ABSTRACT
Many clients presenting for psychotherapy experience strong internal `stroke ®lters' (Woollams and Brown, 1978); discounting positive strokes, disbelieving them or rede®ning them in some way to neutralize them. The tenacity of these stroke ®lters and their imperviousness to simple stroking and contradiction can be quite startling. Positive stroking can hit up against the client's resistances, especially when the client believes only bad things about themselves and has an extensive negative self-belief system in their script.
