• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Therapist asked what i need from them

Status
Not open for further replies.

PandaPower

Learning
It was kind of a heavy session today with some flashbacks. It's a new occurrence for me to have memories come up and try to stay with them in therapy. She asked me what I needed from her and I didn't know. What are things your therapist does when you have flashbacks that help?
 
Nothing. Just sits quietly until I am ready to proceed. My flashbacks are my problem so whether I was in her office or elsewhere I've got to deal with them. But I'm a long way into ptsd and therapy.

It may have been better if she had described to you what she can do to help you manage them?
 
I hate that question and I used to get mad at her for asking it. I should have had a ready answer she did it so often. Then she'd say "I want you to be free". I thought it was pie in the sky.

I did arrive at a bunch of answers like, I want to function better, I need a working facade, stuff like that.

But I am way down the road with this. At first I just drew a blank or I'd say, I want the pain to stop.

It's ok not to know.
 
When that happened to me and I also dissociated, there was nothing my T could do for me during it. She sat back and waited. Now after it had ended and I was obviously distressed we did a quick EMDR session to help me process what had just happened and lower my distress level.
 
My psychiatrist often asks me that question. If I can't articulate what I need from them, I ask what they can offer me to manage or what their thinking is. Sometimes they offer some direction, sometimes they stay quiet it really depends.
They explain why they stay quiet but never tell me what to do or what not to do.
 
My problem with that type of question is my mind goes into all of the things that would be needed for me to be 100% better.
things like unconditional love, a decent family, for my past to not have been so traumatic, someone like my T in my life day to day and so forth. All the things that I cant actually have. My general reply is that nothing that I truly need can be given by you, so please stop asking me that as it makes me feel so much worse.
 
Honestly I think it’s a bullshit question. My support person used to ask me this and EVERYTHING I asked for was denied flat out. It was like throwing darts in the dark and hoping that ONE would hit the dartboard of “things she could actually do to help me”. At no point would she tell me the scope of her job duties. It was one big mindfck.
 
Mine gave me a list of helpful information about things like not being able to control others (no one can control others unless they use underhanded ways like manipulation). And it is not advised. There were suggested things to do or say in various situations. These were most of them copyrighted, so I can't share the actual lists anyway. The opinion about manipulation and control is my own opinion, from hard won experience.

I suppose it would be great to ask what they can do for you. I don't know if they can answer that though.
 
1. Help me work out what I need, because I don’t know.

2. One of the best things for me is to get up and get moving. Partly that’s an ADHD thing. When my body is still, my mind is moving... but when my body is moving? My mind stills. Getting up and going for a short walk to splash some water on my face / run water over my wrists/ etc. isn’t AS effective for me as gravity sports (pay attention, or the ground will reach up and smack you), but I still need to be mostly here to avoid walking into walls, or off curbs, or into random passers by. I’ve had a FEW flashbacks whilst walking/running... but they’re incredibly rare. Self preservation seems to kick in, in a way that it doesn’t when my body is curled up safe and sound on a chair.
 
IDK but reading your post I felt that perhaps when you are experiencing flashbacks you act certain way that made her feel or think she does not know how to react to you or is afraid to react to you in a such that may create a rupture. I think this question is based on what exactly happened right before it was asked. What were your flashbacks?

I do not mean you tell me or post them here but I am saying think of what happen and see how this question fit in that. Or even better ask her what you looked or was asking or saying when you had the flashbacks that made her think to ask how to help you?

In my personal therapy, I learned whenever my therapist asked me that question it was about dependency. I must have gone into my own silo (old habit of solving my problem) which rendered her useless to help and she was asking me that question to sort of bring me back to the present in the here and now and ask how can I be help to you?

my past as an abused but survived child, I have the tendency to do my own take caring so whenever I fall back to that, she nudges me to say what do I need from her.

In all fairness, it is common question and usually it is gauging your relational aspect to ask what you need from a person in the room with you so you learn how to ask what you need in deep moments of intimacy.
I think the best thing is you notice the question and you are exploring in you what that means. That itself is part of the healing cause at the end, it really means, you have had the means to help yourself but she wants to help you as well.
 
Last edited:
My problem with that type of question is my mind goes into all of the things that would be needed for me to be 100% better.
things like unconditional love, a decent family, for my past to not have been so traumatic, someone like my T in my life day to day and so forth. All the things that I cant actually have. My general reply is that nothing that I truly need can be given by you, so please stop asking me that as it makes me feel so much worse.

I am sorry this has been your experience. I had exactly similar feelings but could not put to words like you have here. I think you really put it perfectly. This question creates sort of helplessness. It sounds like the therapist is feeling helpless and asking how can I help you? use me please sort of but subjectively speaking, it seems like the therapist is saying the client is helpless and I think that is why it bothers you and maybe it bothered me then.

It is passive way of talking in therapy that used to drive me nuts! but when I got over it in my own journey, I realized they wanted me to think of my own helplessness as a child and what could I do today to help my inner child parts that were not helped or cared for before. but developmentally and psychologically speaking, it also meant (at least my understanding) that I did not know how to help myself so by telling the therapist what she could have done to help me would be like BINGO! all the things I can do alone to help myself or functions of helping myself that I have not master them yet. Not sure if this makes sense but this has been my experience and understanding of this question in my therapy.

It is the play of language that creates a lot of unnecessary confusion.
 
Oh my. This thread is what I have been searching for.
The exact same thing happened to me in my last session. We have been talking around my trauma and she has been going gently with me. Then last week I inadvertently 'went there', full on panic mode. Terror sweats. Couldn't pull myself back. Disassociated , then tried to get the feelings back and disassociated again. I wasn't in the room: I was 'back there'. And she asked me what I needed from her. Which sent me spinning again. I hadn't a clue! I'm used to me making me alright. I've done that all my life. And then I convinced myself that I needed to reassure her (and we had just been talking about how I reassured my abuser at the time) and then I convinced myself that she was going to 'dump' me.
I found her question of 'what do I need from her' as a sign I had to solve myself and I couldn't cope. I then felt again that the person who is meant to protect me, can't (like childhood). So it was really triggering.
But this thread: hearing your stories and 're-framing' has really helped. She was trying to ground me by that question. I'm not sure it is the right question for me, but I need to think that through as she seems to know me far better than I know myself!
I feel able to breath a little again!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top