Re:Resistance and Motivating for change

Not wanting to talk about familial issues may be a generational issue. Your client is older and people of her generation firmly believe that family issues remain in the family. I sense transference issues from her (taking a parental role and questioning your competence) and counter-transference issues from you (made to feel like a child and incompetent). I had to learn the hard way to let the creative activity be the center of the clinical encounter. I suggest you try and create a safe holding environment for your client in which she does not feel defensive( this is diffucult and I struggle with it myself). Having her share familial details with you may be your agenda. Let her take you to the place were you can be the catalyst for change. As therapists we can often feel the need to cure our clients. Alas, as one of my supervisors told me in early days :we can only treat we can not cure." I think as a companionate fellow traveler on her life journey you could be of much more use if you laid back and listened to her experience, her wisdom and her pain. Probing in this case seems counter-productive. My comments are not meant as criticism but straight talk and I hope they are received in that fashion.

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