About Resistance
In the New Age, self-help world, there is a lot of talk about “resistance” to the Universe or God or Good or the power of manifestation. In therapy, resistance is akin to self-sabotage. They are similar ideas seen from different angles. Basically, we put barriers between ourselves and love, success, happiness, connection, and peace all the time. I think sometimes this is as simple as we are thinking too hard about our lives, ourselves, and about the intentions of other people. In psychology, what we think about what we think is called “meta-cognition.” It’s the space we create between ourselves and the state of Flow, between ourselves and our experience, between ourselves and opportunities, between ourselves and other people.
Resistance is declining a call from a friend or love interest, because the call doesn’t come at the “right” time. It’s wanting a dinner party to go differently than we imagined. It’s expecting more or different out of our colleagues. It’s expecting our kids to be better at sports or have the same drive or passions that we do.
In the world of recovery, there is a lot of talk about acceptance. About letting go and letting God. It’s easy to arrive at therapy or self-help or recovery trying to do better or be different. There is a lot of self-loathing and self-flagellation that drives people to self-improvement of all kinds, but unless the resistance to love and peace is broken down through self-love and self-acceptance, the exercise of getting better is more of the same. Managing the self, managing thoughts, managing emotions, rather than sitting in the self, connecting with real needs, witnessing and feeding the positives in ourselves and the people all around us.
If we’re feeling unloved, faith is a good place to start. Just the willingness to consider some magical thinking and create some space for an entity other than ourselves (be it God, Good, or the Universe) to love, heal, and change our lives also creates an opportunity for us to see people for who they are, let them loves us, or let them fade away. It’s not up to us anymore. We don’t have to do all the work required when resisting reality and feeling unworthy. We can start answering those calls when the phone rings or when the Universe intervenes. We can start letting people choose to love us or leave us, and appreciating it either way when they do.
The hardest part is, once we start to see our own resistance to opportunity, possibility, and love, it becomes much more apparent in others. Sadly, it’s impossible to break through the resistance of another. That work isn’t up to us, it’s up to them and the Universe. All we can do is pray for them and their safekeeping on their journey, and hope to see them if they break through to the other side.