3.75 CE Credits Available
Masterclass in Advanced Psychotherapy Skills, Vol 3: Working with Stuck Clients
by Orah Krug & Victor Yalom
We all have clients with whom we’ve worked for weeks, months, or even years who don’t make significant progress because they are stuck in rigid, and self-defeating defensive patterns that undermine personal growth and relational happiness. Learn through clinical demonstrations by Victor Yalom and Orah Krug how to draw awareness to and loosen the hold of these restrictive patterns so clients can live more fully and connectedly.
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Clients come to us in pain, seeking not just understanding, but meaningful change. And we often help many of them. However, some of these clients, despite faithful attendance in therapy and outward compliance, simply do not make progress. Instead, they cleave to defensive behaviors, rigid thinking, and distancing maneuvers in their relationships—or what are cumulatively called protective patterns. And paradoxically, while these patterns shield and protect clients, they also restrict growth and prevent change, leaving even the most experienced clinicians feeling stuck and frustrated in their efforts to help.

In this third and final volume of their Masterclass in Advanced Psychotherapy Skills, Victor Yalom and Orah Krug turn their attention to working with clients who are entrenched in their protective patterns of behavior, thinking, and relating. Through clinical demonstrations with real clients, you’ll see how focusing on the underlying protective patterns and narratives creates opportunities for new understanding and meaningful growth.

By experiencing real sesssions enhanced with commentaries and accompanying discussions, you’ll learn how to use the client’s own language to identify and address protective patterns in ways that cultivate collaboration, vulnerability and client agency. Yalom and Krug share powerful experiential techniques for confronting avoidance and resistance with empathy and curiosity, which fosters relational safety, invites inner exploration and reinforces change.    

What therapists are saying…

“This video provides a clear use of questions (for identifying protective patterns that lie beneath presenting problems), confrontation (for processing the paradox of protection and inclusion, not amputation), and supervision (for managing and preventing countertransference) to help us return to the heart of therapy: a systematic healing process that requires conscientious engagement from clinicians and clients.”
—Carlos Del Rio, Associate Professor, Grand Canyon University
“In this video, Yalom and Krug use a non-blaming and non-shaming framework to conceptualize and help clients who are stuck -- a topic that is often overlooked in training materials. These insightful discussions, demonstrations, and debriefings will illustrate this approach to therapists at all levels, from students to seasoned clinicians. I am excited to share this content with my students!”
—Kathleen McCleskey, PhD, Associate Professor of Counselor Education, Longwood University
“Masterclass in Advanced Therapy Skills, Volume 3 shows how the gentle exploration of protective patterns when working with stuck clients can guide them toward deeper insights. Dr. Yalom and Dr. Krug’s discussions between footage from real therapy sessions provide valuable guidance for advancing skills and creating a transformational therapeutic experience.”
—Denita Hudson, Clinical Associate Professor and Department Chair, The College of William & Mary
“Working with Stuck Clients will be beneficial to therapists, clients, and students as it explores the concept of protection patterns from the patient's perspective, highlighting their feelings and experiences. The common therapeutic addressed in this video was a client's issue of "worthiness." As demonstrated, everyone's personal issues are relevant enough to discuss in therapy. Well done!”
—Lorraine Gordon, Associate Professor, Concordia University Irvine
“This video provides powerful insight for supervision and training, including naming and normalizing emotional defenses, the client using their body to access emotions, cultivating curiosity out of gentle confrontation and the therapist modeling their own emotional flexibility. Specifically addressing that repetition isn’t failure, persistence can be different from pushing, and how countertransference, when used appropriately, can model authenticity in the relationship. The client sessions and discussions demonstrates how trauma recovery can involve rigid control for safety; asking therapists to respect that what saves the client, might also limit the client. Yalom and Krug invite overall reflection and teach us different ways to go about our work!”
—Michelle Santiago, PsyD, Associate Professor of Clinical Practice, Moravian University
“This masterclass offers a focused exploration of the internal and relational dynamics that keep clients stuck—and how these patterns affect the therapeutic process. Through compelling examples with real clients, viewers will learn how to identify the function of these patterns and guide clients toward greater insight and new ways of being. Counselor educators will find this masterclass to be an excellent addition to their counseling skills courses or practicum.”
—Paige Williams, PhD, Associate Clinical Professor, Indiana University Southeast
In Depth
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Disclosures
Clinicians who work with these highly resistant clients quickly learn that directly challenging their defenses is only met with further entrenchment resulting in being stuck along with the client. Instead, what is needed are fresh and effective skills that you will learn by watching Krug and Yalom work with real clients who typify the core protective patterns, including the intellectualizer, the judgmental critic, the people pleaser, the avoider, and the doer.

In watching them at work, you will come away with new and effective skills for freeing your stuck clients from these old, worn, and constricting patterns, including:
  • Tagging—holds up a virtual mirror to the client’s protective patterns, with comments such as, “do you notice how often your worrying about what's going to happen next takes you away from being present?”
  • Leaning In—an expression of empathy for and understanding of their value to the client, with comments such as “Can you appreciate that to stay safe with your mother as a child, you needed to stay on high alert, anticipating what she'll do next?”
  • Countertransference Awareness—tracking your internal reactions to the client’s resistance.
  • Somatic Exploration—connecting your client with their emotions and inner world
  • Here-and-Now—using the therapeutic relationship as a model and practice ground for relationships in their lives
  • Self-Disclosure—empathetically sharing your reactions and responses with the client
So, sit back, or perhaps better yet, lean into the invaluable lessons to be learned about working with these deeply challenging clients, and regardless of your theoretical orientation, learn how to be a caring coach and collaborator, building your client’s capacity to notice defenses as they emerge, paving the way for awareness, and more authentic emotional contact. 

Length of video: 4:54:27

English subtitles available

Group ISBN-10 #: 1-60124-783-4

Group ISBN-13 #: 978-1-60124-783-4

Orah Krug, PhD is recognized in her field as a master clinician, supervisor, teacher and author. She has been a licensed psychotherapist for over 30 years and an adjunct professor at Saybrook University for over 15 years. Her therapy and teaching has been inspired by her two long-time mentors: Irvin Yalom M.D. and James Bugental PhD. Orah has contributed to her field through numerous chapters and articles on the practice of Existential-Humanistic therapy including her highly regarded texts published by the American Psychological Association: Supervision Essentials for Existential-Humanistic Therapy (2016) and Existential-Humanistic Therapy (2017).

Orah Krug was compensated for his/her/their contribution. None of his/her/their books or additional offerings are required for any of the Psychotherapy.net content. Should such materials be references, it is as an additional resource.

Psychotherapy.net defines ineligible companies as those whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. There is no minimum financial threshold; individuals must disclose all financial relationships, regardless of the amount, with ineligible companies. We ask that all contributors disclose any and all financial relationships they have with any ineligible companies whether the individual views them as relevant to the education or not.

Additionally, there is no commercial support for this activity. None of the planners or any employee at Psychotherapy.net who has worked on this educational activity has relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies. Victor Yalom, PhD is the founder and resident cartoonist of Psychotherapy.net. He maintained a busy private practice in San Francisco for over 25 years, but now sees only a few clients, devoting the bulk of his time to creating new training videos for Psychotherapy.net. He has produced over 100 videos, conducted workshops in existential-humanistic and group therapy in the US, Mexico, and China, and currently leads consultation groups for therapists.  More info on Victor and his artwork and sculpture at sfpsychologist.com.



Victor Yalom was compensated for his/her/their contribution. None of his/her/their books or additional offerings are required for any of the Psychotherapy.net content. Should such materials be references, it is as an additional resource.

Psychotherapy.net defines ineligible companies as those whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. There is no minimum financial threshold; individuals must disclose all financial relationships, regardless of the amount, with ineligible companies. We ask that all contributors disclose any and all financial relationships they have with any ineligible companies whether the individual views them as relevant to the education or not.

Additionally, there is no commercial support for this activity. None of the planners or any employee at Psychotherapy.net who has worked on this educational activity has relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies.

CE credits: 3.75

Learning Objectives:

  • Describe the core protective patterns that stuck clients present in therapy
  • Discuss the personal and professional challenges of working with stuck clients
  • Utilize effective therapeutic interventions to help stuck clients move forward

Bibliography available upon request

This course is offered for ASWB ACE credit for social workers. See complete list of CE approvals here

© 2025

This Disclosure Statement has been designed to meet accreditation standards; Psychotherapy.net does its best to mitigate potential conflicts of interest and eliminate bias in all areas of content. Experts are compensated for their contributions to our training videos; while some of them have published works, the purchase of additional materials are not required for any Psychotherapy.net training. Each experts’ specific disclosures can be found in their biography.

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