What's Your Resistance?

“What’s in the way of you doing your homework?”

Jeff asked me this one night at the est office.

I was 10 years old. Let’s say Jeff was 32. He was the boyfriend of Wendy Grant (not her real name), the head of the Boston est office. Jeff (maybe his real name) looked a lot like Richard Dean Anderson, who at the time was playing Jeff Webber on General Hospital.

On this night, as on every night, the est office was abuzz with a lively assemblage of assistants — unpaid workers — busily demonstrating their commitment to the work. The enrollment assistants erupted in cheers from the phone banks every few minutes, thrilling with each fresh training registration. A huddle of communications assistants whispered urgently as they flipped through enrollment cards. A pair of logistics assistants sat cross-legged on the floor, bundling participant name tags and crisp stacks of slim, paper-bound workbooks. A sprinkling of others spaced themselves about the office diligently doing the work of Werner, one perfectly executed menial task at a time.

I was in the middle of the office at a collapsible work table, yawning in the bright fluorescence on a school night, staring at a piece of paper.

Jeff saw an opportunity.

“What’s in the way of you doing your homework?”

“I just don’t wanna do it,” I told Jeff.

“What’s your resistance?”

“I don’t know.”

“What would it be if you did know?”

“I don’t really know.”

“If you did know, what would it be?”

“I just don’t want to do it.”

“What’s your resistance to your homework?”

“I don’t know.”

This went on for a while.

A WHILE.

Jeff’s sweaty adult face in my face — his eyes wide with intention, his “est stare” like a spotlight. est people always got so close you could smell their breath and see the flaked skin of their chapped lips.

But this was also what I loved about est people — they were right there with you. est people didn’t make small talk. They came for the truth. They insisted on connection. They asked you serious questions and then listened like your answer could change the world.

But one whiff of what they took to be your resistance, and the conversation would kick up a notch — or ten. The questions would come faster, harder, more pointed. That was the work of est: to probe. To get you in touch with what’s holding you back. Because something is always holding you back. You are always resisting something. And when you finally let go of that resistance — that’s when you have a breakthrough.

And a breakthrough, no matter how seemingly small, was worth dropping almost anything else for. To assist someone in having a breakthrough was to do Werner’s work. This went for everyone. Jeff believed the est belief that kids were young people, and young people required breakthroughs just like other people.

That's why it was so important to Jeff to help me get past my resistance.

But — what exactly is resistance?

The word resistance, in est, had a special meaning. When you said you didn’t want to do a seminar, you were told it was because of your resistance. When you said you didn’t want to sign up for an assisting assignment, you were told it was because of your resistance. When you said you didn’t want to do something that someone else was suggesting for you — and honestly it could be anything (it could be that you kept forgetting to turn off the kitchen light, it could be that you didn’t want to get a haircut) — you were told it was because of your resistance.

You were told this by a fellow est person while doing a paired share during a graduate seminar, or while lining up chairs together during an assisting assignment, or while drinking together at the Halloween bash at the rooftop ballroom of the Parker House, or while sitting as a ten-year-old in the est office on a school night, or while dancing to "Ring My Bell" at the GSLP graduation party (don’t ask — basically another graduate seminar, but a reeeeaaallly special one), or just while hanging out at home, because often, your fellow est people were also your family members or roommates.

The term resistance has roots in psychoanalytic theory. In 20th-century psychotherapy, resistance came to describe a client’s conscious or unconscious opposition to the therapeutic process. Resistance in the therapeutic context meant resistance to treatment — resistance to something that was understood to be good for you.

And this was how est used the word. But instead of treatment being the thing that’s good for you that you’re resisting, anything can be the thing that’s good for you that you’re resisting.

So what would normally be described as exercising choice, free will, or autonomy was now labeled “resistance” and reframed as a personal failure. Choosing for yourself wasn’t seen as a legitimate decision — it was seen as a mistake.

Why does this matter?

Because you’re more likely to comply when you’ve been taught that your own thoughts and desires are flawed.

This distortion of the therapeutic meaning of “resistance” turned compliance into a virtue, while skepticism, personal preference, or even doubt became problems to be fixed. All of this served to discourage critical reflection, undermine autonomy, and reinforce the authority of the group and its leaders.

And then you’re conditioned so thoroughly, no one needs to ask what your resistance is — you’ve been trained to ask yourself. So as a teenager, for example, you might find an inner monologue like this playing on repeat in the background of your day: “I’d rather stay home than go to Megan’s birthday party — what’s my resistance?” “I don’t think I want to join the drama club this year — what’s my resistance?” “I don’t want to call Anthony back tonight — what’s my resistance?”

This inner monologue follows you. Maybe in your twenties, and beyond, you find yourself still questioning your own thoughts, feelings, concerns, and preferences. And maybe at some point you notice that when you override yourself that often, you end up agreeing to things you don’t want. Things you have no business saying yes to.

And you use your intelligence not to distinguish that est has redefined the word “resistant” to make you think that your legitimate thoughts, feelings, and choices are wrong — instead, you use your intelligence to contort and twist reality to fit the philosophy you were trained in.

You were trained in this philosophy by some people who knew they were training you in it, and by some people who didn’t know they were training you in it. I don’t think Jeff knew that this redefinition of the word “resistance” was a way of relocating my sense of agency — moving the locus of control from within me to wherever the group pointed. I don’t think my mother, or her boyfriend, or her new best friend knew that this redefinition of the word “resistance” was training me to mistrust my own thoughts and feelings — to see them not as valid signals, but as problems to fix, as obstacles to break through. But I do think the head of the whole organization knew what he was doing, and I do believe those who worked most closely with him in the organization knew what they were doing. That’s my opinion.

“What’s your resistance to your homework?” I was an exceptionally reliable est soldier — I fed on the jargon and prided myself on knowing my lines. I knew I was supposed to dig deep, find my resistance, and bring it up for examination in this conversation with Jeff.

Something like: “I don’t get why we have to do homework.” Or, “I don’t like being told what to do.” Or, “I’m mad at my teacher.” Any of these would have been a strong choice.

Your est interlocutor would then pose more questions.
Why are you mad at your teacher?
You might answer: “She made me feel stupid.”
Did she really make you feel stupid, or was that just your interpretation of what she said?
And on and on until you take responsibility for making yourself feel stupid and see that your teacher is not capable of causing you to feel any way at all.

When you take responsibility for causing your own feelings — that’s the breakthrough. That’s the release of your resistance. And then you do your homework. Or sign up for the seminar. Or do the dishes. Or get the haircut.

But something was different in me on this night.
Just this once, I didn’t follow the rules.
By the time I noticed the dried saliva in the corners of Jeff’s mouth, I was already uncomfortable with how much time he’d committed to this fool’s errand. I had let him walk himself down a garden path.
I had no intention of doing my homework while I sat in the office talking to Jeff.

Because, honestly, I wasn’t a young person.
I was a kid.
And kids don’t like doing homework.

A spontaneous group cheer from the enrollment assistants at the phones broke our entrainment — this time with whoops and whistles, and someone banged rhythmically on a desk, punctuating the triumph. All eyes and ears turned to the phone bank, busy hands across the office came to a stop.

Wendy Grant strutted from her private office and announced, “I want to acknowledge the enrollment team — they just exceeded our target numbers for the May training! Let’s acknowledge their commitment!”

(Question from the future: How many resistant people on the other ends of those phone lines did the enrollment team have to pressure, wear down, or break until their quota was met?)

I clapped. The big paper thermometer on the wall showed the red line victoriously past the goal. Their success buzzed in the air.

An assistant from across the room stood on a table. Someone else twirled a noisemaker. Another someone whooped an inventive cheer. So much individuality and uniqueness on display — another reason I loved est people — yet all while cheering for group adherence.

Jeff hopped up to be by Wendy’s side. As First Man of the est office, Jeff had duties.

I went back to drawing my name in 3D box letters and yawning in the antiseptic lighting. My homework untouched. And me without a breakthrough.

But then Jeff came back. He took his place right across from my homework and me as if there had been no interruption. Getting to the bottom of my homework resistance was just as important as acknowledging the enrollment targets. My small breakthrough — though only a possibility at this point — held just as much weight.

I don’t remember exactly how the night ended.

I don’t even remember where my mother had been that night. Maybe she had been downstairs in the assistant resources room organizing inventory or shredding outdated training applications. Which had to be destroyed after each month’s training as they contained very personal answers — pages where people had written about the worst thing that had ever happened to them, or the lie they were living, or the moment they’d stopped trusting anyone. No, I would have been beside my mother in that case. I loved that shredder. It was almost as tall as I was, and it was built like a tank — it felt somehow prehistoric and industrial all at once. I had never seen one anywhere else, and I never tired of its powers. Everything about it was satisfying — the low buzz of the motor, the crinkle of the paper in the sharp, metal teeth, the decisive pull as the machine took over. The destruction was complete and deliberate, pages consumed, vanishing with a final crunch. Resistance was futile.

So no, that wasn’t what my mother was doing that night. By then, she was further up the chain. She was probably in another room running a logistics meeting for an upcoming graduate seminar.

At some point she reappeared in the office and relieved Jeff. Maybe she joked with him: “I see you’ve found a new assisting assignment.”

Maybe she smoothed my hair without thinking. Or picked up the pencil I had dropped.

Maybe she pulled up a chair beside me and made a few last notes in her binder while I leaned on her shoulder.

Maybe she gave the logistics meeting report to Wendy Grant before we left.

Maybe I did my homework in five minutes while my mother got her things together and said her goodbyes.