Neediness in therapy

http://rockingcomplacency.wordpress....r-letter-word/

"The people around us taught us, by precept and by example, that our needs were unimportant, inconvenient, unwanted, things that would get us in trouble, things that would get us punished, things that nobody was going to respond to except to make us sorry we had them…"

Ever occurred to you that they felt the same way about themselves...

I kind of agree with this statement. One of my inner critics favorite attacks is to tell me that "I am being too needy" when I recognize that I want or need support. I think for me its been hard to figure out where to redraw my ....IDK "needs" line.

Before I would never ask for assistance and then as one song lyrics says...I would find myself "knee deep in a river dying of thirst." I would go and get along fairly well "WITHOUT", but now that type of existence isn't good enough. I think anytime we start trying to open ourselves to new ways of being we can then make mistakes in trying to figure out where the new boundary should be. I think for me T at the moment is about learning how to allow myself to make mistakes, to cross a boundary and be OK. Instead of totally withdrawing and never going near it again, maybe negotating a bit to get a need filled by saying, "I'm sorry, how about here instead."

I think the point the author makes is a valid one. No matter what health care profession or maybe profession in general you will ultimately encounter people who "suck you energy dry" if you let them. A quality care provider has to know how to maintain their own energy and not get caught up in feeding this cycle. I DO NOT think that the author presents his message in a compassionate way, but I see his point.

My T has been very supportive of me throughout the years, but I do not think she promotes or accepts clingyness. She has always presented a stance that SHE does not fix or heal. She simply helps, directs, and facilitates the work I do to heal myself. My T does not seem like the type of T that will allow a client to be passive and suck her energy dry. What I like about my T is that IF I do seem to cross the line into being what maybe Perna mean by a therapist definition of needy, my T usually kind of lets me know it--nicely. In fact...she has used some similar responses to the ones the author wrote. But the way she said them was not offensive, it was just a kind way of reminding me that I CAN solve a problems on my own.

Sunrise, I also CONTINUALLY question whether I should still be going to therapy. I am no longer in crisis, my home is now fairly balanced, and although I frequently shift between the highs and lows of my life in the end I KNOW and am confident that I will survive at this point.

I remember one of your posts a LONG time ago where you would go into therapy and be reluctant to talk about challenging topics because you just wanted to bask in your T's positive energy. If I remember correctly your energy would be lifted just entering the room. There are people who just seem to radiate a higher frequency vibration and when you are in their presence they just feel great. My present opinion of this is...its OK for us to allow ourselves to receive an energy boost when its freely offered by another. I find that the people who are skilled care givers and how have this ability "know" that it is in YOUR best interest not to just allow you to feed off them. These individual know it is important to teach you that you can achieve a higher vibration one your own. They don't withold their energy because they are afraid of running out...they withold it because its the right thing to do. The author who wrote the article... obviously feels the energy drain but... hasn't himself realized that if he is doing his job right... he can't be drained by others. From what you've posted about your T, he will not let you become needy! In my personal experience it has been important for me to first allow myself to receive and then be given assistance and encouragement to figure out how to do it on my own.

Bruce Bibee, the counselor who wrote that bukisa.com article, sounds to me as if he has an unfortunate tendency to project his own issues onto his "needy" clients. If he feels threatened, drained or undermined, he seems to interpret that as his clients threatening, draining or undermining him. If he has a valid point to make, his own stuff seems to get in the way, obscure it, and make it so unpalatable that I'd expect him to lose a good part of his audience just by how he presents his case. As I read it, he wants to do therapy only with clients who don't need therapy and are on the point of realizing they don't.

Before we resort to calling Bibee a quack (only to have him call us victims in return, no doubt) I'd like to raise the possibility that what we're really talking about here is a question of viewpoints, and viewpoints are notoriously difficult to talk about. Ray Charles sums up the "needy" viewpoint quite well, I'd say:

That old sayin them that's got are them that gets
Is somethin I can't see
If ya gotta have somethin
Before you can get somethin
How do ya get your first is still a mystery to me

Banks are reportedly willing to lend money only to those who can prove they don't need the loan.

One of the most important qualifications when applying for a job is... prior work experience.

Whenever I've considered myself needy, lacking, or not OK for whatever reason, I've found myself apparently surrounded by people who made it clear that they didn't feel like giving me anything because I was (obviously) too needy and not up to appreciating whatever they had to offer. It would be like throwing their resources into a bottomless pit. I should go get my needs met and then come back and see them.

"You can't get there from here."

Whenever I've found myself in a "needy" frame of mind, the logic of "them that's got are them that gets" has always seemed impossible to argue against. That's another way of saying that (1.) from a needy viewpoint it's quite difficult to see anything but more neediness, and (2.) the harder I struggle against a needy viewpoint, the deeper I seem to dig myself into it and the less I can see or even imagine outside of it. If I had the misfortune to be Bibee's client while stuck in that viewpoint, no doubt I'd demand that he rescue me from it and no doubt he'd demand that I stop sucking him dry and learn to rescue myself.

If I had to guess, I'd say that neediness is a form of learned helplessness: "You can't have it, so don't ask," later turning into "You're lacking it, so no one wants to give you any." At the risk of sounding like a quack the equal of Bibee, I'll say that (to me at least) the way out of the bind is to recognize that there isn't any "it" to lack.

Your mileage may vary.

fool zero, I am comfortable calling the guy who wrote that article a quack...sorry you seem to have an issue with it... Wonder why?