Recovery work feels like victim blaming

[Lilypad]

My therapist thinks I have trouble being kind to myself and that I need to learn how to do that.  She seems to think that my trauma related neediness scares other people off and that I have to meet my own emotional needs. I find myself feeling really angry and tearful after our session. I feel it is a bit like victim blaming to point this out. How the * am I supposed to meet my own emotional needs when everyone else seems to find them too much? It feels like an impossible task, and that I am being set up to fail. I feel she is being smugly telling me what is wrong with me without providing any clear road map to recovery.

[owl25]

I think your feelings around this are valid and well worth bringing up at your next session. I have really struggled with this concept myself, that I need to take care of my own emotional needs. I used to get really upset about this because it felt like everyone could just wash their hands of me and  it was still just up to me to look after me, to fix my problems, with no help or care from anyone else. The message very much felt like "it's up to you to fix yourself, stop asking for others to fix you". The thing is, we are not meant to be islands and 100% separate from others. We are meant to be interdependent, that means that we do need others to meet our needs, and they also need us to meet their needs. Our needs weren't met as children, and that is why there's such a big hole and deep need now for those needs to be met now. No one was ever there for us, and so we still yearn for that now.

I don't know how we are supposed to learn to meet our own needs if we don't have someone teach us how. I think healing involves having someone there who helps us get started. We need someone to teach us how to manage our own feelings, teach us how to self-soothe, and teach us how to get our needs met. We need learn how to become aware of our own needs and then know what to do with those needs when we identify them. If I am in need of a hug or a good cry with my partner holding me, then that's valid and I need to learn how to ask for that so he can give me that. It doesn't mean that I need to just suck it up that I want to be held and try to hug myself and not bother other people for comfort or support.

I think that we do need to look after ourselves to a degree, we cannot expect others to fix us (how I always hated running into this perspective! how was I supposed to do it alone?), but I firmly believe we need help and support getting there first. I feel it is the therapist's job to help us with that, help teach us how to do that. It does not mean that when we are done therapy, our emotional needs are on just ourselves to resolve. We will still have emotional needs that we'll need others to meet - we will still need a sense of love, belonging, and care. We are a social species and we need to receive love from others, and they need to get it back from us as well.

It is possible with our trauma to overwhelm others with our needs - we are so overwhelmed ourselves by our own emotions that we look to others to meet them. I totally understand what you are saying around that, how are you supposed to manage when it's too much for you too? It in fact really is a catch-22 - if you could manage your own emotional needs, then you wouldn't need others nearly as much to help.

I encourage you to take all this back to your therapist and ask what her approach is to helping you learn to meet your emotional needs sufficiently. Again the goal should not be for you to be 100% self-sufficient - it's not healthy to not have social support - but the goal is to be sufficient enough. How is she going to help get you there?

[Not Alone]

I thought Owl's comments were very good. I agree that to some degree we need to take care of our own needs AND we are meant to need each other and need community.

[mojay]

I feel she is being smugly telling me what is wrong with me without providing any clear road map to recovery.

Lilypad, I've found myself feeling the same way about past therapists. I think Owl made a lot of good points, especially bringing your feelings about the situation to your therapist. Hopefully she can provide you with more concrete steps to being kind to yourself (since that is what she can identify as a learning objective - I don't want to put words in your mouth) and helping you meet your own emotional needs.

I regularly feel like my trauma-related emotional needs are too heavy for people and frequently too heavy for myself. It's a really tough situation and I empathize with you. Sending you strength through the airwaves!

[Kizzie]

I've often thought the same thing Lilypad. While I do think we all need to learn how to be kind and compassionate to ourselves, this begs the question of how do we do that exactly if we've never had many or any positive, healthy relationships with anyone? I so agree with Owl and others that we simply cannot do this on our own - we are not meant to be islands.

Any T who gives us this impression does not understand CPTSD or the nature and purpose of therapy for relational trauma. It stands to reason (IMO) that a large part of our recovery/healing needs to come via relational therapy.  In other words our T's need to do a lot of the "work" right alongside us.  There's an article by Pete Walker about this you might find helpful - http://www.pete-walker.com/pdf/relationalHealingComplexPTSD.pdf.

[Lilypad]

Thanks very much for your replies, guys. I think I was a bit triggered after my session to be honest. I was able to talk it through with my therapist the next time I saw her.

I really liked the way a few of you said that we need to be healthily interdependent with others. It is also true that our therapists need to model compassion for us. And also just that it is all really tough and overwhelming at times.

Thank you for the support xx

[Kizzie]