Magazine “Praxis” · Reading time approx. 7 min

Some clients refuse to answer, fall silent, relativize, or withdraw inwardly from the room. What lies behind this — and how can one work with it productively?

Resistance as Information, Not as Disruption

You ask a question about the grandmother, and the person across from you looks at the floor. You ask about the father, and the client replies: “That's all a long time ago, it doesn't matter anymore.” You draw in a relationship line, and the client corrects you so forcefully that the genogram sits untouched for ten minutes.

This is resistance — and it is not a malfunction of the counseling process. It is a signal from the system.

The systemic stance that McGoldrick and Gerson already articulated in their standard work from 1985 applies here directly: the family system regulates itself. What appears as a blockage is often a protective function that has been tested over decades. Counselors who ignore resistance or try to “work through” it risk exactly that: activating the protective function instead of understanding it.

So the first step in dealing with resistance is not technique — it is stance. Resistance is allowed to exist. It is not fought, it is observed.

Three Forms of Resistance in the Genogram

1. Content-Based Resistance

Clients withhold information about certain people or topics. Common phrases: “I don't want to talk about my father,” “I don't know,” “That's not important.”

This form is the most direct — and often the easiest to navigate. It indicates that a topic exists but is not yet accessible. As the counselor, you note the blank space visibly in the genogram: a symbol without a name, a question mark. The absence becomes a visible part of the picture.

A possible response: “All right. We'll leave that open — maybe it will come up later.” The signal: you are not forcing anything. The topic is still present in the room because it is in the genogram.

2. Process-Based Resistance

Here the client is not refusing a content, but the method itself. “I find all this very abstract,” “Why do we have to draw this?”, “I don't see what this is supposed to achieve.”

This is less rare than assumed. Especially clients who come into counseling through authorities or institutions — rather than on their own initiative — sometimes experience the genogram as an instrument of control. Counselors should take this seriously.

Transparency helps here: “The genogram is not a report that goes anywhere. It belongs to us, here in this room.” And sometimes it helps to negotiate the method: “Do we have to draw it? Or can I just listen while you tell me?”

3. Relational Resistance

The third form is the subtlest. The client answers every question, but the genogram develops no depth. Names, dates, relationship lines — yes. But no emotions, no weighting, no living story behind them.

This is not indifference. It is distancing — a well-tested protective mechanism. These clients have often learned that emotional presence is dangerous. The genogram gets filled in correctly, but inwardly the person remains uninvolved.

How to Work with Resistance

Do not fight the resistance. The reflex to ask the next question after a silence is understandable — but counterproductive. A silence is allowed to remain silence. Often something arises exactly there, if you can hold it.

Name the resistance without judging it. “I notice that we keep slowing down around your father. That's fine — I don't want to skip over it; when you're ready, I'll come back to it.” This phrasing takes the pressure off without dropping the topic.

Work with the resistance, not around it. If a client says the genogram feels too abstract to her, you can address exactly that: “What kind of representation would feel more fitting to you?” Sometimes this question leads to a surprisingly good opening.

Look for the resource side. Resistance often indicates where the energy is. When someone blocks around a particular family member, that is a sign of significance. Counselors can redirect the energy: “I notice your aunt is a difficult topic. Is there someone in the family you'd enjoy talking about?”

Explicitly permit not answering. An underestimated tool: “You don't have to talk about that.” Paradoxically, permission often opens up more than further questioning.

Case Vignette

A client, in her early fifties, had come into counseling on her daughter's recommendation. In the first session, the genogram was begun — three generations, a large family, many siblings. When the counselor asked about the brother who had died young, whom the client herself had known as a child, she said: “Let's leave him out.”

No hesitation, no pause — an immediate, almost mechanical boundary.

The counselor noted the brother's symbol with a cross, entered no date, and said nothing further. The genogram continued, and the brother remained visibly blank.

In the third session — without the topic having been raised again — the client began on her own: “The brother we left out... I think I'd actually like to talk about him now.”

In retrospect, leaving it blank was the decisive move. The client knew that the brother was in the genogram. The symbol waited. It just needed time.

What to Avoid

Treating resistance as a compliance problem. Counselors who insist that the genogram must be “complete” turn the method into an end in itself. The genogram is a means, not an end.

Indirect attempts at persuasion. “If we don't discuss this, we can't really help you” — sentences like this create pressure and damage the working relationship. They are rarely helpful and often counterproductive.

Interpreting too soon. When someone blocks on a topic, the first interpretation is not automatically the right one. “The father is a difficult topic because...” — counselors should not say this sentence before the client has offered it herself.

Taking the resistance personally. Clients who block are not blocking the counselor as a person — they are protecting something within themselves. This distinction sounds self-evident, but in practice it is not always so.

Shifting too early into interpretive conversation. Some counselors respond to resistance by shifting levels: from gathering information to reflecting on the resistance itself. This can be useful — but applied too early, it reinforces the client's feeling of being under observation.

Resistance as a Compass

If, by the end of a session, certain areas of the genogram remain conspicuously empty — if certain names were never mentioned, certain relationships never entered — that is not a defeat. It is a pointer for the next session.

McGoldrick describes genogram work not as a one-time act of data collection, but as an ongoing conversation with a changing picture. Resistance shifts this conversation. It slows it down. But it does not end it — if counselors bring the patience to hold it.

The experienced practitioner does not recognize resistance as a blockage to be overcome. She recognizes it for what it is: the system revealing itself.

Further Reading