Tired after session

Anyone ever feel exhausted after a session?

Today kashi and I had the boundary talk. It then turned into my almost telling him my deepest darkest childhood issues. Not ready for that conversation just yet. But he did share a top level view of his Csa experience which is pretty horrific. It does leave me feeling like I inherently trust him with any abuse material as he more than gets it. But I hate thinking of anyone doing anything terrible to this kind man, once just a boy.

A hard session but a good, meaningful one. It's funny how once I set my mind on working on a practical issue like the driving phobia all of these other issues come to the surface.

And it makes me feel like I want to sleep for 12 hours.

After my last session I was very triggered and I came home and slept for about 12 hours. I needed to not be for a while.
Recently my therapist hinted at her own abuse and I couldn't hear it. It was too much for me to take in. Luckily she recognized that and changed the subject. it is so hard to hear about how other people have been hurt isn't it? I can be much more compassionate to other people than i can be to myself.

Yes , early on in EMDR I would only last until 6.00 pm before having to go to bed , it was exhausting. But I can see how I've improved although I still feel it. Sounds like good work with Kashi.

Hearing their experiences can be so hard. It was worse than I ever imagined and he didn't even go into detail. I want to go back in time and murder the people who exploited him. It is hard to hear yet I know that he has gone through the worst. He is not just a t who learned from books alone.

It's good that your t recognized that her material may not have been appropriate at that moment. I completely agree that others stories bring out empathy while I am only self discusted with my own experiences.

I get that was too sometimes, especially after something that was emotionally draining. I have been known to sleep for hours and hours after a session

I'm wiped out after a session most of the time. In fact I have 'finished' sessions early because they were so intense, that I couldn't keep up any longer or keep focused, so I asked her at times 'can we just leave it there.... and continue next week'. My T is aware of that so normally I have my sessions after work. Afterwards I need to go home and rest and not do anything at all.

When we have to reschedule for any reason and she can only offer midday appointments - having to go back to the office afterwards can be 'interesting'... in those cases I need to make sure I don't have any important meetings that afternoon...

Not necessarily wanting-to-sleep tired, but mentally and emotionally drained. Like wanting to just sit in the room alone by myself for a couple hours (luckily I work from home!) and not deal with relating to other people. It's been tough a few times when I've had to see T at, say 4 p.m., and then H and D get home 10 minutes after I do. I find myself being snippy with them because it's just overwhelming. I generally try to schedule T earlier now. And there's usually a couple hours after MC till they get home, but after heavy sessions like this past Monday, a couple hours isn't enough. I warned H that I was feeling really wiped/fried, so he understood if I was being distant, it wasn't about him. It was that my brain literally couldn't handle more right then.

I often felt the same way. I thought that most of my problems were related to practical things (and the avoidance of them), but just scratch the surface a bit and all those underlying emotional issues become obvious. I still often want to just get better at handling practical things, and as soon as possible (driving phobia is also one of mine), exactly because dealing with all that old emotional stuff underneath can be very overwhelming and draining. Never very effective that way, or most of the time only transiently. I never truly found that simply talking about the emotional issues, trauma etc can change much though, it has to be a combination of investigation and active efforts to try to go against the current and do things differently, whether I want it or not. That can be a good thing for me right after a therapy session: to get into the implementation of whatever I want to change, instead of giving in to the overwhelm. Do something small and simple. It can also be a good distraction from focusing on feelings too much.

If I'm doing good work in therapy, I'm usually exhausted.

I remember coming home from my first session feeling like my brain had just run a marathon. It was fried, but in a good way. Now it's hit or miss on whether or not I'm tired after a session. The heavier ones can be emotionally draining or make me anxious so then I'm often tired. But I also will have a lot of stuff going through my head so it's not always easy to sleep.

I have felt exhausted, but today, I am literally sick--headache, nausea and dizziness. I don't know if it's actually the flu and unrelated to therapy, or if finally getting to some deeper issues today that have been building with family stuff has made me sick. I have had the flu, before, of course, but this feels different, like vertigo. I barely made it driving home, it was hard to stay in the lane.

So now I am wondering if therapy has ever made you sick in addition to tired?

When I was feeling some really intense transference stuff a week ago, for a couple hours after session, I was having chills even though it was warm outside. Like I was shivering. I tend to have trouble eating after an intense session, too. The chills were unusual though. Had an ache in my chest a bit, too--which I associate with feeling things from the past (that's happened a few times before).

Then yesterday, I gave marriage counselor some rather negative feedback, and though I was rather emotional in session, was surprised that I wasn't crying or anything afterward. But it was weird, later in the evening I got really itchy, almost like hives. Later, I fell asleep for a bit and woke up feeling really sick, like my stomach was bothering me. I was OK after an hour or so, but it was like I was having a physiological reaction in place of an emotional one.

Hope you feel better soon!

I will get a sensation of vertigo/room spinning as I am trying to talk about my most traumatic material. Once in a while I will feel ill after session.