My last two years in therapy has been marked by the amount I have cried. In twenty years of therapy I hardly ever cried, but I have finally found a therapist I feel safe enough with and trust with the most vulnerable aspects of myself. I have cried and sobbed and done the 'ugly crying' (nose streaming and everything!) I used to always hide under my coat when I started crying, I felt so ashamed and ugly. I went to a session one day and there was a throw draped over the back of my chair which I then always covered myself with when getting upset. I spent months under that throw crying...

My therapist stays with me in my pain, rarely asks me to explain it and now, after two years, I can cry without hiding under the throw, though I often still turn my face away. More often now I steal glances at my therapist and occasionally I see tears in his eyes, which really touches me, as I feel in that moment that he deeply empathises with my distress. From the way he is with me I feel he has experienced his own personal despair and distress and come out the other side. His is not scared, uncomfortable or overwhelmed by my tears. By staying right with me in this way, without trying to get me to do or say anything, I feel his hope for me that I too will find my own way out of my pain and distress.

He always has tissues on a coffee table between us, and sometimes when I've been hiding and couldn't even reach out for them he will gently move them next to me. He doesn't usually say anything if I'm sobbing, sometimes he just says soothing words about the tears being for me, because I matter. It has helped me to stay with these feelings by him not speaking. In one session I felt so ashamed of my distress that he asked if I would like him to leave the room for a moment while I put myself back together. This has only happened once and was only because I was too frozen to get up and leave the room (as I have done sometimes when I'm really upset). He came back in after a couple minutes.

I have person-centred therapy which differs from psychodynamic or CBT quite a lot in it's philosophy and approach. My therapist has specifically trained to offer genuine empathy, acceptance and warmth as part of his way of being rather than as a skill.

I am wondering what types of therapy/therapist other people are experiencing?

Phx