emotional flashbacks in therapy

I had an emoitional flashback in therapy today, triggered by trying to explain them.... it was very bizaar because my therapist seemed almost uncomfortable by my behaviour, which made me feel weird. It must be very strange witnessing an emotional flashback someone is having because i just go inwards and shake and I am not in the room. I know I look like I am in pain. I am kinda scared about going back because I just don't know if my therapist can handle it. They are not a trauma informed therapist, which is where I am struggling to communicate my experience with them. But I have felt comfortable with them up until this point.

Were you able to talk to them at all about what happened before you left the session? I would try talking to them about it and hopefully they can be honest in how they feel about working with that.
I know last week I had a really strange dissociative reaction with my T (I disassociate a lot but this felt completely different) and he reacted in a way that intellectually feels strange to me. I don’t know how to interpret it at all... if he was worried, uncomfortable, confused... my behavior was not anything he had seen from me before. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it as it was too close to the end of the session but I am sure we will next week.

we vaguely talked about it. She just asked if I wanted to come back next and that I should. I don't know what to make of their reaction because sometimes it feels dismissive. This is the first time I have done this with them so maybe they weren't used to me acting that way rather then used to that behaviour. usually when I have dissociated in session with other therapists I have also felt completely abandoned but also that they know whats happening to me. but thats because they have been trauma informed.


I hope your talk next session goes well and is productive in the healing process! :-)

Was it a teletherapy appointment? My T and I discussed the fear of me disassociating and her not being in the room with me to help me out and feel safe. For that reason, we talked about avoiding going too deep.

When I do disassociate, she gets a bit concerned. She also seems to get frustrated because she didn't notice the signs early enough.

My T is very trauma informed but in a different way than other trauma T’s I have worked with because he doesn’t specialize in trauma. Personally this works far better for me. Anyway, it sounds like maybe you are fairly new to this T or just starting to move deeper into your work with them. Honestly, I can see my T saying something similar to what your T said. He wouldn’t mean to be dismissive but until he knew me better he wouldn’t want to make a big deal of it or draw too much attention to it. So his biggest concern would be that I seemed to have “come back” before I left the office and that I would keep coming to therapy. He would be a little concerned that because I had triggered I might feel to scared or ashamed to return and then he can’t help. Now that he knows me better he still doesn’t draw a lot of attention to my dissociative episodes but we have a good enough understanding of eachother for him to know if he needs to help bring me back, if he needs to let me stay there for a bit or if I am finding my way back on my own. Once I am back we will talk about it if there is enough time left in the session. This past week I dissociated differently than usual and he could tell I was calm so he let me be. When I came back he made sure I was OK, and would be in session next week but there wasn’t time to process it.