I think sometimes I have prolonged flashbacks, other times what I experience is days and days of feeling weird unreal and frightened and T describes that as an abreaction- often it starts after a particular session or flashback, but it is stuff coming out, processing - better out than in. Other times - a lot lately - I feel depersonalised which is yet another frightening feeling - from early life when I had to shut down completely to the extent I no longer felt real.
I think therapy is a long process of tolerating these and lots of other weird/hard experiences. To heal the pain and the dissociation at some point you have to - momentarily sometimes, or abruptly especially with EMDR - relive the experience and it feels exactly like it did at the time - overwhelming, fragmented, immature and senseless. But the difference is at least now only PART of brain believes that stuff - the part that is your adult brain knows it is not like that anymore, and slowly it can start to integrate it. I find as you go further along that, although the reexperieincing, flashbacks or whatever are just as unbearable, you get better at handling it, hanging in there, and your adult brain is better at getting hold of it and integrating it. It is exhausting though, and it can and does make ordinary day to day functioning much harder.
I don't know what treatment your therapist does, but EMDR sets off a bit of an mini explosion under the blocks and over the next few days all manner of stuff bubbles up - then settles down, reorganised. With that and other specialised trauma modalities, therapy doesn't have to take as long as the trauma, or anywhere near it.
I do think it might be a good idea to talk to your T and make sure she understands you need to be feeling safer and more contained before you leave. That is very important - you need lifelines to hang onto through all this stuff. But basically what you describe is pretty par for the course with therapy when it hits the spot!
