Troubleshooting Ordeals: What to Do When the Client Refuses the Task

The moment your client sits down and admits they did not complete the assigned ordeal, the real work of the strategic intervention begins. We do not view this as a failure of the practitioner or a failure of the client. We view this as the client communicating the exact price they are currently willing to pay for their symptom. When the client refuses the task, they provide you with a map of their resistance. You must receive this news with the same clinical neutrality you would use to observe a client’s pulse or their seating position. If you show disappointment, you hand the power of the session to the client’s resistance. If you show frustration, you validate the client’s belief that their problem is bigger than your expertise.

We understand that an ordeal must be more bothersome than the symptom it intends to cure. If the client refuses the task, the task was either too easy to ignore or it lacked a direct link to the symptomatic behavior. I once worked with a forty-two year old man who suffered from a compulsive need to check his front door lock exactly twenty-five times before leaving his house. I instructed him that every time he felt the urge to check the lock more than once, he had to go to his basement and sort a large bucket of mixed brass and steel screws into two separate containers for exactly one hour. He returned the following week and stated that he had simply decided not to do it. He still checked the door, but the screws remained in the bucket.

You do not ask the client why they did not perform the task. We avoid the search for causes because the search for causes gives the symptom more time to exist. Instead, you investigate the mechanics of the refusal. I asked this man what he was doing at the moment he decided to skip the ordeal. He told me he was running late for work and felt the basement was too far away to travel in his suit. This is a specific mechanical obstacle. You accept this explanation immediately. You then use this detail to tighten the ordeal. I told him he was right to avoid the basement in his suit. I then instructed him to keep the bucket of screws in his car on the front passenger seat. Every time he checked the lock more than once, he had to pull his car over to the side of the road and sort the screws for ninety minutes before continuing his drive. The ordeal now moved with him. It removed the excuse of location and increased the time penalty.

We know that a client will often test the practitioner’s resolve by refusing the first ordeal. This is a struggle for hierarchy in the room. If you allow the refusal to pass without a consequence or a modification, the client learns that your directives are optional suggestions. You must treat your own directives as if they are the only possible solution to the client’s distress. When a client tells you the task was too difficult, you should agree with them. You might say that perhaps you overestimated their desire to be rid of the problem. This is a direct challenge to the client’s position. We use this move to provoke the client into a state of defiance. If the client is defiant toward the practitioner, they are often willing to complete a more difficult task just to prove the practitioner wrong.

I worked with a couple who had spent years engaging in loud, destructive arguments at two in the morning. I instructed them that the next time an argument began, they had to stop immediately, go into their bathroom, and stand together in the empty bathtub while wearing their coats and hats. They were to stay there in complete stillness for one hour before they could finish their conversation. They returned to the next session and told me they thought the idea was ridiculous and they had no intention of standing in a bathtub. We do not argue with this assessment. I told them I agreed that the bathtub was perhaps too small for their big problems. I then modified the directive. I told them that because the bathtub was insufficient, they must instead walk to the nearest park and sit on a bench in the cold for two hours every time they raised their voices. They found the bathtub ordeal much more attractive after hearing the alternative.

You must remain focused on the function of the symptom. If the symptom provides the client with an excuse to avoid a difficult life task, the ordeal must make the symptom even more difficult than the task they are avoiding. We observe the client’s reaction to the modification. If the client’s eyes widen or if they begin to negotiate for the original task, you have found the correct level of pressure. You must never negotiate down. You only negotiate up. If the client asks to do thirty minutes of the task instead of sixty, you inform them that the problem has grown since the last session and now requires ninety minutes. This maintains the practitioner’s position at the top of the hierarchy.

I once worked with a woman who complained of chronic insomnia. She used her wakefulness to watch television and eat snacks. I told her that if she was not asleep by twelve thirty in the morning, she had to get out of bed and polish all the silver in her dining room until three in the morning. She came back and told me she stayed in bed and watched television anyway because she did not feel like polishing silver. We recognize this as the client attempting to maintain the benefits of the symptom without the cost of the ordeal. You must respond by making the bedroom less comfortable. I told her that since she preferred the television, she could continue to watch it, but she had to do so while standing on one foot and holding a heavy dictionary in each hand. If she put a foot down or dropped a book, she had to start her silver polishing immediately.

We do not provide these directives to be cruel. We provide them because the client is trapped in a repetitive cycle that they cannot break with logic or willpower. The ordeal creates a new cycle where the symptom has a high price. You are looking for the point where the client decides that the symptom is no longer worth the effort. When you reach that point, the symptom often disappears suddenly. You might observe a client who has been depressed for years suddenly find the energy to clean their entire house just to avoid the ordeal you have set for them. We call this a successful outcome. The client is no longer behaving like a depressed person because the cost of behaving like a depressed person has become too high.

You must watch for the client who tries to turn the ordeal into a joke. If the client laughs while describing why they did not do the task, you must remain grave. You might ask them what is funny about their continued suffering. This brings the focus back to the reality of their distress. We do not join the client in their humor because the humor is a defense against the change we are trying to provoke. I once had a client who laughed about not doing his exercise ordeal. I sat in a long pause and then asked him how much more of his life he was prepared to waste before he took his own health seriously. The laughter stopped. You use the client’s refusal to highlight the stakes of the work. Every refused task is an opportunity to increase the intensity of the intervention. We never let a refusal go to waste. You use the client’s own excuses as the building blocks for the next, more difficult directive. The practitioner who can pivot after a refusal is the practitioner who stays in control of the change process. The client’s resistance is not a wall. The resistance is the fuel for the next move in the session. You must observe the client’s hands as you deliver the new directive to see if they grip the chair or clench their fists. These physical signs tell you that the new ordeal has reached the necessary level of influence.

When you see the client’s physical markers of resistance, such as the white-knuckle grip on the chair or the stiffened spine, you have confirmation that your ordeal has touched the nerve of the problem. If the client follows these physical cues with a verbal refusal to perform the task, you must not respond with a defense of your instruction. We know that any attempt to justify the task or explain its psychological utility only serves to lower your status in the clinical hierarchy. Instead, you accept the refusal as a diagnostic statement regarding the client’s current capacity. You treat the refusal as a useful piece of information that dictates the next stage of the ordeal. I once worked with a man who suffered from a hand-washing compulsion that occupied four hours of his daily life. I directed him to wash his car by hand, without gloves, every time he felt the urge to scrub his skin at the sink for more than one minute. He looked at me, his face turning a dark shade of red, and told me that he would not do it because his car was already clean. I did not try to convince him that a clean car was less important than his recovery from a compulsion. I simply told him that if the car was too clean to wash, he must instead polish the silverware in his kitchen for one hour for every minute he spent at the bathroom sink. By providing a second, more tedious option, you force the client to choose his own form of discomfort while keeping the focus on the price he pays for the symptom.

We often encounter the client who returns to the office and claims they simply forgot the instruction you gave them. You must treat this as a deliberate tactical move rather than a genuine memory lapse. When a client says they forgot to perform a middle of the night task, you respond with a systematic increase in the complexity of the task. I treated a woman who complained of chronic procrastination regarding her business taxes. I instructed her to set an alarm for four o’clock in the morning and spend thirty minutes alphabetizing her junk mail. She returned the following week and stated she had forgotten to set the alarm. I told her that because her memory had failed her, she clearly needed more practice in following a strict schedule. I instructed her to set the alarm for three o’clock and four o’clock in the morning. At three, she was to alphabetize the mail. At four, she was to sort her spice rack by expiration date. When you double the requirement in response to a lapse, you teach the client that forgetting is the most expensive mistake they can make in your office.

You must remain the one who defines the terms of the engagement at all times. If the client suggests a different task, you must reject it immediately, even if their suggestion seems like it might be useful. We know that if the client designs the ordeal, the ordeal will fail to produce change because it lacks the necessary element of being an external imposition. If a man with a public speaking phobia suggests he practice his speech in front of a bedroom mirror instead of standing on a park bench and reading the weather report to strangers as you instructed, you must tell him the mirror is insufficient. You might say that since he feels the mirror is a better tool, he must now do both: forty minutes in front of the mirror followed by twenty minutes on the park bench. You use his own suggestion to expand the burden of the ordeal rather than allowing him to negotiate it down.

We use the client’s refusal to build a sense of anticipation for the eventual change. If you have assigned a task and the client refuses, you can state that they are perhaps not yet strong enough to handle the relief the change would bring. I used this with a professional athlete who could not stop over-analyzing his performance during games. I told him to spend one hour every night recording his failures in a notebook while sitting in a cold garage. He refused, saying it was a waste of his time and would make him feel worse. I looked at him and said that I had overestimated his readiness to face his errors and that we should wait three weeks before trying any intervention at all. I told him he should keep his symptoms exactly as they were until our next meeting because change requires a level of stamina he had not yet shown. By making the symptom a requirement for the next twenty-one days, you turn his defiance against the symptom itself.

When a client refuses a task, you may also choose to involve the family members as observers of the ordeal. This increases the social cost of the symptom. I worked with a teenage boy who refused to attend school due to vague physical complaints. I instructed his parents to sit in his room with him all day while he was home from school, without a television or a phone, and to talk to him only about the history of their ancestors. The boy refused to participate and tried to leave the room. I told the parents that if he left the room, they were to follow him and continue the lecture wherever he went. You are not asking the parents to be angry. You are asking them to be tedious. When the social environment becomes more bothersome than the school environment, the boy will choose school. You must be specific about the content of the lecture to ensure it is sufficiently boring.

We find that some clients refuse the task because they believe they can outwait the practitioner. You counter this by remaining more patient than the client. If the client refuses to complete a task, you do not move on to a new topic. You spend the entire session discussing the details of the refusal. You ask how they managed to avoid the task, what they did instead, and how they felt while they were not doing it. I once spent an entire fifty-minute session asking a man about the specific brand of television show he watched instead of performing the exercise I had assigned. I asked about the characters, the plot, and the commercials. By the end of the hour, he realized that talking to me about his procrastination was more exhausting than simply doing the work. You make the refusal the most boring subject in the room.

If a client says the task is too difficult, you must agree with them and then make it slightly more difficult. This is the paradox of the ordeal. If a woman says she cannot wake up at five in the morning to scrub the bathtub because she is too tired, you should tell her she is right. You then explain that because she is so tired, she must wake up at four in the morning to allow herself more time to move slowly while she scrubs. You frame the increased difficulty as a concession to her fatigue. This forces the client to either admit she is capable of the original task or face an even more demanding requirement.

We observe that a refusal is often a test of the clinician’s conviction. If you show any sign of hesitation or if you offer an apology for the difficulty of the task, the client will use that gap to maintain their symptom. You must speak as though the completion of the task is the only logical outcome of the meeting. I once had a client tell me that my instruction to walk five miles in his business suit before work was insane. I did not blink or smile. I simply asked if he would prefer to do it before work or after work, as the morning air is usually cooler for a long walk. When you offer a choice between two versions of the same ordeal, you move the conversation from whether they will do it to when they will do it.

Your client’s refusal to follow the instruction provides you with the leverage to introduce a more restrictive directive. If the client refuses a minor ordeal, you are then clinically justified in prescribing a major ordeal. We view the first refusal as a necessary step in the client’s education about the nature of the change. You are teaching the client that every time they resist your influence, the cost of that resistance will go up. I worked with a couple who refused to stop their nightly arguments. I told them that for every argument they started, they had to go into the basement and stand together in the dark for thirty minutes. They returned and said they did not do it because the basement was too cold. I told them that because the basement was too cold, they must now hold a heavy dictionary between them using only their foreheads while they stood in the cold. The added physical strain made the original task of just standing in the dark seem like a luxury they had wasted.

The practitioner who fears a client’s anger will never successfully use an ordeal. You must be willing to be the person the client dislikes in the short term to be the person who helps them in the long term. If the client leaves the office angry because of a difficult task, we consider that a successful session. The anger is a form of energy that can be harnessed to complete the ordeal. I often tell clients that they are welcome to be as angry with me as they like, provided they express that anger by completing the task exactly as I have prescribed it. When the client completes the task to prove you wrong, the change still occurs. The motivation for completing the ordeal is less important than the fact that the ordeal was completed.

We use the final minutes of a session to reinforce the requirement without allowing time for a rebuttal. You deliver the final instruction as you are standing up to open the door. This prevents the client from starting a new round of negotiations. I once told a man who refused to stop his gambling habit that he had to give fifty dollars to a political cause he hated every time he entered a casino. I said this while walking him to the door and shaking his hand. I did not wait for his response. I told him I looked forward to hearing which cause he had supported when we met the following week. You close the session with the expectation of compliance. The client’s refusal to act is often a physical attempt to maintain the current power dynamic of the family.

Your client’s insistence that they tried to do the task but failed is a common form of refusal. You must distinguish between a genuine attempt and a half-hearted gesture designed to appease you. If a client says they tried to sit in a chair for an hour without moving but could only manage ten minutes, you do not praise the ten minutes. You tell them that the ten minutes do not count and that they must now start over with a ninety-minute requirement. We do not give credit for partial completion of an ordeal. An ordeal is a binary event: it is either finished or it is not. I treated a man with a cleaning ritual who said he tried to cut it down by half but found it too difficult. I told him that since cutting it by half was impossible, he must instead double the length of the ritual for three days to see if he could gain more control over the timing. When the ritual becomes a forced labor rather than a voluntary compulsion, the client will eventually seek to reduce it.

You can use the client’s own values against their refusal. If a client values their time, the ordeal must be a massive waste of time. If a client values their money, the ordeal must involve a financial cost. I once worked with a wealthy woman who refused to stop her habit of criticizing her daughter. I instructed her to write a check for one hundred dollars to a charity she despised every time she made a critical remark. She refused, saying it was her money to do with as she pleased. I told her that her refusal meant she valued her right to be critical more than she valued her money, and we would see how long that remained true as the daughter’s resentment grew. We define the refusal in terms of what the client is sacrificing.

A refusal is a signal that you have not yet made the symptom more painful than the task. You must continue to tighten the constraints until the client’s desire for relief outweighs their desire for stability. I once saw a man who would not stop checking his front door locks twenty times every night. I told him that for every time he checked the lock, he had to go out onto his front porch and do ten push-ups in his pajamas. He refused, claiming the neighbors would see him. I told him that if he was concerned about the neighbors, he must do the push-ups at three o’clock in the morning when the neighbors were asleep. He then realized that his choice was between the lock and the push-ups, and the push-ups were far more unpleasant than the uncertainty of the lock.

We anticipate that the client will use their symptom as a reason why they cannot do the ordeal. A depressed client will say they are too tired to go for a walk. An anxious client will say they are too scared to go to the store. You must incorporate the symptom into the ordeal. You tell the depressed client that they must go for the walk while focusing entirely on how tired they feel. You tell them to count every heavy step and to note the exact quality of their fatigue. When you make the symptom a part of the requirement, the client can no longer use it as an excuse for non-compliance. You are not asking them to feel better before they act; you are asking them to act while feeling exactly as they do. The physical movement of the client remains the most reliable indicator of a shift in the clinical power structure.

You observe the physical movement of the client as the most reliable indicator of a change in the clinical power structure. When a client moves their body in response to your instruction, they are acknowledging your authority even if their words continue to protest. We do not acknowledge this movement verbally because doing so would allow the client to bring the struggle into their conscious awareness where they can use logic to defeat it. Instead, you proceed as if their compliance is the only logical outcome of the conversation. If the client remains defiant after the physical change, we move to the Ordeal of Observation. This technique is for the client who claims they are unable to perform a physical task because of their symptom. You tell the client that since they cannot perform the task, they must instead become a researcher of their own misery.

I once worked with a man who suffered from a hand washing compulsion that consumed four hours of his day. He refused the ordeal of cleaning the basement floor because he said the dust would trigger more washing. I did not argue with his logic. I told him that his refusal indicated the symptom was much more complex than I had first realized. I told him that since he could not clean the floor, he must instead record every single thought that entered his mind for fifteen minutes before every wash. He had to write these thoughts in a notebook with a fountain pen to ensure he moved slowly. If he missed a single minute of recording, he had to restart the fifteen minute timer. This ordeal used the symptom as the trigger for a task that was more tedious than the washing itself.

We use the follow up session to solidify the new hierarchy. When the client returns and admits they did not complete the observation task, you do not express disappointment. You maintain a posture of polite curiosity. We treat the failure as a diagnostic sign that the ordeal was too easy and did not match the impressive strength of the client. You might say that since the fifteen minute recording was not enough to capture the depth of their problem, they must now record for thirty minutes. You are not punishing the client. You are adjusting the dosage of the intervention to match the severity of the case. By increasing the burden in response to a refusal, you make the act of refusing more expensive than the act of complying.

You must be prepared for the client who tries and fails. We distinguish between the client who refuses out of defiance and the client who uses failure as a weapon to prove the practitioner is incompetent. When a client tells you they tried to do the task but their anxiety was too high, you must praise their anxiety. You tell the client that their anxiety is a powerful force that is currently protecting them from change. You then assign an ordeal that requires them to use that anxiety. I worked with a woman who had a phobia of leaving her house. She refused the task of walking to the end of the block. She said her heart raced too fast. I instructed her to stand on her porch and intentionally make her heart race as fast as possible for ten minutes every hour. If she could not make her heart race, she had to stay on the porch until she succeeded. This task changed her relationship with the symptom from something that happened to her into something she had to produce on command.

We often incorporate the family into the ordeal when the client is part of a system that supports the symptom. If a child refuses to attend school and the parents are overprotective, you give the parents a task that makes the child staying at home an ordeal. You instruct the parents that if the child stays home, the child must stay in bed with no electronics and no books. The parents must check on the child every twenty minutes to offer a glass of lukewarm water and to ask about their health. This constant interruption makes the child’s day at home more annoying than a day at school. You are using the social environment to tilt the balance of convenience. The child will eventually choose the school over the lukewarm water and the constant questioning.

You watch for the moment the client realizes that the symptom has become more expensive than the task you set. This is a cold calculation on the part of the client. We do not appeal to their emotions or their desire for wellness. We appeal to their desire for convenience and their inherent dislike of boredom. I worked with a man who had a phobia of driving on highways. He refused the task of driving one mile and back each morning at four in the morning. He claimed he was too tired to wake up that early. I told him that his fatigue was a significant obstacle to his recovery. I then assigned him the task of sitting in his car in his garage for two hours every night at midnight. He was not allowed to have a radio or a phone. He was required to stare at the dashboard for the full two hours. If he fell asleep, he had to wake up and start the two hour period over again. Within three days, he decided that driving a mile at four in the morning was a much better use of his time.

As practitioners in the strategic tradition, we understand that the refusal is a test of who is in charge of the change. If you allow the client to dictate the terms of their recovery, you have lost the ability to help them. You must remain the expert who determines the price of the symptom. We use the follow up session to reestablish this hierarchy through the introduction of the modified ordeal. You do not show anger or any sign of frustration. You show a clinical interest in the persistence of the symptom and a renewed commitment to finding a more effective ordeal. This posture prevents the client from using their refusal as a way to engage you in a personal struggle.

We know the ordeal has finished its work when the client no longer brings up the symptom as the primary topic of conversation. You do not ask the client how the symptom is doing. If you ask about the symptom, you are suggesting to the client that the symptom still exists. We wait for the client to tell us about the changes in their life. When the man with the driving phobia started talking about a promotion at work that required travel to a different city, I knew the ordeal had succeeded. I did not ask him if he drove on the highway to get to the interview. I asked him what the new job responsibilities entailed. The absence of the symptom is the goal, but the presence of a functional life is the proof of the clinical success.

You must be careful not to end the ordeal too early. If the client completes the task once and the symptom vanishes, we do not stop. We instruct the client to continue the ordeal for another week to ensure the symptom does not return. This is the ordeal of prevention. You tell the client that the symptom is clever and might be hiding. By continuing the ordeal, they are making the environment too uncomfortable for the symptom to come back. We keep the pressure on until the client has demonstrated a consistent pattern of new behavior. The client who once refused the task will now perform it with diligence because they fear the return of the more difficult ordeal you would otherwise assign.

I worked with a woman who stopped her compulsive cleaning after two weeks of a very difficult writing ordeal. She asked if she could stop writing. I told her that she must continue writing for ten more days, but she could reduce the time by five minutes each day. This gradual withdrawal of the ordeal allows the client to feel a sense of relief while still maintaining the structure you have created. We use this period to observe any signs of relapse. If the client reports a single instance of the old behavior, you immediately return to the full duration of the original ordeal. This provides the client with a clear choice between the old behavior and the cost of the task.

We use the final sessions to frame the client’s success as a result of their own persistence in completing the ordeals. You tell the client that their ability to follow through on difficult tasks is what solved the problem. This leaves the client with a sense of their own competence while reinforcing the idea that change requires action. You are not a listener who provides insight. You are a director of behavior who provides the conditions for change. The client’s initial refusal was simply the first step in a sequence that led to their eventual compliance. Every refusal is a piece of data that you use to refine the next intervention. The practitioner who understands this dynamic never fears a client who says no. The refusal of a task is the beginning of the most effective part of the therapy. We wait for the client to declare their independence by functioning well in their own life. You observe the client standing up to leave the office with a posture that is different from the one they brought into the first session.