Befriending (and Overcoming) Resistance

During one of the group calls for a workshop I recently participated in, I heard an overwhelming consensus from the participants that they were struggling with doing the meditative, self-care practices being suggested.

They knew these practices would help them along their personal development path, and they believed in their value, but they still struggled to complete them. 

If this rings true for you, you are not alone. This is such a universal challenge! How many of us struggle with doing the thing that we know will help and make us feel better? How many of us want to be able to do something, and do everything in our power to make it happen, but still bump up against some form of resistance anyway? 

How often, when faced with the choice to meditate, exercise, make art, or reach out to a friend, do we instead turn towards our familiar coping tools, like Netflix, snacking, scrolling, substance use, or complaining?

Sometimes, resistance is here for a reason. It can be a sign post trying to indicate that something big in our life might be out of alignment. It’s important to be able to recognize this kind of resistance for what it is, and understand how to properly utilize the information it provides, rather than ignoring it and trying to bulldoze over it in the name of “getting things done”. 

Resistance is a protective instinct

In many cases, resistance shows up as a “protector” when we are faced with feelings we might not want to feel, or with the brain energy cost of making a change from familiarity to something different. Our brains are generally designed to choose the path of least resistance in terms of energy conservation, so resistance may arise when we feel there is an “easier” way out. 

It’s important to understand that resistance is not trying to trip us up, that it actually wants to work for us, and to help us out. This acknowledgement is what first enables us to get into the driver’s seat of our proverbial car. From there we can choose how to work with our resistance instead of fighting against it to overpower it. Working against it will usually make it fight back harder, the result of which is being stuck in a loop of self criticism and inertia. 

Availability of resources matters

There are three main steps to working with your resistance.

The first is to limit the number of things pulling on you from all directions – often, our resistance comes up because it knows we are stretching ourselves too thin and we have too much on our plates. Therefore, try to focus on just one practice at a time, something you’d like to do more of.

This is something I talk about a bit more in my recent blog, The Key to Lasting Transformation. Feel free to check it out if you’d like to dive deeper. 

The second step is to acknowledge to yourself that the feelings you may be avoiding are probably not as big as your resistance is making them out to be. Remind yourself you are even more capable now, than you ever were before, because of the new connections, experiences, and understandings you encounter every day. Take ten slow breaths in through your nose, and let yourself feel the sensations and feelings that arise.

Third, increase the resources (or energy stores) available in your brain by doing more things that light you up. Then, begin to pair these pleasurable things with the new practice.

The more whole-hearted you feel, the more resources you will have accessible to you, so your brain will be less likely to hoard energy. This makes it easier and simpler to do new practices without encountering resistance. 

Have you ever come home from a fulfilling time with friends feeling somehow buoyed, buzzing, and ready to do the things you’ve been putting off? This is an example of a time when your nervous system feels at ease. You spent time engaging in something pleasurable, fun, and lighthearted, so you now have more “resources” and more access to energy. As a result, you feel more able to accomplish tasks that would normally cause resistance to appear. 

Working with resistance to decrease resistance

The key with these steps is that we are trying to increase our available resources so that our brain feels less overwhelmed, and  therefore does not put up so much resistance.

Sometimes, we have to use our resistance to help us understand why and where our brain is feeling overwhelmed, so that we can work on those areas to increase our energy stores. 

So the next time you feel resistance come up within you in response to a task, situation, or conversation, instead of punishing yourself for experiencing resistance, try to see what happens when you work with it. I’d love to know how it goes!

To share your experience, or to talk about the possibility of taking a deeper dive into this, you can always message me HERE.