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Is it normal to feel mentally exhausted after therapy

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999FnR

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Hi, recently started therapy and meds and had 3rd session today (one a week) and I seem to get home and feel mentally drained and lower than normal.
I am due to start edmr in my next session and today she went through the breathing and relaxing exercises and staircase to my safe place, when I left I felt very zoned out and strange I was due to get back on the underground train back home but couldn’t face it so I went and sat in the pub on my own for two hours (probably not a great idea I know) until I was ready to travel home, and now again I feel mentally drained and quite low mood does anyone else feel
Like this?
 
Oh ya.... i call it my emdr hangover. It usually takes me about 24 hours to get my brain to go back into my head where it belongs and to stop floating around the damn room. I've (finally!) learned that pre-planning for that is how I'm gonna get thru - so I just plan on taking the next day off and do non-important stuff that doesn't require any brain cells.

It sucks, but it's totally normal.
 
Oh ya.... i call it my emdr hangover. It usually takes me about 24 hours to get my brain to go back into my head where it belongs and to stop floating around the damn room. I've (finally!) learned that pre-planning for that is how I'm gonna get thru - so I just plan on taking the next day off and do non-important stuff that doesn't require any brain cells.

It sucks, but it's totally normal.
Thanks, yeah a hangover is a good way of putting it I guess will make sure future appointments are not around times when I’m busy as feel like I just need to be by myself for a while, I could have sat in that pub on my own all day just thinking
 
Ooooooh yeeeeeeah.

Massive therapy hangover.

I also tend to double down by stressing the f*ck out up to a few days before therapy, and then being simply shattered after therapy.

I can minimize both by doing StressCup stuff to blow off as much stress both before and after, but? For me that’s like eating before going out drinking, pounding water during, and then waking to a greasy breakfast. It doesn’t eliminate the effects of a few too many, but it sure as hell makes life infinitely better to be smart about it.
 
Yep, therapy hangovers. Horrible.

I scheduled a 'no meeting day' the day after therapy in work to reduce the number of meetings I had to help me function, during the harder times in therapy.
No I find that having meetings the day after helps.

So maybe build in things for the next 24 hours that help stabilise you.
 
ETA… It’s also something that makes sense, when one stops and thinks about it… about why trauma therapy is so much more like reconstructive surgery & physio (walk in, wheelchair out, suffer through months of pain… to be able to not just walk but run/jump/climb); IE it gets worse before it gets better. Meanwhile most therapy for other disorders/problems people start feeling instantly better.

People with PTSD aren’t just remembering the past, we’re reLIVING it. So, for a time we’re not only deliberately existing in two places at once… but our physical/mental state that made total sense back when? Is what we’re reliving now. So

- if after clearing bodies out of rubble for 15 or 72 hours, I could curl up on the softest, most lovely, blissful piece of asphalt, to sleep myself out?
- Or needed to go out & get f*cked up, get in a few fights, get laid, etc. because my adrenaline is still screaming through my blood, just to begin to calm down & clear my head?
- Or just had to sit and stare out at infinity, until I was done, wracked with too many emotions or none?
- Or am buckling to the ground to shake/cry/puke my guts out?
- Or desperately need a hot shower, cold beer, and to go for a run / start a construction project, get filthy productive & active, then repeat the hot shower cold beer
- Be left alone, FFS.
- Be surrounded by others, that I trust and rely upon, in as much physical contact as possible… conversely…feeling lost, empty, like there’s a hole inside me, impossibly lonely without the camaraderie and understanding needed in that moment to feel like ME.
- Et Cetera?

It ALSO makes sense that reliving the times that brought me to those places would bring back being in THOSE places.
 
Hiya, yep I feel like that frequently, but then you get used to it and then it doesn't really matter and lessons. Revisiting past traumas and bad memories in detail takes ALOT of mental and emotional energy!!! Your going to feel Zapped! But have faith in the process. 😊
 
it's normal for me.
at the other extreme is the breakthrough high. the breakthrough sessions are not so normal for me, but they can keep me pumped indefinitely and settle into unlimited growth and direction.
 
am due to start edmr in my next session

Therapy hangover, yes, though not always just when something seems to be extra hard. Sometimes I even go home feeling relief.

I noticed you said you haven’t started EMDR yet. EMDR certainly amplifies this effect. I hope you’re letting your T know what’s going on AFTER therapy so they can help you.
 
Oh, absolutely. I vacillate between exhaustion and energized. Either way, that's how I know it was a good, productive session. It's like exercising, it releases that cocktail of hormones. Adrenaline and norepinephrine and cortisol and endorphins.
 
Yes absolutely I get therapy hangovers too. I was going to make a thread asking the same when this one popped up.

And others have said they experience it too.

I suppose it makes sense really; we’re poking the bear on purpose and that will spike adrenaline and whatever other brain chemicals which when you come down from them, will leave us exhausted?
 
There can be a wide wide range of reactions. All the way fro physically sick to too f*&^ed up to drive myself home to sleep for hours to feeling like a caged tiger, wanting a fight, looking for prey, a fight, some way to burn off the anger and aggression.

It can last hours or days depending on what we worked on and how intense therapy was.

Just know there are two separate things - hangover and if you are doing EMDR reprocessing stress. Hangover usually lasts a couple days unless you unlock and work on trauma memories. Reprocessing is just added work and stress that can go on days or months. Reprocessing varies day to day, hour to hour even and usually comes with recovered memory for me. I found when working on my first trauma the memories were like a timeline in chronological order.
 
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