When Joe speaks directly to a person’s resistance—asking it, rather than the person, what it’s protecting—what surfaces is not stubbornness but feeling. In this session, the resistance to asking for what he wants turns out to be guarding sadness. Specifically, the fear of being seen as sad, and beneath that, the fear of rejection.
“What is it that you’re resisting? … sadness. … And what makes you resist it? Not wanting to be seen as sad.”
The resistance isn’t the problem to be eliminated; it’s a doorway. Joe doesn’t ask the man to stop resisting—“Feel free to resist all you like”—because the point is to follow the resistance down to the emotion it’s holding. The block on asking for what you want is rarely about the ask itself. It’s about an emotion you’ve decided isn’t safe to feel or to be seen feeling.
Once the sadness is acknowledged rather than resisted, the deeper pattern of self-rejection becomes visible, and the energy underneath—ambition—can finally move.
Related Concepts
- Rejecting yourself first is a strategy to never get rejected
- Welcoming yourself dissolves the need to reject
- Asking for what you want dissolves resentment
- Resisting an emotion creates the very outcome you fear
- Ambition survives beneath the resistance, waiting to be set free
- The pressure-resist cycle is a game to avoid feeling sadness
- Trying to feel your feelings is as much resistance as trying not to feel them