In this sense the therapist is non-directive because they are tracking and following the client. Metaphorically the therapist is walking alongside the client, sometimes a few paces behind and sometimes a few paces ahead, sometimes stopping to discuss where to go next, but always going wherever the client goes.
Martin Seligman developed the theory of learned helplessness, and defined it as the motivational and behavioral deficits displayed by humans when exposed to uncontrollable circumstances.
Seligman's Learned Helplessness. In early 1965, psychologist Martin Seligman and his colleagues accidentally discovered an unexpected phenomenon related to human depression while studying the relationship between fear and learning in dogs.