Tears in Session

Mostly I post on another therapy forum, but I always read here and lately have been doing a bit more posting, so decided I’d post about something I’d like to get others' views on. Apologies in advance if anyone recognizes this post from the other forum, I’ve more or less copy and pasted it verbatim…

Had a session yesterday and the plan had been for me to install a safe place, using a form of EMDR. All well and good, though I did explain that I don’t ever feel safe and even trying to imagine a place that is safe for me emotionally is not likely to be easy…

But I wasn’t prepared for my response, as soon as T asked me to describe my chosen place and I started to talk about it I just burst into tears. She seemed to think this was not how it should be going and sort of pushed me to keep focusing on positives but all I could do was cry and say that it made me feel sad

So it was all a bit of a fizzle and T ended up saying that it wasn’t going to work because of the tears being in the way all the time and we would focus on something else next session.

Therapy issues aside (I’m going to talk to T next session about how her responses to my tears made me feel), my question is whether anyone else has this kind of reaction to imagining or remembering happy/good/safe places and times? That the positive sense of such images just makes you feel terribly sad and weepy. T thought it was to do with loss which makes sense intellectually but I literally do not know why I cried, I have no sense of the meaning of the tears. So just wondering if anyone else can relate?

Torn

Not necessarily in a T context, but I think I can relate somewhat. Recently, thoughts of my kids have been causing me to burst into tears. And not the happy kind, they're sort of mournful and I really don't understand it.

I'm glad you're going to talk with your T about her response, which feels full of wtf? If my T said anything about my tears getting in the way, I'm pretty sure I'd just shut down from there on out. So kudos to you for bringing it up.

Do you think there's any part of imagining a safe place that evokes tears because it's so difficult to imagine one? I could imagine grief related to struggling to find a place that's safe.

I absolutely can relate...I have a tendency to feel incredibly sad when imagining a safe/happy place....For me, it represents a lacking in my life, triggering a sense of grief and despair.

I agree with MUE. I have experienced this also and, similarly, feel it represents something( I recognize) missing in my life. The tears represent my grief and understanding.

LL thanks for picking up on the 'wtf' aspect of the session - it really bothered me but not much I can do about it until I speak to her about it, I could be misinterpreting her reactions (quite likely!). Yes to how you describe crying when thinking of your kids, in a mournful way - I get that a lot out of therapy too, anything moving or meaningful makes me want to cry and it feels like... I dunno really, I guess that's why I'm asking here. I don't understand it!

As for the safe place scenario, I didn't think I'd be able to come up with any image that felt safe to me, so I was a bit put out that I DID come up with something and she seemed to think it was the wrong image, the wrong situation, not good enough to serve as a safe place. Has me totally confused. Is a safe place meant to make you feel all happy and positive? I would have thought cosy warm comfortable, well, SAFE...

Thanks for replying

Torn

MUE thanks for this - I think it makes a lot of sense. I certainly don't feel safe now in my life, and to be honest I never have, but the image I came up with was from when I was a kid, a time when I didn't know that I wasn't safe (if that makes sense) and so invested a lot of positive meaning in the place (a specific beach/seashore from my past). So maybe what's hitting me now is that lost sense of peace and safety, the loss of it, the lack of it as you say. Grief I dunno, is this what grief feels like?

I'm sorry you experience it as despair, that's a hard emotion to deal with. I don't think there's anything really negative in my tears, that's what's weird, when I was crying yesterday it didn't feel like I had to run away from it or that it meant something bad or negative (which is why my T's reaction to it was doubly hurtful). So no despair. Though I didn't get much of a chance to go into the tears (apart from my own automatic shut down on the expression of any feeling) so who knows where they could have ended up...

Thank you too for replying

Torn

Lost it seems you have the same sense. Is it that you recognize it as missing in your life, but not necessarily something that you once had and have lost? In this case loss isn't the issue, but the yearning for something you never had or don't currently have?

And you say the tears represent also understanding, so I take it you are aware in the tears of why you are crying?

I just seem to be completely ignorant. I have no idea why I'm crying (except vaguely and mostly intellectually after the event). It's like there's an image/memory/thought and here are my tears and the two don't seem connected. It's all very frustrating.

Thank you for replying, very much appreciated

Torn

I sometimes cry when I am in emotional pain or a crises and if I reach out to people, as I obsessively do, and someone responds empathically, I sometime sob, but it isn't frequent. I often think and feel that I am not worth responding to, and altho I desperately want someone to respond, I am surprised when they do. I can feel my pain emerging as I write this. I don't want to be terminted, I want to be accepted and to have somebody care. BUT I feel like I am worthy of termination, but I'm not worthy of being accepted and not worthy enough to have people care. So, I think I deserve what I don't want and that I don't deserve what I want. I am at work, but this brought up alot of emotions. Better stop now. Thanks for giving me something to think about.

Torn, great questions. Maybe, it's both? I sense it as something missing in my life. I guess I would not have known it was "missing" if I had never experienced it (or recognized it in others)? So, it is a yearning.

I'm really HARD on myself. I used to get frustrated (with me) when I couldn't figure stuff out. I think "understanding" for me, means giving myself the breathing room to recognize it's okay when I have these tears. Not necessarily, the why behind them even when I have a pretty good sense as to the cause.

Oh, one more thing. I did catch your T's response in your OP. I am curious if she may have been "rescuing" you from your own negative emotions? I think talking about the negative emotions is a good thing in therapy! I hope you bring this up with your T.

Yeah, I'd be put out too, or more. How can one's safe space be wrong?! Sometimes I wonder if Ts (as a group) are so bent on their theoretical ideas of how session are "supposed" to go that they miss the stuff that's right there in front of them. I think it's great that you seem to be responding to your tears with curiosity and openness, even if your T couldn't do the same in the moment.

Agreed. I don't understand a T who pursues a technique to the exclusion of the emotion presented in the moment.

Lost, LL and Feralkittymom – thanks for replying .

Lost I like this, speaks of acceptance and dropping the need to know to rationalize or explain. I’m still stuck in having to know why I feel what I do, it’s a defensive thing I’m sure but it’s all too threatening still at the moment just to go into a feeling without having some idea of what’s going on.

I didn’t mean for this thread to be critical of my T, as I’m fairly sure I’m reacting to her response to my tears from a defensive position and until I speak to her about it I’d just be stirring up my own anger and hostility.

Having said that I can’t help agreeing with LL and Feralkittymom (how do you shorten your name? FKM? doesn’t sound quite right. Feral maybe?) No matter what the technique was, she shouldn’t have kept pushing me to pursue it when it was obvious the tears took precedence in my mind. It would have been so much more useful and ‘therapeutic’ to have really gone with me into the tears, as it is I had to shut down on them because of feeling like I was doing the safe place thing all wrong, that crying was just the wrong thing to do fullstop. A missed opportunity at best there .

Torn

Torn-
T and I have been working on guided imagery. Last session we discussed using it to help my anxiety during a medical test I am having done. When I told her which image I was going to use the tears started welling up. It wasn't because I was sad about the image either. Just emotionally overwhelming. We weren't actually working through the process at that point so t just said "That is a beautiful, safe image." And we kept discussing.

It took me a long time to be able to focus on guided imagery enough to use it effectively. T encouraged lots of practice in a relaxed environment. I am sorry your t pushed the way she did. It does not sound like that was helpful.

If it was "obvious" to you at the time (instead of in hindsight, which is, as they say, 20-20), then you could have asked her to "go" with the tears. Part of our job as clients is to articulate the obvious to our Ts when they don't get it.

I also think it's an assumption that it was "obvious" to her. Obviously it was not. It sounds to me like she was trying to stay on task and help you with something, which it sounds like is something that you wanted or agreed to. There are times when a good T knows not to just flit off into an tangent but to stay focused on something, and that can be very healing.

I'm not saying you are wrong to feel however you feel or to be angry or hostile or whatever that your T made a mistake. She probably did. I'm not saying don't talk to her about whatever and however you want to talk to her about this issue. I'm not "defending" her and saying she was really doing the "right" thing. I have no idea.

The bigger issue, I think, is examining what you think your T's responsibility for your therapy is, and taking at least a skeptical look at your own assumptions and post hoc thinking and perhaps distorted interpretations. This is the stuff of changing and therapy itself. Pointing out your T's mistakes-- well, I suppose there is some value in that because it encourages a low level confrontation and perhaps a resolution of conflict that may translate to other relationships-- that's easy because it doesn't require us to do any changing. T made a mistake, I'm off the hook.

I find it easy to point out other people's mistakes, including T's. Even my own. What's much more difficult, and ultimately much more insightful and life-changing, is to examine the feelings and the thoughts and the interpretations that surround the mistake.

Sconnie thank you for sharing about the imagery work you did with T. I suspect that too is another aspect to tears in response to safe/positive images - the beauty and/or emotional meaning of the image. I have a problem in that I don't recognize what I'm crying about, I don't recognize the feeling (sadness, loss, grief, happiness even!) so I was completely wrong footed by having a teary response in the first place - but it makes sense that something beautiful would bring up tears - being moved in effect.

Thank you, and I wish you luck with the upcoming medical test.

Torn

Feralkittymom (how do you shorten your name? FKM? doesn’t sound quite right. Feral maybe?)

Whatever you like! Meow?

I think Anne's point is well-taken, though it wasn't my impression of the scene. I think "teachable moments" are rare and special, and a T on their game is sensitive to them as much as possible. Tears seem like a pretty visible show of emotion to me. And I think being able to identify our feelings and their origins isn't a distraction or defense necessarily: it's good work.
I hope you can address your feelings about it with her.

Coming at the whole 'Your tears got in the way' idea, maybe she just meant physically- since EMDR revolves around the eye movements and she has to watch your eyes to do it. Your eyes being full of tears might have made it more difficult to continue, plus she wasn't trying to push that button just yet. EMDR Requires a strong connection, from what I understand, and can really dig up some raw emotions. You have to start off easy or you can flood the person I think. Maybe she was just trying to help you start off on an easy foot and didn't want to push too hard.

Hello Sila thanks for replying. We weren’t actually doing EMDR proper, but using buzzers to ‘install’ a safe place with a view to doing visually based EMDR work further down the line. But I appreciate your coming up with a positive explanation for T’s response to me, thank you .

Fwiw I didn’t intend this thread to be about criticizing or blaming my T but seeing as how this is a therapy forum I needed to put my questions in the context of my therapy and it just so happens that T made a bit of a pig’s ear out of responding to my tears (there’s a long backstory about me and my inability to cry, which I didn’t include in this thread as it wasn’t really relevant to my questions.)

I was mostly wanting to find out whether other people had experienced something similar with tears as a response to trying to establish a safe place/positive imagery, because T’s response made me feel like I was doing it all wrong and that I shouldn’t have been crying .

But I do also appreciate having my T’s not so positive responses to my tears noticed and commented on all the same, as I experienced them negatively myself, so thank you everyone for being supportive of me in this and thanks for all your replies .

Torn

I will be doing EMDR for the first time next session, and the T has told me my 'homework' this week is to think of a 'safe place'... I haven't cried - yet! - but I'm struggling, for sure. So, I can kind of understand... I think if I'd have been asked the question when in a particularly low mood, it may well have been enough to set me off, too.

I also understand how you'd feel bad about your T's response to the tears, too. I was recently on the phone with my T (feeling heartbroke, very dramatic!) and I was blubbing so hard I was struggling to speak. Sounding somewhat exasperated, she said, and I quote: "What?! I can't hear you over all the crying!" Like, cheers T, how sensitive!!

Wow that's some foot in mouth comment your T came up with there Justsomegirl!

I'd like to think it was just a bad moment, is your T normally so insensitive? Sounds like you weren't too upset by it but I must say I'd probably be getting off the phone and making little T dolls and sticking pins in them if a T had said that to me. I'm sort of joking but I think I'd be really really upset in reality. How did you feel when she said that?

Hey are you looking forward to starting the EMDR? From what I gather a safe place is essential so that's an important part of the work, in fact I think it's not possible to go ahead with EMDR unless you do have a safe place in place. So to speak

You know I had no problems thinking of a safe place when I was alone (it didn't make me feel all warm and cosy, and I did feel a lot of background teary type feelings, but was actually feeling quite pleased that I'd come up with what I thought was a good one) - it was when I started describing it to T (a witness, an other who makes it real?) that the tears came - it really did surprise me. Something to do with a real other person making it real or more meaningful or emotional, I can't work that one out - why someone else hearing me would make me cry?

I'm sorry you're struggling with it and I hope you manage to bring your safe place into session without the tears (but if they're there, then that's the work too, isn't it?)

Thank you for sharing that, makes me feel less alone and abnormal .

Good luck with your session, I hope it goes well and that the EMDR helps.

Torn

Early on in therapy my T asked me to picture a safe place, although it didn't make me cry, I couldn't picture a single safe place. Nowhere felt safe. Mostly in recent years her office is the one safe place I have....

I do think sometimes these things trigger off all sorts of associations, including a sense of loss, longing, sadness...and so on.

Oh and my T said the same thing to me on the phone after she forgot to call me back when I was desperate. She said she couldn't hear me so why didn't I just send her a text. Righto never felt worse in my life. I'll put it in a text... (she's told me since that it was the only time my texts have been intrusive too). Ouch.

I don't have any real insight, but I will say just that thinking about responding to this post has me tearing up. Safety is a big issue for me, and I can not come up with a place or time that I have felt or feel safe. It's something that I've been coming back to for the last few months, but always with the same results. For me I think the tears come because I have trouble thinking how I can make changes when I can't even get the concept of safety.

Thanks

I'd like to think it was just a bad moment, too. We seem to have been in a pretty destructive cycle lately, with a fair amount of frustration and emotion flying around, things have been said - on both sides - that have been hurtful and not particularly tactful or well thought out, this being one of them. My jaw did kind of hit the floor at the time, yeah, but I was hoping to patch things up as she was flying out on vacation the next day, so I wanted to move past it. I think she just had a lot going on. It's a(nother) human moment I'm forgiving her for... She's not so insensitive usually, no.

I'm actually working with another T in her absense to try and help work through the issues I'm having (with therapy, transference, attachment, this rupture, getting stuck in 'hurt child' mode...) and he's suggested EMDR as part of that. I don't know what to expect, really!

I guess my problem is that the places I have felt good aren't always that safe?! Like, T's office has been a safe place, but now it's entangled in all of these mixed emotions... I have some happy memories of being out riding, but then there's some anxiety involved with that, too, and a couple falls...! Safe?! I have a vivid happy memory of being a schoolgirl and walking across the playground at hometime when school had just broke up for the summer, feeling optimistic and like there were endless possibilities ahead - but then I was alone in that memory, and now I look back at my childhood with mixed feelings, and am not sure I can seperate this image from the rest of it... I don't really have a time or a place that I can look back to and say 'I felt really good' or that I was in a good place in my life... a lot of memories feel bittersweet. Any snippets of good memory that I do have seem to connect too quickly to something negative. The best one I've come up with so far, I think, is: being in the stable, hugging my horse. I'm hoping that's warm and fuzzy (and safe) enough!

I hope you can begin using EMDR as hoped and that you find it helpful

PS: You're not abnormal! x

why someone else hearing me would make me cry?

To be heard/witnessed is validating. It's a form of mirroring. For those of us who never experienced that growing up, it's experienced as a huge outpouring of care and attention. Totally understandable that it could feel overwhelming.

Nighlight I’m sorry you too had T made an insensitive comment, ouch is right!

I feel sad for you that you too had nowhere that felt safe – I was trying to explain this to T today, that it was almost a pointless exercise because I just didn’t know what safe meant, or rather, am completely unable to picture myself feeling safe anywhere.

So your comment (which I read late last night) about T’s office becoming a safe place actually inspired me to suggest it to T – I made a few grumbly remarks about how I didn’t even feel safe in the room and that’s spurred her to make a few changes that will hopefully start to establish some sense of if not safety then at least consistency. I suspect that failing having had any kind of experience of safety in the past, establishing a safe place with T is probably the only way we’re going to learn what safety feels like. Do you think so?

Thanks for replying

Torn