The Small Glimmer of Resistance
People don’t like it when you challenge their paradigm. Their worldview. They cling to it because it feels safe, familiar, proven—even if that paradigm is causing them suffering. Sometimes I’ll say something in a session and, just for a flicker of a second, I catch the look in someone’s eyes. A small, sharp glimmer of “fuck you.”
And honestly, I get it. I wouldn’t want someone to challenge my paradigm either. I’ve had those same moments—my own eyes flashing with that quiet, involuntary resistance when someone dared to tug at the threads of how I saw myself, or the world. The paradigm we hold is not just an idea; it’s a scaffolding for our identity. To disrupt it can feel like an attack.
But this, I’ve come to realize, is part of the work. Actually, it’s the heart of it.
We humans have a way of getting caught in our own loops—our private mythology, our familiar suffering. We start confusing what is known with what is true. And in that rigidity, in that inability to imagine other versions of ourselves or other ways of living, we often find the root of our suffering. The paradigm becomes a prison cell, and though the door may not even be locked, it feels impossible to leave.
So when I push, when I disrupt, when I offer an alternative way of seeing—it’s not cruelty. It’s a kind of love. A disruptive love. It’s standing in the discomfort with someone long enough for them to see that maybe the walls aren’t as solid as they thought.
And yet I know the risk. I know the moment when someone looks at me as if I’ve just betrayed them by suggesting the ground beneath their feet might not be as firm as they believed. Sometimes I leave a session and wonder if I pushed too hard. If I should have let the paradigm be. If safety, even when it is illusion, was kinder than rupture.
But then I remember my own life.
The moments when someone challenged me, and I low-key disliked them for it, and then—weeks or months later—I realized they had given me a gift. The gift of possibility. The gift of imagining that my reality was not the only one available to me. Don’t be fooled into thinking that because I’m a therapist, I’m somehow better at this than you. I’m not. I still get that same “fuck you” glimmer from time to time too. Because I too am not immune to resistance, or to clinging to my own cherished illusions. Oh how I love my illusions and delusions.
That’s what I want for my patients. Not to strip away what makes them feel safe, but to help them notice that safety and freedom aren’t always the same thing.
And maybe, just maybe, the “fuck you” look in their eyes is the beginning of something important. A small rebellion against the old paradigm. A crack in the walls of their prison. A place where the light can start to come in.
More than anything, I’m not claiming that the paradigms I offer are “right.” They’re simply different. Only you can decide what is true and right for your life. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t take the risk to push, to add another layer, to disrupt the “perfectly painted canvas” you’ve constructed. And yes—sometimes I get it wrong.
At the end of the day, this is your life, not mine. I don’t mean that with indifference, but with respect. What you accept or reject isn’t for me to decide. My role is to stay focused on what you bring forward as your struggle, and to help you wrestle with it honestly. And sometimes, you may change your mind. Sometimes you’ll decide that what once felt like a problem doesn’t need to be solved after all.
