With my previous T who I saw for 10 months, I never once cried in a session and was pretty good at keeping my emotions under control.
I have started seeing a new T who in total I have seen 8 times, including 2 assessment sessions. For the last 3 sessions I have ended up crying quite a lot for a large amount of the session.
It’s something that makes me uncomfortable, which I think comes from being raised in an environment where showing emotion was not allowed.
I try to stop myself in session but when I do my T tells me that I need to let myself feel what I feel and not shut down. Other than that she doesn’t really acknowledge that I’m upset, no real reassurance just tell me that it’s normal to be upset over painful things. She just kinda carries on and gives me time to sob silently, which I find takes me back to being a child and getting ignored when I was crying.
So I guess I’m just trying to work out whether showing this emotion is productive or not. It feels like I’m wasting sessions and I just need to get on with the talking and I feel stupid for crying so often and like my T must think I’m ridiculous. I’m not sure why I’ve suddenly gone from being able to hold it together in sessions to now being an emotional wreck.