Throughout the session the man keeps responding with a version of “I don’t get the question, I’m trying to understand, I’m confused.” It reads as honest bewilderment. Joe reframes it: the confusion isn’t a failure to comprehend, it’s resistance wearing the mask of confusion.
“In your mind you think it’s confusion but there’s a resistance to something happening in your system. What are you resisting?”
The “trying” is part of the same pattern. The man tried with the marketing, too—and Joe points out that the trying itself is a way of staying stuck, a performance of effort that keeps the real movement from happening. The confusion (“I’m focused, I’m trying to get it, but I don’t get it”) shows up identically with the marketing, with Joe, and with his life.
Naming confusion as resistance is what lets the man stop chasing an intellectual answer and notice what he’s actually pushing away—being helped, being loved, being seen.
Related Concepts
- Simultaneously wanting and refusing help creates stagnation
- The stuckness you came to solve is happening right now in the room
- Catastrophizing is helplessness stuck in the head
- Resisting help replays the relationship with your father
- Liminal space is where breakthroughs happen
- Intensifying a feeling moves you through it rather than trapping you