difficulty answering therapists' quesions

Hi all,

My therapist has been asking me questions that I do not know how to answer. During todays session in particular, I couldn't answer a lot of the questions - some of which were asked a good few times. Questions such as 'what does a balanced life look like to you?' 'What's one small thing you could do now to get there?' 'What advice would you give a friend if she was in this situation?'. One that she kept coming back to was 'Why is balance important to you?'. Each time, I failed to answer adequately. I know the answer now and will be sharing it next session (it appears that it's not so important to me - maybe that's why she kept asking - person centred approach?) Anyway, I feel so frustrated for not being able to answer these types of questions. I'm so lost, I just don't know what's good for me and is the very reason why I'm in therapy. I need her to tell me. She did say that it's ok, we'll figure it out as we go along, but I'm worried she'll get frustrated eventually. Can anyone relate?

Wait, you want her to tell you what's good for you? How should she know this?

As for your question, yes, I find myself without an answer all too often. This is bad, as when I don't have a snappy retort, the therapist tends to think I must be starting to see things her way or agreeing/admitting to something and things just snowball in a direction I don't like.

I found it difficult to answer questions quite often because usually there were several ways the questions could be answered and I never could figure out which sort of answer was the sort to give to a therapist.

When my T asks me a question I don’t know the answer to I flat out tell him I don’t know the answer. However, he won’t accept that for an answer so from there we usually work through it. It is so much easier to let him answer for me, but that’s the lazy way out, so I do make the effort to at least start the conversation with something that will point us in the right direction.

For the question about a balanced life - that’s a big question that can go in so many different directions. It’s not surprising that it requires some thought and introspection. I would probably try to bullet point a couple things and expand from there. I don’t think your T would expect you to have the whole answer, or the right answer right off the top. It may very well be that she wants you to take it away and think about it.

There’s not a right or wrong answer to open ended questions such as these in therapy. Most likely, your therapist is just trying to understand your perspective of things so that she can better help you. It sounds like she’s using a task-centered approach and that’s why a lot of her questions are focusing on specific goals/tasks/interventions. It can be difficult, but maybe when she asks you a question like this, your response could just be you thinking out loud about how you don’t know what to say? Like unfiltered speech. My t is trying to get me to do this more often. It usually helps me get a thought going.

Try to give yourself a break,okay? if you’ve not thought about those types of things before, especially if you were not expecting the question, of course youre not going to come up with a long, fantastic, well thought out answer right away. Just because you didnt answer them all immediately doesnt necessarily mean you are lost...give yourself some time to think them over, and try it again next time.

From what you've described, it sounds like your therapist is using the Solution Oriented approach, which is a part of the so-called "post-modern" psychotherapy modality. One of the corner stones of it is to put the client in the driver's seat and to let them navigate their own therapy.

I am a big believer in taking personal responsibility for setting your own goals and defining what you want instead of letting the therapist do it for you, which is not really their job. So, I like the idea of the Solution-Oriented therapy in principle when the client is making decisions about what they want to work on and so forth. I don't necessarily like how they try to implement this idea. Therapists of that theoretical orientation tend to rush things and bombard clients with too many questions in one session instead of letting people follow their process at their own pace. I had a colleague who practiced this orientation early on and she lost some clients because of this strategy.

I believe it is absolutely necessary to ask a client about their goals because it's not a therapist's job to define it for them. Beyond that, questions should be asked when they are appropriate and organic to where the client is at the moment. Therapists should follow the client's process instead of pushing the client to follow their agenda.

Tell her, enough with questions already.

To be honest this doesn't sound the person centred approach to me. The person centred approach isn't about trying to find answers so I can't understand what's with all the questions.

I particularly don't like the question "what advice would you give a friend in this situation?". What a useless question. She should also be okay with the idea that you don't know what balance looks like for you. Sometimes it's okay not to know.


I agree with Jessica that it's okay to tell her to just stop with the questions if they are not of use to you. She should be able to adapt to your needs.

You are absolutely correct. She's an integrated therapist - one of the approaches she follows is solution based. I'll have to bring this up for a discussion next session.