattern of minimizing and holding everything in.

Now, in early adulthood, those feelings rise again when life becomes stressful.

Some might call this a “mental health episode.” As his Gestalt-informed parent, I see unfinished business, a creative adjustment, a contact style that once protected him and now needs curiosity, support, and room to breathe.

Interpersonal Resistance: Ignoring What is in the Petri Dish

Like bacteria left to multiply in a Petri dish, avoided feelings and unspoken tensions grow larger and more complex over time. Naming, contacting, and staying with what emerges is what stops the spread—personally, interpersonally, and organizationally.

Research on relationships, including decades of findings from The Gottman Institute, shows that behaviors like minimizing, ignoring, and deflecting are not small habits—they are early warning signs of relational breakdown. These patterns map directly onto defensiveness and stonewalling, two of the strongest predictors of divorce identified by John Gottman. When one partner consistently downplays feelings, shuts down, or redirects the conversation, the connection slowly erodes. Over time, unresolved pressure builds beneath the surface, making even small conflicts feel explosive.

Organizational Resistance : The Paradox of Forced Change

Poorly managed resistance comes with staggering organizational costs.

● 60–70% of organizational change initiatives fail

● Some studies show:
○ 50% outright failures
○ 16% mixed results
○ Only 34% clear successes

● A University of Palermo study found 70% of change programs fail due to inadequate leadership commitment and support

Employee attitudes and emotions play a critical role. When change is rushed, forced, or handled without psychological safety, resistance increases—resulting in lower productivity, higher absenteeism, disengagement, and mistrust.

When organizations honor resistance, the outcomes shift dramatically:

● 83% of companies using structured resistance-management strategies
● saw 72% increases in successful change adoption
● and 10% decreases in annual turnover
● saving up to $23 million in training and implementation costs

The message is unmistakable:
Resistance is not the problem—poorly managed resistance is.
Forcing change intensifies fear and shuts people down. Honoring resistance creates adaptability, resilience, and trust.

Resistance at the Sociocultural System: Going Postal

When I was younger, we even had a phrase—“going postal”—a crude shorthand society used to describe what happens when someone’s internal pressure becomes unbearable.

And while it is far too simplistic—and irresponsible—to claim that this metaphor fully explains the rise in mass violence in our country, it does point to something essential:

When individuals, families, communities, and systems have no culturally acceptable way to express overwhelm, fear, shame, anger, or grief, pressure seeks its own release. Sometimes in ways that are harmful. Sometimes in ways that are heartbreaking.

Honoring resistance means noticing the early signs of pressure—the tightening, the shaking, the holding-it-all-together—before the system is forced to explode.

A Gestalt Framework for Honoring All Forms of Resistance

Reframing Resistance
Understanding resistance as a creative adaptation helps us soften our emotional reactivity—to others and to the situation. Resistance emerges whenever our safety, identity, or autonomy feels threatened. At its core, it is an intelligent response—a signal that says:

● “Something here matters, and I’m protecting myself.”
● “Slow down.”
● “I’m not ready.”
● “I need more information.”
● “Something important is at stake.”

Leveraging Resistance for Positive Change

When we honor resistance:
● “Noncompliance” becomes meaningful data
● Ambivalence becomes a guide
● Change unfolds at a pace that feels safe
● Integration replaces fragmentation

Personal Change:

While some experiences are stored in memory and now a part of our habitual patterns, it's not too late for change. In the case of my son, he will continue to name what he is feeling rather than ignoring it. He will let the cap come off the pop bottle, put the petri dish under the microscope. Rather than pushing down feelings, the utility of feelings being raw information in motion will benefit him as his own needs and environmental supports come into play. In therapy, he will approach himself with curiosity, be met with a pace that the kindergarten line and Principal did not. He will sit with a therapist, a support to what he is feeling, not an expectation to what he is not feeling.

Interpersonal Change:

Resistance in families often signals unmet needs or systemic imbalances. Rather than locating “the resistant one,” healthy systems explore what the resistance communicates and where the needs are.

Organizational Change:

Organizations that leverage resistance:
● Build psychological safety
● Create channels for honest feedback
● Use resistance as quality control
● Encourage dissent as part of innovation

Practical tools include resistance audits, formal devil’s-advocate roles, pilot programs, and structured communication channels.

Four Steps to Leverage Resistance

1. Curiosity Over Combat
Shift from “How do we eliminate resistance?” to “What is this resistance protecting?”

This reframe transforms the dynamic from adversarial to collaborative.

2. Resistance as Information
Every form of resistance carries data about values, fears, and needs.

In therapy, it points to core areas requiring care.

In organizations, it signals misalignment, unclear communication, or legitimate concerns.

3. Pace and Timing
Resistance often emerges when the pace of change feels too fast.

Honoring resistance means adjusting timelines and slowing down to integrate.

4. Including Rather Than Excluding
In therapy, relationships, and organizations, involving resistant voices strengthens outcomes.

Resistance is not an obstacle—it is part of the intelligence of the system.

References

Gross, J. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1997). Hiding feelings: The acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106(1), 95–103.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.106.1.95

Hayes, S. C., Wilson, K. G., Gifford, E. V., Follette, V. M., & Strosahl, K. (1996). Experiential avoidance and behavioral disorders: A functional dimensional approach to diagnosis and treatment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(6), 1152–1168.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.64.6.1152

Chawla, N., & Ostafin, B. (2007). Experiential avoidance as a functional dimensional approach to psychopathology: An empirical review. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 63(9), 871–890.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20400