Navigating Resistance

In this podcast we discuss:

• What is your role
  
• Informed choice
  
• Empowerment vs. Power
  
• Fight, Flight or Freeze
  
• Culture
  
• Righting reflex
  
• And so much more!
  

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Tami Calais: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the communication solution podcast. Here at IFIOC we love to talk communication, we love to talk motivational interviewing, and we love talking about improving outcomes for individuals, organizations, and the communities that they serve. Today, we’ve got Casey Jackson on the line, John Gilbert.

And I’m Tammy. Welcome to the conversation.

John Gilbert: Hello and welcome everyone. You are listening to another conversation with us at the team here. Today we have, uh, a topic. I was surprised we haven’t talked about fully yet, but it is gonna be navigating resistance. And so you might have this in a variety of different situations, personal professional, all sorts of different things.

And so we talk a lot about this in our intro to motivational interviewing course that will reference throughout. And there’s some other, uh, resources like MI minutes setting Casey [00:01:00] can speak to, that will point you towards afterwards, but for now, that’s what we’re gonna be kind of setting the tone with.

In terms of resistance, one thing that came to mind for me, Casey, is something that years ago you brought up of the whole rubber band analogy and kind of the physics 1 0 1 thing. So I think that could be a place to start if you are both open to that. But at some point I think that would be helpful just to get a sense of defining our terms a little bit, or what are we talking about instead of the maybe stigma that happens when you think.

Making the label that someone is being resistant. So I don’t know if you’d mind starting there.

Casey Jackson: Well, I, I think it’s interesting because if we kind of unwind the history a bit of this in the beginning, when I first was learning motivational interviewing and, and getting trained on it and then training on it, resistance was a term we used literally rolling with resistance and then it started falling out of favor.

 And the big shift was towards discord. And I understood the thinking behind it. Because what they were saying is [00:02:00] we don’t wanna label the individual as being resistant. We don’t wanna label the individuals being resistant. You know, what do we contribute to that? You know, so there’s discord, there’s tension between people.

And it was interesting because I had been training resistance as the energy between two things, because I I’m so a little freakish about semantics. Like I, I, I need to, my brain needs to know what it means. And so I’d researched and, and looked up, you know, the source of it had to. Physics, you know, when you’re looking at human physics or when you’re looking at, you know, just physics and science, that resistance is the energy between two things.

So that’s when I started using that analogy. Like if you pick up the rubber band, there’s no resistance in the rubber band, you know, it’s when we pull on it and it’s, and then I started talking about, you know, if I pump my fist together and smash my fist together, that’s resistance. What I’d say is that it takes two things.

So there is no such thing as a resistant individual, by definition, it is the energy between two things. And for me, that really helped my brain start to evolve of [00:03:00] understanding what causes resistance and what reduces resistance, which makes it easier to navigate resistance in dialogue. I think the thing that’s so interesting with different populations that I’ve worked with.

Is that there’s so many things we do to try to manipulate or control people to bring down their resistance, which just in inadvertently increases resistance. One of the things that I I know is such an interesting challenge, um, when I train law enforcement is one of the most common things they’ll say is, you know, oh, well maybe we could use motivationally after we get them cuffed and in the car.

And it’s like, oh my gosh, the amount of resistance you’ve generated that you’re gonna have to come over to overcome. That is gonna. A challenge. Um, another way to think about this, if you’re thinking from a kind of an evolving practice or promising practice is what if you eliminate the resistance, so you don’t have to use force or it doesn’t have to escalate, which is, you know, I mean, we’re talking about if there’s not health and safety, if there’s not a minute risk mm-hmm , but the majority of calls officers go [00:04:00] on, there’s not imminent risk.

You know, and so it’s just like, can we rethink about how do we eliminate that tension instead of creating massive amounts of resistance and then trying to undo it after the fact mm-hmm, just seem almost, I can see from that logical perspective, but it’s counterintuitive. Um, when you look at it from a, you know, a different model too, mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah.

John Gilbert: It’s, it’s interesting. When you start to. And helpful and, and useful. Uh, more importantly, when you start to put the responsibility, back into the lap of the practitioner contributing or not contributing and there’s, or is something you’ll say, um, at trainings that I’ve will use in trainings of, you know, with everything you say, uh, You either have the potential to increase or decrease that sense of between you and the other person stretching or pushing or something like that.

And that [00:05:00] mindfulness, there is something to be said about getting in the flow and a practice skill. So I don’t wanna take away from that for counselors therapists, people that are listening, that, that are in that zone, but there is something to be said about the ability to respond. There’s taking responsibility of resistance between you and something else, and it’s just a more powerful place to be.

And so it brings empowerment back to the officer, back to the counselor, back to the therapist, back to the social worker to recognize back to the child, back to the teacher. Yeah. I mean, you’re right. That’s exactly it. And well, and oh, go ahead.

Casey Jackson: Well, and, and the thing I think about too is you’re, you’re laying that as you’re talking, John.

What it comes down to is what is your role and what are you trying to accomplish? I mean, maybe people don’t wanna reduce resistance. Maybe they wanna increase resistance. Maybe they wanna rally people up. So I think this is also why, you know, we’re talking about how do you navigate resistance, but I also think is what is your end goal?

Or what is the, what’s your intention going into the [00:06:00] conversation, you know of, do you care if you’re generating resistance, if you’re pounding your fist on a table and you’re trying to make a change mm-hmm , um, these people think that, you know, generating that resistance, it gives you a dynamic tension to work with.

And so it just, it, it just really does come down to what is your ultimate intention in, in reducing that resistance? That thing I always brace against is when people think that when I can see or they talk about that, ultimately the mindset has some. Tone of manipulation to it. And that’s when I get a little itchy, in terms of, yeah, that’s, that’s a different mindset going into, trying to manipulate someone to almost necess like rub the alligators belly.

So they go to sleep kind of thing. Like if you’re doing that to manipulate them or, or entrance them, that’s a, that’s not what we’re talking about.

John Gilbert: Yeah. I’d like to bring Tammy in related to that with sales, because where, where my brain goes is very philosophical and I I’ll just throw out. Well, do Casey, to what you’re talking about.

 Do you believe more in the power of fear [00:07:00] or, uh, power of kind of that sort of thing, or do you believe more in the power of love and acceptance and that sort of a thing, and that will really shape, do I want to take this acceptance, motivational Interviewing spirited thing to see if the power of that works. You can always rely on the power of the confrontation, but some people so believe be it through evolutionary psychology or otherwise believe in the power of the, uh, For being more powerful, like we’re seeing with so many things in the world, right. That it’s not even going through their brain to be in the power of huh.

Versus Ugh. You know, and just that, but that underlying belief conscious or not is really gonna shape how you enter with that intention. I think that’s so powerful what you, you said there, but then there’s also this other thing of being mindful of. Now I’m going to use my skillset to get this person, to see what I want them to see by acting like I understand where they’re coming from and then kind of imbuing my stuff in there.

And that is definitely not [00:08:00] motivational interviewing, but I think there is a connotation of sales with that. So I was wondering Tammy, if, if you can speak to your experience in the world of business with empathy and what you kind of. Thought it was or what you were introduced to it and just, I don’t know any, any sort of thoughts you have on resistance in sales and, and anything you learned with that?

Tami Calais: Well, as far as navigating resistance goes, even in a sales role, I was lucky enough to believe in helping people is the first priority. So if you help people get clear about what they really. Then they might choose, you know, your product or whatever, but reducing resistance for me was never about how do I reduce resistance so I can share my product and get them to buy it.

It was, how do I reduce resistance to help them get clear about who they are and what they want. [00:09:00] And then together we can work towards navigating getting them to their goals, essentially. So. Yeah, that’s my 2 cents on it.

Casey Jackson: Tammy, for me, what that trigger is that I think is so helpful to think about because it expands the primary concept of informed choice, because we tend to think of informed choice more in my, like a medical model.

We want people to have informed choice, but I become such a fan of understanding how comprehensive that is, because that’s exactly what you’re talking about from a quote unquote sales perspective is. If they can get a clear idea of who they are, if they can get a clear assessment of their needs. And if they can get a clear assessment of what their opportunities or services or resources on.

Then the decision becomes there, theirs, as long as they’re clear that, which is not normal in the sales community. I mean, that’s not the that’s, that’s not the predominant way. It’s how do we convert? How do we [00:10:00] convert? How do we convert? How do we convert, um, to a sale and. But the thing that I think is so fascinating when you look at human dynamics, it’s in that absence of resistance that people can make a more informed choice.

And then I can dive deep into the brain science behind that because mm-hmm, , our logical brain is more engaged when we’re not in a fear based or defensive. Status? Yes. The thing is, is that people depend on how we attached we are to someone else’s outcome depends on how much free will do we want them to have.

And John, this circles back all the way around your question about power, you know, what kind of power are we looking? Are we looking at empowerment? Are we looking at power? For dominance or power for control or power for the outcomes of which we’re attached to. So I think that’s, mm-hmm, that for me is where it really gets fascinating.

And when you start to peel back some of those layers.

John Gilbert: Mm-hmm well, it also, uh, you know, you were alluding to this earlier, Casey, like healthy boundaries at a certain point of health and safety. You’ve been in some extreme situations where you still chose to try to decrease resistance and, you know, [00:11:00] nonviolent communication.

Marshall Rosenthal. If I got that name right. Would talk about extreme situations where someone will try to, you know, especially express empathy as some of the things we’re, some of the stuff we’re alluding to, but in extreme situations, does it always work? Not necessarily, but there is a certain place where.

I don’t know that there there’s a decrease in a sense of me fighting you or wanting to attack you. If you understand me more now that is easily could be from a privileged place, not being attacked right now. Not, you know, being a, a male, all these things and not being in a situation as a female out, walking at night.

Right. There’s so many things that I wanna honor there yet. At the same time, there does seem to be a, there, there to go. This is not okay for myself or someone else. And where is that line for yourself and being a little bit clear, you might need to come up with it in the moment, but up until that line, having the awareness and the skillset [00:12:00] practice of expressing what it must be like for this other person.

And I, I do think the violent situations are an extreme example. I do think Casey, you mentioning the officer thing is important, but I’m wondering. Kind of situations. Where, where do you see kind of the most danger, but still application for Motivational Interviewing Casey with the officers? If we want to take it to some extreme, I know we show some videos in our training.

And then where do you think it just could be more. Um, like more basic life day to day resistance. I’m just wondering from both of you kind of to get a spectrum of resistance here of there’s this end of it, where maybe we start to bring in compliance and then there’s this end of it. Just day to day with, you know, kids or partners.

And so I was just wondering kind of to that discussion.

Casey Jackson: The thing I immediately think of with day to day is I think of, you know, I mean, I’ve got twin 13 year old, Yeah. You know, and I’m married [00:13:00] and so on any given day. I drive, you know, so, you know, um, so the capacity for resistance on any given day where there’s tension between two things, uh, you know, I watch the news, I go on social media at times.

And, and so the opportunity on a day to day basis for extreme resistance, uh, sometimes is not even in law enforcement. I think it’s sometimes, I mean, especially with this entrenched, because it’s not these. Touchstone moments, um, like with law enforcement, I mean, this is a, can be a chronic issue with a teenager who just is refusing to do their homework, or no matter what their parents say, they’ll run away before they stop smoking weed, or you can kick me out.

I mean, that kind of day to day resistance will grind people to a halt. That constant pressure of resistance is it’s taxing on people and can do damage. Those are the things I think of day to day reality.

Tami Calais: Which is why I think it’s so important to be talking about [00:14:00] navigating it because we all encounter resistance every single day.

Absolut, whether there’s big resistance or little resistance.

Casey Jackson: Absolutely. Mm-hmm, tension between two things. I mean, that for me is just always, what I look at is just, yeah, that, that, that capacity is so high. I think when we get into navigating it, then again, for me, it comes back to the intention. What are we trying to do?

You know, are you, I I’ll just take personal examples. Am I trying to get my daughter to get the homework done? or am I trying to help them develop study habits or do I just want them to graduate or, you know, what is my there’s, you know, and we can wrap it all together, but the more you wrap it together, the harder it is to untangle mm-hmm

So it, I think it takes an onus on if we’re trying to navigate resistance of what is my attachment to the outcome, what is my end goal? And do I believe using pressure is going to get me the best long-term outcome, because Motivational Interviewing is much more about long-term outcome than short-term outcome mm-hmm

So is it a compliance thing where’re grounded or is it a behavior change [00:15:00] thing where you have choice and you’re gonna get the benefit or the consequences of your choices? Mm-hmm and it’s, those are two completely different mindset.

John Gilbert: That really triggered in me this whole thing. We don’t need to go into the, the brain child.

That is that amazing concept, Casey, that you had come to you, uh, related to resistance in politics, but I do want to allude to, and we can open up as much as that as you would like the sense of when we think of resistance. We think of decreasing resistance, we’ve been alluding to it in our training. We talk a lot about empathy becoming shoulder to shoulders, stepping in their shoes, getting a sense of feeling, what they’re feeling, having a sense to care enough, to feel what they’re feeling and then giving voice to that.

All these sorts of things are not necessarily an attachment to an outcome other than, giving voice to this experience of this person. As soon as you bring in [00:16:00] that attachment or that direction, or that guidance of where to navigate that view. Now we start getting into, can you remain in equipoise? And we talk about that right?

In other, other podcasts and getting into that, the thing that, that triggered for me, that you were just getting at is if we’re gonna decrease resistance, one way to do it because I want to talk about other ways of decreasing resistance is empathy and getting out of your perspective into this other person’s perspective.

And so I just the example you gave with, you know, your, your twin 13 year olds, it’s like. To decrease resistance. One way to do it is just leave your reality completely and empathize. But then at the same time, that can be so triggering as a parent. That can be so triggering in so many ways. It seems like that’s one way to decrease resistance and I want, and we can unravel that more is empathy.

But then there’s also this like level of your perspective to [00:17:00] bring in and how do you navigate that of not being manipulative, but still decreasing resistance? Um, you know, be it in a parent, in a relationship. And then also my brain goes to. One of the talking points we talked about, which is how do you decrease resistance without necessarily empathy?

Like, are there ways of decreasing resistance without empathy? So those were just two thoughts I had.

Casey Jackson: That’s a great question. 15 questions you have there to unpack and then, and then, and then, and then, and then the, the, the biggest thing I think of that went, went through my brain when you were talking about John, and I’ve never even thought about this, you know, analogy before, but my brain just always goes there is I think of a teenager suited up with football pads on ready to hit their parents or their sibling or their teacher.

And they just keep running into these walls. Like they’re looking for somebody to run into. And what the vision I have is what if they were just on a white piece of paper, you know, with no walls, [00:18:00] nowhere, and they just keep running and running. There’s no walls, there’s nothing to run into. There’s nothing to have an opinion about.

I can almost see them running until they just get exhausted and drop down and start sobbing. Cuz there’s nothing to fight against. And they’re not sure what to do if we can’t give them something to fight against. This is how you get to the source of where ambivalence resides. As long as there’s things to fight up against, then we have something, we get outta an opinion and get rallied up inside of ourselves around.

And that’s where our righting reflex comes in. And we just wanna have something to pound against, but , I think of, you know, forest gum running from coast to coast or whatever, it’s just like when there’s just nothing in front of you and just keep going and going. There’s no stop lights. There’s no trees.

There’s no people, there’s nothing. It’s just open Prairie and you just run and run and run forever. Until you just get exhausted cause you have nothing to bounce up against. And I think there’s something about if I don’t give them something to bounce up against, you’re gonna get to the, the core of their ambivalence.

And this is why from a brain science. It’s so fascinating to me because we get defensive. [00:19:00] We need something to fight against when we’re in that fight, fight free. We’re in that primal response. And the reason we’ll go there sometimes is if we can’t move up into our executive function, if we can’t solve the problem, if our brain can’t do the metrics around how to get out of this situation.

Then the converse is we get sucked further and further into our defense mode, especially if we feel pressure from other things. So it’s easier for me to swing at you and be mad at you and be pissed at my, my parents, or be pissed at this person or mad at this person or angry about this and wanting to pick a fight and half the time it’s because we can’t solve the issue ourselves.

So I’d rather put my energy that I’m so fr that internal frustration of stuckness or frustration with status quo that makes us more edgy or snappy or snippy at other people. That’s just like, Ah, ah, I mean, just it it’s quintessential teenager is what it is. And teenagers are quintessentially in a chronic state of ambivalence.

you know, because they don’t wanna do what their parents say. There’s part of their brain that knows that, you know, some of the stuff their, their peers may be doing may not be the right thing to do, but I don’t wanna think about it anymore. I just wanna do it. And [00:20:00] my parents are stupid and you’re stupid and that’s stupid.

And you know, I don’t wanna do my homework and that’s not gonna change anything. And I hate history class. I’m never gonna use it anyway. Like it’s just all of those things to fight against because they really don’t know. And they know that they don’t know, but they don’t wanna give themselves acknowledgement that they don’t know which means you’re gonna have chronic resistance.

John Gilbert: Hmm. Hmm. There’s this sense about me? That’s like, Well, but isn’t there. So aren’t there so many distractions in life that you can always point to. So you’re always gonna be able to point outside yourself. Absolutely. So there’s always resistance. You’re never gonna be in that white God bless America. Yeah.

Casey Jackson: The us gives us things to pay attention to 24 7 365. So we don’t have to think about ourselves. We can react everything around us. We don’t have to, we don’t have to engage our executive function in our brain. We let other people do it for us.

John Gilbert: Yes. Yes. Well, so there’s this. Yeah, damn. Tammy. What resonated for you with that?[00:21:00]

Tami Calais: Just some personal beliefs, but yes. Yeah. yeah. Oh my gosh. Don’t go.

Casey Jackson: It is it just, and then we get further and further from who we are and what our values are. And then we let other people dict dictate our values, and then we blame other people. When we get in trouble for decisions we make, you know yes. When it’s like, you’re not taking responsibility for what your values are, what are your values?

And I know what some people are thinking is what if some people don’t know what their values are or if they came from a family where, you know, they have antisocial values or, I mean, it just, this is when we start to pull on these threads that it starts to unravel.

Tami Calais: Oh my gosh, that, yeah, that, yeah, that really, yes, people, it’s so easy to get distracted by other people and the noise of what the world is trying to tell you about what you really value that you don’t figure it out yourself.

Yes. And that can impact so many different things.

Casey Jackson: Well for me, and what’s so critical about that is when everybody’s making those decisions, it does nothing to develop executive functioning children. This is what [00:22:00] makes me so nervous about technology and not for being an old curmudgeon.

It’s really from going, wow. When you look at how the brain fires and functions. What are we doing to foster executive functioning development? When the kids just literally, I watch my own children at times, just staring at a screen for an hour. And I’m just like, I can’t like I can literally see that their brain isn’t firing it.

It, it causes me chills thinking, you know, the matrix I’ve actually talked to the kids about that, of just going, you know, you’re basically a battery for something else because you’re just sitting there absorbing information and drooling and, and your brain is not using its capacity. It’s being anesthetize, which means they’re not developing executive functioning skills.

Tami Calais: Well, and it’s interesting. So as a new mom, myself, like it’s so interesting how much I am constantly at a fight with myself between compliance and be behavior change with my child. Absolutely. Absolutely. Almost a two year old. He’s gaining more independence, but it’s funny how like quickly I [00:23:00] resort to. No, we’re just doing this.

Yes. Without, without, like you said, engaging as his executive functioning, which then creates a ton of resistance. Yes. Cause I’m just telling him what to do versus trying to create a little bit more one empathy. Yes. And relating to why he’s upset in that moment. Even though I think it’s so silly that he’s crying.

You know, to him, it’s a big deal that I took away a lollipop or whatever. Yeah. Or that we didn’t go out to the garage today, whatever it was . But then, then trying to navigate like, well, what do you wanna do about it? And that is a completely different way of communicating that we don’t naturally do.

Casey Jackson: Like, you know, what’s so fascinating, Tammy is we don’t naturally do it in our, in our culture.

And because I had this whole string of thoughts, as you were talking. Because of, we live in a culture about mass production and maximizing. Which means we never have enough time, which is delusional because if you go to a different indigenous [00:24:00] culture, that is where you see this depth of wisdom that’s passed on from generation to generation, because there is time.

There’s not this sense of, well, we gotta get to the store. We’ve gotta get here. We’ve gotta go pick up your dad. We’ve gotta go do this. You’ve gotta get to soccer. We’ve gotta do this. You’ve gotta do this. That that’s our culture. And so we as a team, I mean, all three of us have talked about fundamentally bandwidth.

We wanna do everything. We wanna do it, right. We wanna be involved in all these things. We wanna maximize our life experience and we wanna get it all done in an eight hour day and not be exhausted. It’s just math. The bandwidth doesn’t exist. And we get all of these shortcuts to having to think and use our own executive functioning.

So we turn on the news and we have other people tell us how to live our lives. And we turn on social media and have other people tell us how to live our lives because we don’t have the bandwidth to think for ourselves. So it just, it feeds itself. If you don’t get back to what the core, that’s why I go back to an indigenous perspective is, oh my gosh, there’s all the time until I die to teach this lesson to my son, um, you know, every day it’s something that we think about.

And because it’s not, we don’t [00:25:00] have to get to soccer practice, you know, and then don’t have to get their homework done and they don’t have a, you know, a. The birthday party that they’re getting to. And, you know, it’s just all these chronic pressures socially that we have in our mainstream American culture.

And I’m gonna try to find some way to bring this back into how to navigate resistance.

John Gilbert: No, no, no. I got, I was thinking to this, I’ll do that brain soapbox. All of a sudden I can climb up there and just. Preach preach, preach. no Casey where my brain was going. That connects is just something that was talking about earlier, as you brought up the, indigenous populations and culture, um, around that more importantly, the culture and how critical it is to pay attention to culture and, um, equal opportunity and things like this and how the, the situations in which we’re raised really shape a lot of things. We know this is different therapy or cultural socio, um, uh, what am I looking for when, uh, [00:26:00] economic psychology in groups? Oh, sociology. Yeah, all sorts, all sorts of things that, you know, situational will shape how we think or act given the container we’re in.

And I just really wanted to give voice to that because culture and, you know, Daniel conman and all these people will point to, we think our character would act in one way, but when you control for all these variables through behavioral economics and all these studies. Our container we’re in our culture, how we’re influenced by our parents.

All these things seem to really matter to influence our belief systems and then the things that we end up doing. And so I wanted to give voice to that because you had mentioned what’s that perception of time and immediate compliance, growing up in a culture like that is going to have a default sense of either.

You know, immediate fight or flight, like you were thinking, uh, or mentioning earlier, or a sense of there’s time. Like you were just getting out with your son, you know, like, what is that default [00:27:00] sense? Is there a sense with this discord, this lack of harmony that we’re experiencing this resistance we’re experiencing, to what degree is there?

This sense of embrace over time for long term change of that. And what degree is we need the short term change immediately. And that seems to be a really important default, regardless of, is it through the power of compliance and getting them to do it? Is it through the power of love and acceptance? If we don’t feel we have the bandwidth or we.

Have more of that culture of immediacy, like you were talking about immediacy. Yes. Then we’re gonna just go to that, even if we believe in this love thing, right? Yes. I just don’t have the time for this love thing. Right? Yeah. Uh, so it’s just a really, really important point and not all families have the same, uh, opportunity.

There’s a lot of adverse childhood experiences and a lot of right disenfranchised groups that unfortunately. Create that impaired executive functioning that make it harder to have equal opportunity to do that. Uh, so I just think that’s really important to give voice to is [00:28:00] culture and container shaping.

Absolutely how immediate that is.

Tami Calais: And I just wanna say that really resonated with me, cuz again, I, I go back to, I literally deal with this every day, trying to reduce resistance with a toddler. And every single day, it tends to be that culture of “rushed-ness”. And like, I’m trying to get places. I’m trying to do things I need to get X, Y, Z done.

So I need you to do X, Y, Z. Like you said, John, I tried to write it down, but we don’t have time. Oftentimes I don’t feel like I have time to work towards behavior change because I need compliance in that moment for my timeframe. Mm. And I think that’s really important to recognize, because I think a lot of us, I think of leaders, I think of business people, I think of parents, I think of, law enforcement, any of the people that work serving and communicating with people, you often feel like you don’t have enough time to work towards behavior change.

You don’t have [00:29:00] enough time to be empathetic to put yourself in your shoes to get the guard down. So you can really talk about behavior change and what they’re ultimately looking for. Cause ultimately my toddler, my toddler is not trying to upset me. My toddler is not trying to be difficult. My toddler is not doing any of these things, but it’s my communication method that’s causing it.

And so again, I am not trying to get my toddler to do what I wanna do, but I am trying to get them to communicate clearly to me. What is it they really want.

Casey Jackson: Well, and there’s two things that I think of that just hit me so hard is we can’t, you have to put it in the context of understanding the righting reflex.

Because when I think about, you know, you see your son has climbed into the candy drawer, you know, eight in the morning and your righting reflex is triggered by. Eight of those different behaviors, just because like, what are you doing up this early? What are you doing in there? Why haven’t you, it’s just, there’s so many [00:30:00] righting reflexes, which is going to generate resistance.

And so it’s not just the righting reflex side of it. It’s also this sense. Like we keep talking about the time or the urgency around it as well, too, our perception of what we’re doing as well. I think of those parenting moments, Tammy. I think it’s not only that, it’s what my perception of my own parenting is and what good parenting is.

My perception is if somebody else could see me. In my parenting in this moment and all the narratives that you have around that as well too, or your, your perspectives as a spouse or your perspectives as a boss or your perspectives as a law enforcement perspective, as a doctor, a teacher, it just doesn’t matter.

It’s, what’s, what’s your perception, how other people perceive you, which can generate a lot of resistance to what’s the right thing I should be doing. I mean, and then you get into these whole, how do we navigate that level of resistance? It’s that, that, that deep breath and it’s. Just passive acceptance. I think this ties all the way back to me, what you had said, Tammy, about helping people get to that [00:31:00] place of informed choice so they can just breathe.

But then it just is gonna come down to how attached I am to their outcome, because if I can just take a breath and breathe and realize it, they really do have some choice here. And how attachment to this specific choice in this specific moment is really facinating. So ways that I think of kind of encapsulating, how do we navigate that?

Resistance has to do so much with our own righting reflex and our attachment to our perspective, our perspective about ourselves and how we are in this narrative with this person. How important is that? Um, or how much it is really about this other person, their own narrative around themselves. I mean, that right there is almost goes full circle from where we started from, you know, is it the rubber band or is it the two fists pushing together?

Where, where am I gonna put myself in this equation? Um, So do I need to reduce this resistance? Do I wanna reduce this resistance or do I wanna create a different experience? That’s that’s gonna come to a personal professional choice.

John Gilbert: Yeah, it seems to be that as we’re, we’re coming to the close of this one, [00:32:00] there is that, that personal, am I being reactive or responsive?

That those sorts of connotations, how mindful am I being in my response to this sense of tension, this sense of. And the, you know, we could relate that to emotional intelligence and other work that’s out there as well. Uh, we had alluded to empathy throughout, so I just wanted to point people to the podcast that we did on empathy, with the head of the social worker podcast.

That was a wonderful, um, Deep dive into empathy for some practical ways to potentially decrease resistance. If, anyone would like to listen to that. We didn’t get into lots of other ways than empathy, but we did talk about resistance from so many angles. It was so interesting. And I just wanted to summarize, like the sense of belief in time seemed to be kind of a, key indicator of what’s my response to resistance, my sense of belief in time with my culture. How intense is this situation with safety or not safety? And that sense of psychological safety seem to be really [00:33:00] important as well. What are healthy boundaries or what is my actual boundary here of safety?

And those seem to be two underlying fundamental things we talked about that will shape, how reactive or how re responsive we are, um, with compliance or trying to decrease resistance.

Casey Jackson: The one thing I think about John, as you’re talking about that, is it just, it, it just keeps popping into my brain. These are things that if people really are interested in any of these concepts, our intro class covers these things.

It’s not even about Motivational Interviewing per se. I think it’s startling to some people who take the training, even people at higher risk for these trainings. I think they’re almost startled a bit that it’s not so much teaching technique. It’s teaching these constructs because for me, context matters so much.

Um, and so I just think if any of these concepts are intriguing, the righting reflex, equipoise, dealing with resistance. I mean, that, that , that is so much just what our intro class is about is for people to understand these dynamics. Because the dynamics are almost more important than the technique behind it.

Mm-hmm . And [00:34:00] so if there, if you are curious about any of this stuff, I mean, that I’d point people in either more of our podcasts around some of these concepts or, um, some of those MI minutes, but honestly that I, I would just send people back to the intro class and just say, really look at context, because there’s so much, what we teach is about context, about behavior change in this resistance construct.

Yeah. The emotional side of approaching Motivational Interviewing versus the cognitive side. And there’s a lot we get into in the intro in that that a lot of people find more helpful than, um, potentially other Motivational Interviewing trainings they’ve been in. It’s been a lot of the feedback with that. It’s fun. It’s surprising that we can bring up a concept like resistance.

We talk about all the time and we can spend 30 minutes talking about it. So I just, I, it’s always fun for me that we get to do these topics that it’s just like, wow, I feel like I could do this topic 15 more times and we wouldn’t even repeat, you know, there’s just so much depth and breath to it. So I appreciate people listening to this.

John Gilbert: Well, with that, we, um, invite you to check out all the things we got, the intros, of course, uh, probably one of the best bang for bucks of what we talked about today.

There’s [00:35:00] the Motivational Interviewing minutes as well, if you’re interested in that, on, uh, our YouTube and you have that to, to look to, and, um, any other podcast we have, thank you so much for listening and hopefully this was worthwhile for your time and we’ll see you around for the next one later. Take care. Excellent. Thank you.

Tami Calais: Thank you for listening to the communication solution podcast.

As always, this podcast is all about you. So if you have questions, thoughts, topic, suggestions, ideas, please send them our way at casey@ifioc.com. That’s casey@ifioc.com for more resources, feel free to check outIFIOC.com. We also have a public Facebook group called motivational interviewing every day.

We have an amazing blog and we have lots of communication tips on our website. In addition to all these amazing resources we do offer online public courses on our website on motivational interviewing, and [00:36:00] effective communication strategies. Thanks for listening to the communication solution by I F I O C.