I was surfing around and read a counselor's description (see below) of needy clients --how they are not really in therapy to solve their problems but to get caring and support and compassion from him. He says the problems they bring to therapy aren't truly problems, but just things to talk about while they go about their true purpose (sucking the energy from him). By no means does he say all clients are like this, just a needy subset. When I read something like this, I get some mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel that getting support from a therapist is a fine reason for going to therapy, but on the other hand, I feel like maybe I am a client who really shouldn't be in therapy anymore, because I do like the support and compassion I get from therapy, and it does supercede a lot of "problems" we work on. I am typically very competent, functional, and independent; I don't like to think of myself as needy. In fact, in therapy we have worked on getting me to admit I even have needs and that it is OK to tell another person what those needs are or to ask to have them met. (My T sometimes says to me, "what are you needing from me?") But sometimes I feel guilty for going to see my therapist because I feel the positive I get from our interaction goes beyond what I
need to function. My feelings of guilt or that I am doing therapy "wrong" are reinforced by reading things like what this counselor wrote. They are also reinforced when I read on PC that a client expressed strong needs to her therapist and then got terminated. On the one hand, some therapists don't want you to be needy. On the other hand, some therapists work with you to get you to realize you have needs and to express them. I know there's not just one way to do therapy, but I find these differing reactions to client neediness to be very confusing.
Once my T gave me a birthday present--he read a favorite poem of his to me in session on my birthday. He said he wanted to give me the gift of hearing a man speak these words to me. The poem was about a woman with very strong needs. I told him afterwards that parts of the poem scared me. The parts where the woman admits her needs. I am scared I may have those needs too, and they are in a cellar somewhere and if I open up that door, there my needs will be, and others will see them too. Aaackk! The fact T chose this poem for me means he must see I have strong needs. I'm not even sure of that myself; if I do have strong needs, I thought I was pretty good at keeping them under wraps.
Then I read stuff like this counselor writes about how having needs ("being needy") is not a legitimate reason to be in therapy, and I question whether I should still be in therapy. Maybe I am just coddling myself and sucking T's energy.
I don't feel like I am...
Quote:
from http://www.bukisa.com/articles/28294...h-needy-people
[Rescuing] is exactly what we cannot do when dealing with “needy” people. Rescuing is what they want, because it’s how they plug their suction hoses into our “energy.”
So, what do you do instead of rescuing? It took me about five years to answer that question. It isn’t answered in counselor-school. Instructors do warn counselors-to-be about burn out, but they don’t teach you how to avoid burn out (and burn out is just another synonym for letting needy people suck you dry). Even though it took me about five years of trial and error to figure out a workable response, the response itself is rather simple. It goes like this.
Since the “problem” needy folks bring to you really isn’t the problem -- it is, rather, something to talk about while they plug in their hose -- then the real problem is how they are thinking about or “holding” the problem. Above I talked about this. To recap: they don’t want help in solving any of the problems they may have in life; instead, they want someone to take responsibility for all those problems -- they want someone to take care of them.
And that’s the real problem. While it is true that ‘being taken care of’ is a crucial developmental stage in childhood, by which children begin to learn how to take care of themselves, this dynamic is not one that can be resolved within adult relationships. In other words, you may need the experience of being cared for (since it’s foundational), but I can’t give you that experience. It’s too late. You’re not a child anymore. In other words, you are going to have to give that experience to yourself (e.g., “inner child” work is how it’s accomplished).
Therefore, when one of these needy folks show up in my office (or my life, for that matter), I never answer their questions with problem-solving information. I answer with questions like, “How do you think you can make this work?” They answer, “Well, I can’t. That’s why I’m here. You are the counselor after all.” (I might add here that guilt-trips are the weapons Victims use most effectively.) To which I reply, “What is it that keeps you from solving this problem?” And they answer, not the real answer of ‘I’m in Victim-mindset,’ but some litany of hardships. To which I reply, “And how is all that keeping you from solving the problem?”
Two things eventually happen when I employ this strategy: 1) they leave in a huff; or 2) they begin to get how they set themselves up for Victimhood. The second result usually takes a while, but for those who are ready, they finally get it.
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