How to engage people who don’t want to work with you

This article focusses on a practical approach to engaging people who don’t like or don’t trust therapy, therapists, or the institutions therapists represent. The approach is significantly different to contemporary approaches designed to engage and work with voluntary clients. The approach was developed in Australia specifically to engage clients who are pressured in some way to attend therapy. The author makes the point that most models of therapy are designed by professionals who love therapy for clients who love, or at least are willing to explore the potential of therapy. Clients who don’t love therapy and don’t trust therapists or the institutions they represent, and who therefore are uncooperative, polite but disengaged, or actively rebellious, are often pathologized or simply seen as terrible clients. The No Bullshit Therapy approach is a simple but not simplistic model of engagement that is specifically designed to engage hard to engage clients by meeting them where they are at, accepting that they don’t want to work with you, don’t trust you and hence don’t want to cooperate, collaborate or change. No Bullshit Therapy is very different from traditional approaches to therapy because involuntary clients approach therapy very differently to voluntary clients. Voluntary clients typically choose their therapist, and have some capacity to sack their therapist, involuntary clients do not. The term bullshit has a particular resonance in the Australian culture and parlance, which enhances its effectiveness, and the terminology may need to be adapted to suit different cultures and workplace contexts, but the underlying concepts are universal.

Keywords: Reluctant Clients, Overcoming Resistance, Therapy Haters, Mutual Honesty, Overcoming Barriers to Change, Avoiding Obfuscation.

Jeff Young, How to engage people who don’t want to work with you in "RIVISTA SPERIMENTALE DI FRENIATRIA" 2/2026, pp 141-160, DOI: 10.3280/RSF2026-002009