My3sns,

I have had something similar happen in therapy twice. It sounds like you dissociated. It is very scary, but it is not rare when it comes to people who have been through traumas. Many of us have pushed away scary experiences from our past, and when we begin developing more safety and trust in our therapist, those old feelings and experiences sometimes come up in therapy. We really did not have a way to work through that scary experience as a child when the trauma happened, so letting it come up now in a safe environment with a safe person (our therapist in therapy) will give you a chance to express those pent up fears and work through them. Ideally, though, our adult self remains present at the same time that those scary memories or feelings come up, so that we do not lose a sense of where we are or what is going on.

Trauma processing needs to be done slowly, in pieces, and it sounds like you got blindsided with too much too soon. It sounds like you are not at a point where you are ready to deal with some of these memories. My suggestion is to ask your therapist to "hold back" on trauma processing and help you develop more coping skills and containment abilities first.