Experiencing emotions in session?

I’m curious about how people express emotion in session (if you do that is)?

Do you talk about it? Go silent? Something else?

And, do your Ts catch on?

I know this seems like a rather basic question but it puzzles me. I tend to show very little emotion (not out of choice) or so I've been told — I can literally feel the gap between what I feel vs. what I express.

I also tend to observe my emotions a lot in general (rather than feel it) which of course allows me to talk about it. This has its benefits but I’ve also often wondered if it’s a not-so-good thing given the curious distance (and a 'split') the act of observing seems to create (T opinions on it have differed by a fair amount).

And, my experience with Ts has varied in how well they catch on to what I’m experiencing emotionally — current T thankfully seems to get it fairly quickly which makes my life much easier (and has also said that I show a lot more than what I've been generally led to believe).

I'm not looking for advice on my situation (although of course if you'd like to comment away, go for it!) but rather about your experiences.

Haven’t created a poll because well, it didn’t seem poll-able.

I think it varied for me. Sometimes emotion would bubble up--or burst--and I couldn't control it. Other times, I would go silent, but non-verbally it was pretty clear I was feeling something that I just didn't have words for. And other times I would distance myself through dissociation--this was the least productive both because it would take me away from the feeling, as well as prevent my T from helping me with it. The first two were productive for my T; the last was a frustration to him, and eventually for me. My T was acutely observant in all instances.

But in life, the ability to distance enough to observe could be very useful. The only problem would be if I lost control of it.

Like you I have the observing/split thing going on. And sometimes I know what I am supposed to feel, so I say I feel that - without actually feeling that. So none of these help much when they ask me, as 2 and 3 do, "where do you feel that in your body?"

Some of my emotions are easy to read - sadness, anger - but I often get, even from therapists, a comment like "Your affect is very hard to read." On the whole I like that, but learning to put it aside at times would no doubt be useful.

I tend to cry fairly often in therapy and marriage counseling. It can be interesting the particular things I end up crying about. Like I'd expect to be emotional about a certain thing, but am not. But then some random topic comes up that I didn't realize was bothering me, and I'll just start crying. Which happened today in marriage counseling. I find it can be illuminating, like, wait, if I'm crying about this, then what's going on there? I need my brain to catch up to my emotions.

Sometimes, though, if I'm upset about something, but am unsure about bringing it up for whatever reason, then it becomes anxiety, like I'll start having a panic attack in session. I've come to realize now that, at least within session, if I feel panicky, it means there's something I need to talk about but am avoiding. So I try to address that.

Hope that helps!

I have been angry and frustrated. I usually just tell her like "I become a tad cross when you try to trap me". The woman has said she has only seen anger. I told her I was sad about something once, but she blew it off so I did not bother with doing that again.

I also have a huge gap between what I'm feeling and what I'm expressing. I think it comes from years of forcing myself to act neutral no matter what emotions I was feeling.
I WANT to express emotion in therapy, but it's so hard for me. I don't even know what words to use. So generally it just looks like me stammering, trying to explain to my T how I feel, but not being able to.

I've only recently started seeing T's again. My intent was to show no emotion. I failed at that and showed fear, especially when I met the T and was on my way to barf when he came to get me from the lobby. There are things I cant discuss without emotion. Those things just wont be discussed unless I like the T.

Sometimes I end up crying. Sometimes when I think it will an emotional session, it's not, and sometimes it sneaks up on me, and I become emotional when I didn't expect to. I tend to go silent. When I'm crying, I can't really talk, and my T tries to get me to tell her what I'm feeling, and often I cant.

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.

I'm pretty expressive in general. Though I've been told I can also make weird expressions? Most of the time I'm actually laughing and smiling even when I'm depressed. That's Atypical Depression for you. But when someone knows me well, they can easily see past the smile. I cry only sometimes. Usually talking about abandonment or loss triggers me. When on a difficult subject, I sometimes shut down. I get very quiet and stop making eye contact. Normally, I tell my T to stop right before I shut down, and if she does it prevents me from shutting down. She's usually good about it.

I've experienced feelings of anger and being hurt during my sessions. I try not to show my true emotions. The only times that I came across this was when my T had an issue with me because of something I said or wrote. Most of the time I sat there not knowing what to say and shocked. Other times I tried explaining myself in order not to upset her more. The one time that I showed my true emotions concerning her behavior and response she didn't take well at all. Otherwise we never dug deep enough into my issues in order for me to feel emotions.

I have found they do not handle client emotion as well as they think they do and neither of them can read me. I am not perceived by them as being demonstrative even though to me it seems as though I am almost over the top. The second one admits she can't see it and the first simply bungles it. I try telling them -directly -I am sad or I am displeased-but they often just don't get it or listen. I don't experience emotion a lot in general. I almost never cry - dead pets and parents are pretty much what that is confined to. The first one tried to get me to cry and got frustrated at me when it did not happen. I just didn't have an urge to do so. She also is frustrated because I don't show her emotions (her words not mine) but when I asked for examples other than crying - she just said she didn't know. So I just quit thinking about it

I'm not a very demonstrative person. I know a lot of people find me hard to read. I don't really express emotion much in session; I've only cried once and that was during a rupture. I guess I have a level of self-protection with most topics which has built up over years, but the relationship with T is the one thing I am less self-protective about and more vulnerable, because I rely on him to protect me emotionally. So when something goes wrong with the relationship my guard is at its lowest.

I talk about them, I cry, I nervous-laugh, I do these big expressive sighs (which t hates haha) sometimes I go silent, sometimes I stomp my feet.... I guess it varies.

I express a lot of emotion--crying through snot and spit bubbles, anger that has ended in having to use an ice pack, art, sculpture, writing, excessive talking. It's humiliating that I am like this. I was sobbing even when we had an outside session in a park recently. My therapist doesn't really say much when it's bad. I'm just another appointment in the day. I think it gets old to her, though she hasn't said. The time in the park, she said no one would think anything of my sobbing, that it was just a normal thing.

I don't see any value at all in getting emotional. If I could stop it, and be more like how you describe, I would do that in a heartbeat.

eta: I just remembered that I do go the other way some times and shut down, like yesterday, I just had nothing else to say and left about a half hour early.

Oh dear, Stopdog.. hope you okay now.? I never cried in therapy.. but every session, as thearapist is talking to me telling to shower for 5 mins.. (something I cannt do!) I was having a hot flush.. and feeling very anxious.. I always asked it he can put the fan on for me? sooo embarrassing! he wanted me to do such hard things.. yet I been so lost, and missing him, today is the first wednesday, I have NOT have an appointment with him.. I need to get a life! I wanted to add him as a friend of facebook.. and he said he cant, I felt so stupid. Best of luck everyone with your therapy .

I express positive emotions easily, I think. Negative ones, not so much. I never cried in a therapy session but showed anger and frustration with my first T quite a bit towards the end. My current T mentioned quite a few times seeing emotional reactions in me when I did not feel it myself so he must be good at reading people. In general I prefer to talk about my feelings in therapy rather than showing them.

There are times... when I want.... to hold back in my head.. but then it gushes out.. I want to "keep myself more together" but I feel safe with my T now and it just comes out, kind of naturally.. and I'm one of those "wear your feelings on your sleeve" type person. I wish I could hide it sometimes... My T catches about everything.

lots of emotions in my sessions. i often try to not express them, but my t usually gets me to.

T asks me how i am feeling if we are talking about something upsetting. or he'll ask if im feeling a certain way...like paranoid, or how it feels to be angry with him. sometimes i cry a lot and stare at the floor or cover myself up with the blanket. sometimes i stare off into space and he mentions that i am dissociating. it took a long time for me to express emotions to him.... in the beginning i mostly just sat there with my eyes closed... he called it hypnotizing myself

I feel a lot of things in my sessions. Fear and shame a lot, because those are my issues. They cause me to withdraw and become unable to think or speak like I would like to. Sometimes T notices a change and asks me what I'm feeling, which produces different brilliant responses like "I don't know" or just a head shake. What I often want to respond to that with is "Why?", "Why are you asking?" ("What's your motive?", "Am I safe!"), "How does my answer affect what comes next?" or "What des it seem like to you?". All deflective, all non-answers, which make me made at myself then. Which takes right back to shame and fear, a familiar place

Yes, this is so true for me, too!

I go from frozen to emotional in session. T is helping me learn to express emotions without being terrified by it. It's going very slowly.

Ah, emotions...

I've come to accept that I am a very emotional person. Unfortunately, however, I am often unaware of what I'm feeling in any given moment. And, as such, I run the gamut in terms of how I experience emotions in session with my therapist. I also suffer from a dissociative disorder and that impacts my feelings and how I express them as well.

I am a very in-my-head kind of person. While I have emotions, I do not always know what I'm feeling. Despite that, I will label those feelings based on how I think someone would or should feel in a similar situation. It's all cerebral. Therefore, it's easy for me to seem as though I am in tune with my emotions where, truthfully, I haven't the slightest idea how to really know what I'm feeling. And, that poses problems because I don't know how to express those emotions. So, overall, I often feel out of control and confused. And, that definitely comes across in session. Thankfully, my T is both intuitive and experienced - she "gets" me in spite of me not really understanding myself.

Since I don't know how to appropriately express what I'm feeling, I act out a lot. That can take many forms. I often feel as though I am a child throwing a tantrum. Sometimes, I fight my therapist on things that she asks me to do. I outright tell her no, I ask to leave, I do everything short of stomping my feet. However, I've not yet cried in front of her. I think I tend to dissociate before that comes to pass, but smaller parts definitely take over and behave in ways that I am not proud of. I'm never mean to her, but I am defiant and willful, to say the least. At the same time, depending on the situation, I can completely shut down. I become non-responsive or avoid. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why I act one way versus the other, but it's apparent to my therapist that I am experiencing a strong emotion and she tries to work with me to identify it and sit with it. At this stage in the game, we're not always successful and the dissociative disorder has its own set of challenges, but it's a process - I didn't get this way over night and I am certainly not going to be recovered that quickly either.



Emotions are hard. It doesn't matter whether it is a positive or so-called negative emotion, I am rarely able to discern what it is or know how to express it in a healthy, productive manner. But, that's why I'm in therapy, after all!

Normally no. I find therapy more cerebral. But I think my feelings before I feel them. That said I became emotional once in EMDR. It came out rather suddenly. They were 2 other times I can recall. Once with my new therapist and once with my first. Also I should say that once I leave therapy the session stays with me for days and after thinking about for a while I do once in a while have a therapy "after effect" where I do feel intense emotions for maybe 5 or 10 mins.

We are dealing with this right now. I hate any negative emotions and disassociate but in therapy and out. I have a huge fear of crying in front of people. I have been doing a project outside of therapy that is very painful and my fear of crying. There are times I know it is appropriate to be upset and want to cry but it is like there is a block there.