Strange, detached feelings and behaviours after sessions

Sometimes after sessions I feel very strange and detached and have a lot of scattered thoughts. Not often but sometimes I have the urge to do destructive things, especially binge drinking and occasionally self-harm. Binge drinking is a big problem for me that I work on a lot with my therapist. It’s really frustrating that I have such feelings after some sessions and feel compelled to drink. I can’t figure out if it’s a particular type of session that triggers me, as it doesn’t tend to happen if we’re talking about particularly difficult things. It just feels random. I see my T once every two weeks.

I’ve mentioned it to my T – not making a point that it happened after a session with her but just when I last drank alcohol which happened to be “after our last session.” I don’t know how to tell her and it feels like she’ll be tired of hearing that I’ve done it again after so much work. Do any of you get strange, numb, scrambled feelings after sessions? How would you tell your T? It seems to reflect on our therapeutic relationship somehow, and I don’t even know how. I sometimes feel kind of "cut off" from her afterwards, I don't know, even the slightest thing she says/does that I read as insensitive, and most of the time I'm not even aware of it, just that I'm feeling "strange." I'd like to know if anyone else finds themselves doing "destructive" things (or things you don't want to do) after a session.

I often used to dissociate after sessions. And sometimes I would have to go to bed after. Sessions can stir up all sorts of feelings, in my experience. I don't drink (due to alcoholism) but if that were an option... I might.

I think it is probably useful for you and t to talk about why the reactions to sessions. I definitely do the strange, numb, scrambled this that you mention

I get that way as well. My urges to use less-than-ideal coping mechanisms are always strongest the night of the session and the following day. After that I settle somewhat.

Let your T so you can both start to notice patterns. Talking about it with my T also helped us find some fixes in session to try to reduce how messed up I got afterwards.

I go to a bar after every session for the last couple of months. Because yeah i feel strange.

Therapy can stir painful memories of 'not getting enough' especially sessions where we felt even closer to T.
Self harm can be a dysfunctional way of trying to give ourselves what we never got. It's the only way some of us knew how.

Might not be that. That's just my experience.

I have had several sessions where I leave feeling weird, strange, not myself, not connected to the world... ect. It doesn't happen every time, not even most the time. Most the time there is something in session that happens, sometimes there's not. I just leave and feel weird.

I don't drink afterwards except maybe one time. I walk about 4 miles home after session so I have a lot of time to think or I put on an audiobook to keep the noise in my head silent.

I find that when I have these sessions.. things are shifting for me; so I see them as good things, even when they feel scary, uncomfortable, or just unsettling.

I do find that the first 24-36 hours after a session, good or bad, are the hardest for me as I crave more time with t, the safety of the space, and the comfort of someone walking with me, holding/containing me.

This weird, detached feeling sounds to me like you're dissociating. For me, my brain goes numb and/or I get detached in order not to feel/experience painful/strong emotions that I wouldn't be able to handle on my own. Seems logical to me, that you'd feel like this after your session with your therapist, especially if you talked about difficult topics and/or the session was emotionally intense in other ways.

Also it makes sense in a way that in a situation like this you'd turn to drink/self-harm if these are your established coping mechanisms.

Talk to your T how you feel afterwards, about feeling dissociated, numb, detached. Ask her/him, if you together can come up with ideas how to better cope in situations like these? For me, the dissociation quite often would start in session, sometimes head on, sometimes quite subtle. My T was quite good on picking up on the signs. So quite often she would do some grounding exercises with me at the end of intense sessions. Once or twice when dissociation hit me pretty hard, she'd asked me if I wanted to sit for a while in the waiting area in order to regroup. Which was helpful for me, so I could come round in my own time and didn't have to go outside in a pretty dissociated state. And she'd asked me what I would do afterwards and/or this evening. So having a plan in place (like taking a bath, watching a movie, do some nice cooking, having a friend come over etc.) helped me to cope in more healthy ways.