Eight important assessment questions:

1. What is the function of the client's resistant behaviors? [what is their goal?]
2. How does the client's current resistance fit into his or her historical/developmental patterns of resistance? [Example of a client with a history of passively resisting demands from his mother, wife, and employer who responds to his therapist in the same way.]
3. What might be some of the client's idiosyncratic beliefs that are feeding into his or her resistance?
4. What might the client fear will happen if he or she complies?
5. How might the client be characteristically misunderstanding or misinterpreting the therapist's suggestions, methods, or intentions?
6. What skills does the client lack that might make it practically difficult or impossible at this point for him or her to actively collaborate with treatment?
7. What factors in the client's natural environment may be punishing the client's attempts to change?
8. Does my conceptualization of this case need to be revised or ammended? What do I still need to understand about this client in order to make sense of his or her resistance?

[The article discusses 10 suggested interventions and gives 3 case examples]