How does anyone else here who has had the experience of their T saying, something you had told them was upsetting and had made them - the T - feel like crying, feel about that?

And this isn't an ego response question. Not a "I don't pay a T to cry blah blah blah ego rubbish"

On a genuine feeling level . I was terrified that T would cry. I don't know why. I had to stare at the wall and hold myself rigid. I mean it felt good I guess, I dunno. But it was such a new experience for me that I was like a deer caught in a cars headlights.

[DP_2017]

Originally Posted by Mouse_62

How does anyone else here who has had the experience of their T saying, something you had told them was upsetting and had made them - the T - feel like crying, feel about that?

And this isn't an ego response question. Not a "I don't pay a T to cry blah blah blah ego rubbish"

On a genuine feeling level . I was terrified that T would cry. I don't know why. I had to stare at the wall and hold myself rigid. I mean it felt good I guess, I dunno. But it was such a new experience for me that I was like a deer caught in a cars headlights.

The only time i cried in t...
He did too. I loved it. It was moving and made me feel cared for and not alone.

[MobiusPsyche]

It could be scary like the first time you realize your parents aren't all powerful.

But it can also trigger a connection, a moment when both of you are feeling the same thing.

I haven't made my T cry although she's teared up a few times. It makes me feel connected to her and like she's an actual human being, not some perfect creature that has mastered and conquered emotion (which is what I think sometimes, that she just doesn't have emotions anymore because she is able to handle them so well).

I'm sorry you didn't feel a connection then.

[LostOnTheTrail]

Last January, I had a strange experience where I'd posted something in a Facebook support group I use. It was an excerpt from my journal that I wanted to share, concerning an upcoming anniversary. In another window, I had a conversation open with a friend, to whom I wanted to send a link.

Rather than copy and paste the link, I somehow copied and pasted the entire journal entry into the chat box, and sent the message before I'd realised.

In the journal entry, I revealed my innermost feelings about this upcoming anniversary, and read an excerpt to R to help her understand why I was embarrassed by having revealed this truth to my friend.

When I looked up, she was wiping her eyes. That was quite a moment. I felt held and companioned in a new way...and I think that was the moment I realised that I could trust her.

[jeremiahgirl]

Sometimes as clients we are disconnected from those we need most. I believe this happens because “both” feel vulnerable and unable to express emotions. This can happen in therapy; however I believe it’s healthy to hear emotions from a therapist.

I experienced this one time when discussing something very sad. I was sad, and looked up and saw my T’s eyes, red he was fighting back the tears.

Expressing emotions are good, but perhaps the timing can produce a need to “divert” one’s attention. It just depends on the present situation.

I normally feel very connected. This nearly sent me running for the hills.
I did say "that's not the worse that happened to me" and shrugged me shoulders.
I guess when you've lived with this knowledge all your life, it's bit like "why you crying. That was years ago" lol

[TrailRunner14]

There was something that I wanted to bring out and be known but I could not put it into real words.

I wrote it on a card, took it with me and he read it.

We talked very generally about it and I believe I saw tears in his eyes. I wasn’t all there but I believe that is what I saw.

I was sitting cross legged on the floor and I wrapped my arms around my knees and kind of curled up into a protective ball. For some reason that felt safe to me.

I haven’t really thought about that before.

[Moment]

I guess I would wonder why the therapist was telling me that--not that they shouldn't, but what the therapist was trying to convey. Seeing tears in someone's eyes, or seeing a change in expression, is one thing. But a therapist telling you that they felt they wanted to cry, I'd wonder why that was being shared. Is it because the therapist is trying to convey that the client seems to be cut off from normal feelings about an event--that although the client is not showing emotion it is in fact an emotion-laden event and that a normal human reaction would be to want to cry?

As for your response, going rigid and feeling terrified, I guess I see three possibilities:
1) You feel that your therapist could "lose control" and that terrifies you as other people have lost control in the past and that has been bad for you. You want the therapist to maintain control for your own sense of safety.
2) You feel terrified by this expression of caring, because it is hard for you to accept the genuine caring of others because you have been betrayed/abandoned/let down in the past and expressions of love/caring have, in your experience, been a prelude to bad things happening
3) You feel terrified because if you open your own heart and allow yourself to feel the kind of pain at your own experience that your therapist is capable of feeling about your experience, you fear becoming overwhelmed with pain and sadness, in other words, that you yourself might "lose control" and/or fall apart. In that case perhaps your therapist is trying to model that one can feel deep emotion and still hang in there and survive it. Or perhaps you tend to downplay your experience and deny its effects, and you fear acknowledging the reality of it because then that means you have to actually deal with it and the implications of it in a way you never had before.

I'm right there with you that knowing someone cares can feel "good" even while it's a little scary. It takes some times to come to grips with all this stuff. Or at least it did for me.

T didn't actually cry, thank gwad.
She said "that's upsetting, I feel like crying" and she had to reorganise herself.
I felt she was trying to convey to me a feeling I don't have.
I'd have it for another baby. T is always saying that she's amazed that given my history, I was able to use it and make sure my children didn't ever have to share any of my experiences. Because often when I show no empathy for the baby me, she says "ok, what if it was one of your babies" then I become very animated and protective. But for the baby me? Don't have much feeling at all.
When T was in Spain at an art exhibition one yr. There was some artists instalation on a river bank of a giant larger than life spider protecting its young underneath it.
She sent me a photo sayin "this reminded me of you"

[TeaVicar?]

Once I spent the whole session talking about a particular time when I was a teenager. By the end of the session, he looked destroyed. Not crying but close. I felt good in the sense that I had reached him and that he cared but guilty for damaging him. He comes across as quite stoic, so it's always a surprise when he shows his feelings.

How lovely that she's so thoughtful and sends you photos Mouse.