I think I am usually mentally very present in terms of anything we talk about and the interaction between us. It's more an intellectual presence though and I often have delayed emotional reactions -- this has been a long standing issue for me not only in therapy. Then when I do feel my feelings strongly outside of session, I would love to suddenly see my T, but often by next time I go, the emotional detachment sort of comes back.

My T mentioned to me before that what works best is to express feelings in the moment in the session, but I still find this challenging, I think I unconsciously resist being flooded by emotions, fearing that I would be swept away by them and make a fool of myself. One of my goals in therapy is to improve this aspect of the communication as I am certain doing this might also improve my relationships with people. I'm glad that I read this thread, good reminder to ask my T to help me with this more.

I am not so sure that the best approach to help is to just say "try to be more present" -- that's not giving any guidance, more a type of criticism and of course it can scare the client. I think a more helpful strategy would be to actually engage us more with how to achieve more presence. I think that with some clients, focusing on the physical and non-verbal aspects of the interaction (like body language, eye contact etc) can be good... I personally don't think it would help me as I am already usually very aware of this and have no problem sensing and maintaining that sort of connection, I actually need it and doubt that doing therapy over the phone, for example, would work for me. It's more my own emotions I tend to detach from in the moment and so it's hard to discuss those in depth.