I am a very emotional person and cry a lot, so in therapy I cry. Sometimes my emotions overwhelm me, when this happens I dissociate or go quiet. My t has often commented on how quiet I am when I cry because I try and hold it in but the tears just fall, I won't make any noise and will carry on talking. T will ask me what is happening and I think to myself "eh is that not obvious, I am crying? " but she says I can see that when I tell her that I am crying, then she asks me to stay with that and describe what is happening in my body and where I feel the sadness. She tries to get me to stay with the feelings and learn to accept them rather than reject them.
I have found when I do get overwhelmed and I am unable to talk it's very hard to come back out of that place. I go into myself and so far no t can get me out of it. Current t tries her best but she gets very frustrated and mad with me and then we gave a rupture and I leave feeling really unsupported and annoyed that she let me leave like that. I don't know what can get me out of it because no one has ever helped me come out of it and my t telling me she can't support me because I need to tell her how to support me does not help. It's really frustrating and I have come really close to giving up therapy lately because this has turned into such a vicious cycle where both t and I become frustrated at each other. I will send t an angry email afterwards and she is delighted j expressed my feelings but wishes I could do it more in session.
So I do have trouble verbally expressing my emotions but my body remembers how it's used to responding when I feel ashamed, angry or sad. It goes into shutdown and it's very hard to break that habit.