To cultivate trust with a defensive client, listen actively, acknowledge their concerns without judgment, maintain empathy, and communicate openly. Be consistent, transparent, and patient, creating a safe space for dialogue that encourages collaboration and reduces defensive reactions.

A defensive patients have past trauma. Touching the trigger point with empathy and story telling can take back them in to confidence. Just not be words but Also deliver them back the trust they lost in the system in action.

Building trust with a client like this takes time, hence, the need for patience and be consistent with your tone and approach. Acknowledge and validate the client's emotions, even if you don't agree with their perspective. This helps create a sense of safety and understanding. Ensure that your body language is open and nonthreatening, and maintain a calm voice. Empathy and Active listening; show that you're engaged in the conversation and avoid blame or criticism. Referral: refer when need arise.

Patience and compassion is the best way to let trust build in such a situation along with exploration of the past roots for lack of trust and defensiveness. A balance of meeting the client where they are at and compassionately nudging them to move forward is needed. At some point, it can be beneficial to highlight the resistance and compassionately invite them to share where it’s coming from and how would they want to be supported. Ongoing self reflection as a professional will be helpful to make sure one keeps aside one’s own goals and aspirations for the client and meeting the client where they are at.

The question is framed in an unhelpful way which assumes the client is somehow deficient in terms of inwardly dwelling qualities such as openess and trust. A non-structuralist conversation would focus on the "horizontality" of a clients relational understanding of their hopes, expectations, beliefs, values and principles as part of their Relational world. Such a conversation decentres a client from internalized states of mind and more productively sees themselves as interconnected and knotted with others: how do you see yourself in the world? I say much more in my recently published book: Philosophical Foundations of Psychotherapy - Radical Relationality p138...

Aceite a vulnerabilidade • Compreenda que não é necessário estar sempre certo ou ser perfeito. • Aceite que críticas podem ser oportunidades de aprendizado, não ataques ao seu valor pessoal. Busque apoio externo • Converse com amigos, familiares ou um terapeuta sobre como você se sente e como reage em certas situações. • Um terapeuta pode ajudar a identificar padrões e oferecer estratégias personalizadas para lidar melhor com as emoções. Pratique o reforço positivo • Reconheça suas pequenas conquistas sempre que conseguir evitar uma reação defensiva. • Substitua autocríticas por frases de encorajamento, como: “Estou aprendendo e evoluindo.”