Crying after session

Figured I'd just make a thread about this. I often end up crying after a marriage counseling session. Sometimes, it makes sense, like it was a particularly emotional or intense session. But other times, like today, it was more of a light session, not talking about too much of substance (mostly just about us maybe getting a dog, plus a few other things, but nothing deep). Yet, shortly after getting in the car, I started crying.

I think for days like today, maybe it's that I felt I wasted the session, like maybe there was something could have brought up but didn't, and now I have to wait another week. But I don't know. Or maybe it's just about the transference stuff. Because it doesn't tend to happen with individual T (occasionally, but not that often). MC also tends to make me feel very "safe," so I've also wondered if it's like, "I was in that safe place, and now I'm back out in the scary world again." Or maybe some mix of those?

Does this happen to anyone else? If so, have you figured out what's behind it?

I cry after session if we talk about something new and difficult, that I have never confided in anyone before. It feels like a big leap of faith, and T says it is like removing field dressing on wounds the have been covered to long. We feel connected with good rapport, but then he flicks his eyes side ways to say time is up. He seems to try and apologies for this by seeing how small he can make the gesture, to which I will still obey. The times I do from trusting therapy to help me, and feeling. kind of cruelty in it, is the twenty minutes I spend crying in the stair well before going back to work. T is long done with me by then, and never comes to check on me. How can he care so much during sessions and just don't care between?

Yes, happens often to me. Not sure why either but I hate it because when I get done,the rest of my day and usually the following day is an emotional rollercoaster for me

Any marriage counselling session will make you think about your marriage, whch I infer is not the happiest of topics.

You're not alone. I'm pretty much the same with light sessions. Day after sessions are heavy for me. Sometimes I plan things to say but when the time comes I can't find the words. Be gentle with yourself.

It absolutely happens to me. A lot of times, for me, it's that I get out and realize...I'm still in pain. That it can't be fixed in one session. That I was holding my breath all week for that one session, hoping the pain would stop, but it's still there. Also, it tended to happen a lot with my exT because he was my safe place and my safe person and leaving him was agony.

I have been known to cry after some sessions because I didn't want to leave my 'safe place' and I didn't want to leave my T...

ETA: yeah, exactly what TMC said, basically!

Thanks, this sounds a bit like what I experience. Because there is often much anticipation of the session, worrying that he'll cancel (because there was that long period where he had to cancel frequently because his wife was sick), so then the session actually happens and it sometimes seems to be over so quickly.

So maybe my expectations are too high at times, because there's so much buildup. Like I want there to be some big revelation and/or some intense connection every session, but it can't always be like that. So when it doesn't happen, I feel sad.

Plus, as you said, there's the whole leaving a safe space/safe person thing.

Crying was never something I did in relation to therapy, but I sometimes felt very uneasy after sessions, worse than before, and dissatisfied. I think the intense emotions can be related to the fact that therapy is so unnatural... we go there with a lot on our minds, high expectations and anticipating the meeting for days prior - then all the highly personal interactions and whatever we perceive from it - then suddenly it is cut off because the time is up. It is really not a natural way of interacting, especially when it comes to highly emotional matter.

I experienced similar intense emotional states when in relationships that were strictly time-constrained, i.e. we could be together for several hours or 1-2 days periodically, then had to separate because we were living in different places and other factors. I remember one such relationship in particular that was very disorienting and stressful and I did not understand initially why. I was often in a sort of dissociated state and very desperate for a day or two after the meetings, with all kinds of intense reactions from crying spells to intense anger to sometimes feeling as though the familiar surroundings were alien to me. It was often very disturbing and a few times I impulsively wanted to break off the relationship because I could not tolerate it.

You probably feel that way after MC and not so much after your individual T sessions because you are much more involved and preoccupied with your MC, beyond your marriage issues. I think it is a natural reaction, probably like a sort of sudden withdrawal effect following a highly charged encounter even if the actual content of the discussion is not so deep.

This quote by Virginia Casey has helped comfort me through many times: "Tears are like rain. They loosen up our soil so we can grow in different directions." Maybe you will like this quote too.

I don't cry after every session, but I probably cry after session more often than not. Typically I'll cry after we discuss heavy topics, but I've also cried when I didn't feel particularly connected to T.