Youth is the period of life between childhood and adulthood, and young people are people who are in that period. According to research, young people, for various reasons and due to the influence of numerous factors, face many changes and risks that impair the quality of their lives. The mentioned risks often lead to the need for environmental intervention. In this paper, the focus is on the intervention in the form of counseling with young people carried out by social workers. Counseling is aimed at helping individuals, groups, organizations and communities to function optimally and change dysfunctionalities in emotional, health, behavioral, interpersonal, educational, work and other areas of life. It developed precisely for the purpose of guiding and helping people of all age groups, and it has its roots in not so distant history. In counseling, it is inevitable to mention the resistances and defense mechanisms that appear when working with all groups of people. There are many reasons for the appearance of defense mechanisms in an individual, as well as numerous types of defense mechanisms and resistances. The role of the social worker in counseling work is to recognize the mentioned defense mechanisms and resistances and to develop strategies for their mitigation and elimination so that the process of counseling and the provision of assistance to young people in the form of counseling can be of higher quality and therefore more successful.