"I am trying to meet you where you are at" ????

I think I shall be much more careful to quash her talking at all.

When it's been said to me, it means my therapist is trying not to push me, but to accept where I am, whether that's in terms of my emotional state, my ability (or lack of ability) to process an event, or in benefiting from her guidance.

I'm sorry it's hard for you two to connect well and for you to get anything comforting or helpful from her when she speaks.

This is the first time I have heard that you are bleeding. I've heard your frustration and anger and confusion, but this seems to come from a deeper place.

I guess I always knew you were in pain, but you appeared to be in denial about that and I couldn't reach you.

I was just coming up with examples of statements that did not match up. I did not mean I am bleeding or in pain.

I am reminded of The Twilight Zone episode, "The Eye of the Beholder": The Eye of the Beholder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How does it work , I'm curious. I wonder if your t gets frustrated when you don't want her to talk at all, you just want her to sit there the whole session and listen with no feedback ?



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The woman has said she does not get frustrated nor (in response to my question if it was hard for her) is it hard for her to refrain from speaking.
I don't really worry much about whether she gets frustrated or not - that is for her to deal with on her own time with her own therapist or whatever else she uses to cope. I don't really think I am all that bothersome to her.

Oh ok, I would also be annoyed with a chatty therapist.

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In my training (I'm a social worker).....it was a phrase that got used a lot. I was taught that it means that I need to meet the client where THEY are, and not, perhaps, where I, as the clinician, think that they should be.

I think that the tendency in life is to impose our expectations for the situation onto someone ("I would do this," or "If this person could just realize x, it would help them SO much. Why don't they see that?") and it actually isn't helpful, because it just isn't where they ARE in that moment. It isn't good or bad, and it isn't a judgement....it just IS.

It's also supposed to be a tenet of acceptance and validation-that I SEE where you are in this moment, I understand why you are here, and it's ok.

Merely trying.


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I've heard therapists in a hospital setting say this to others.

Ok, this is a bit snarky, but I've never trusted the phrase.
To me, it always sounds like one of the following:

* T: I need a politically correct way of saying "I don't understand you"
* T: I need a politically correct way of saying I think you are too impaired to hear me
* T: I'm expecting your way of seeing the world and mine to be the same, and despite my years of training I am still shocked that we see things so differently

Not a fan of the phrase.

(In reading responses, I also wanted to say that I don't know if I would necessarily use this phrase with a client....I can see how it might come off as obnoxious....)

PS… My CBT T uses the following phrase too much…"Help me understand xyz….."

Why can't you just ask "why?"

[QUOTE=stopdog;379 She is most useful to me when she does not talk at all - my mistake is that sometimes I let her and it always goes badly for me.[/QUOTE]

Like you've stated, you have your reasons for seeing this particular one . 😌

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My T said something similar once when I knew I did something dumb and expected her to pretty much judge me on something. Instead she said, she was "accepting me" where I was at. However, in your context I don't really get what she meant.

Sorry, I misunderstood. In this case it does sound like she needs help understanding what's going on with you. Without the context in which it's being said though it is hard to really know.

I see it as clairelisbeth says. Then when stopdog's t tries to restate sd's premise and fails miserably - if that is indeed what is going on - then we are back to perna's question - did t misunderstand sd, or does sd now misundertand t's understanding of sd? It gets recursive very quickly.

No one can get to where you are at, Stopdog. If anyone ever got there, you'd move to somewhere even more remote.

SD - is it that the T can't keep up with your thought process? Are you a quick thinker? I know I am, and my brain easily flies from topic to topic making abstract associations, finding patterns, double back, leapfrogging ahead... it's hard to slow down and explain to another human, but not impossible.

Maybe T follows you from A to B, but doesn't make that leap to C. Could that be it?

I just wanted to add that I know people who feel misunderstood in life because they don't know how to explain the abstract connections their mind makes... but I always feel like I can help them slow down their brains long enough to explain how they got there... because I do it all the time. Its like they're just not aware of HOW to slow down their fast brains. Cuz I know it's hard to slow down those connections because they come so naturally. Believe me, I KNOW it's hard and struggled for years, but can be done because I do it now and wasn''t able when I was a teenager.

Yes. I (briefly) had a T who used that expression. I hated it. It was his standard reply anytime I disagreed with him, so I heard it a lot. Since he used it in his promotional materials, I thought maybe it was his catch phrase.
Later, I started working with current T who substituted the phrase "I'm just trying to understand what it's like to be you." I got annoyed with that very quickly and he explained that it was his way of communicating (compassionately) that he didn't understand what I'd said.
I told T that, if I can stop him and say "I don't understand what you mean," then I prefer that from him.

That was my experience. I don't know if that is where your T "is at" or not.