If you found yourself drawn to reading this blog post then you might of just experienced ‘counterwill’. Counterwill is a term first coined by Otto Rank, but made sense of by Dr Gordan Neufeld as the automatic and instinctual response to any form of coercion or control.
There is a good chance that you don’t know me personally and so just the fact that I told you to do something in the title automatically draws you into doing the opposite. This instinct is very much alive in our children and you probably first recognised it with the ‘No’s’ of a toddler. Once I asked my daughter if she wanted an apple and she replied ‘No, daddy. I want an APPLE’. This is a good example. The decision had to come from her.
It’s often misunderstood for defiance, or being disobedient, laziness or a lack of motivation. It can manifest itself in a variety of ways e.g. doing the opposite of what is expected. But in reality we have little control over it and when you do notice it in children and others, it’s important to work the relationship and not the behaviours.
It’s natural function is to protect the child from taking instruction from people that he is not attached to and therefore may not have his best interests at heart, so it has a perfectly good function. But if the attachment bond is not active or the child does not sense that they are in relationship with you at the time then counterwill is likely to kick in. And if you push it, it will just push back stronger, because children are very true to themselves.
As parents and teachers, it is important that we understand the dynamic of counterwill so that we are not fighting it and the first thing to do to understand something is to start by noticing it.
Where do you notice counterwill in your relationships?
If you’re interested in finding out more Dr Gordan Neufeld runs wonderful online course on counterwill here:
https://neufeldinstitute.org/course/making-sense-of-counterwill-2/
And if you’re looking to working the relationship with your children then one way to do that is to try Compassionate Inquiry to gain more awareness. If you’re interested in finding out more contact me at mail@joeatkinson.co.uk