Using a collider as a physical barrier

Hi all. I'm trying to set up a collider to act as a physical-yet-invisible barrier, but not having much luck. When I run into the collider, instead of behaving like a solid wall, I partially run through then "snap" back. Has anyone had any success using a collider as a "hard-stop" to block movement, similar to how a building block stops you? Or at least a way to smoothly spring-back from the collider instead of the snapping? (I've also tried player.Push and rigidbody.AddForce, but they don't seem to have any effect)