How to Understand and Cope When Therapy Leaves You Feeling Heavy
You walk out of the room or close the Zoom window and instead of feeling lighter, you actually feel worse after therapy. Your mind feels heavy, your mood feels lower. You ask yourself: “Is this normal?”
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This is normal and pretty common. I’ve been in therapy for years, and I know firsthand what it’s like to feel worse after therapy before the benefits show up.
There’s a reason why you may feel worse leaving a therapy session than when you started. And that’s because therapy doesn’t always feel good.
This may sound counter-intuitive. We go to therapy to feel better about ourselves, talk about our issues, and work on our goals. Those are all things that should make us feel good, right?
Not necessarily. Much like going to the gym, therapy is a workout for your mind. Not every session will feel great. But, over time the work builds strength, clarity, and growth. We might just not feel those gains in the moment.
Today, we’re going to talk about why it’s ok to feel down after a therapy session. We’ll discuss:
- Why do I feel worse after a therapy session?
- Why is feeling this okay?
- What can I do for myself when I notice these feelings?
Why Feeling Worse After Therapy Can Actually Mean You’re Making Progress
Let’s explore this by continuing with our fitness analogy. Whether you are working out to achieve a goal or it is part of your routine, you are bound to have work outs that don’t feel great. Your workout may be harder because you’ve had a stressful day or week. Maybe you’re overtraining and not giving yourself enough time to recover. Maybe you’re not properly fueling your body.
All of these factors (and many others) can make a workout feel so much harder, and can even feel demoralizing. The same concepts apply to therapy.
Think of therapy as a mental workout. There are going to be days when you enter your session and there’s outside noise bringing you down. What’s great about therapy is that you can use your session to decompress and vent. However, you may notice after your session that you’re not feeling quite right. You may even be feeling heavier or more drained than when you walked in.
This can happen for a variety of reasons:
- Your problems aren’t solved yet:
Therapy provides a great space to talk; however, your problems will likely not be resolved during your session. Sometimes, just talking about your negative feelings may not be enough to make you feel better. If therapy is bringing up more anxiety than you expected, our anxiety therapy in NYC page explains how we help clients manage these feelings. - You didn’t have enough time:
If you only have 45-60 minutes to unpack an entire week’s worth of events, you may find there are things you can’t get to. Feeling like you didn’t cover everything may make you leave therapy feeling worse. - Some hidden emotions came to the surface:
Some days we walk into therapy feeling like there is nothing wrong; yet, when we dive into our session, we notice something more implicit or subconscious that may be affecting us. When we become aware of these subtle, negative feelings, we are bound to leave therapy feeling lower than when we walked in. After all, we didn’t even notice the negative feelings in the first place.
These are certainly not the only reasons we sometimes feel worse after therapy. There are countless reasons why you may be experiencing this. What’s important is to understand this phenomenon and know that it’s ok.
How Feeling Worse After Therapy Can Be a Sign of Progress
Since I’ve been in my own therapy for quite some time, I’ve become familiar with feeling down after leaving a session. I’ve had to remind myself this is ok because this is all part of the process.
Remember our fitness analogy, when you have a hard time at the gym, you recognize this as a part of the process. You go back for the next workout, even if you give yourself an extra rest day.
Therapy is the same way. Even if therapy is supposed to be helpful and make us feel better, it is also work and work doesn’t always feel good.
Therapy requires deep self-reflection, unpacking long-held beliefs, or coming to terms that something in our life is not quite right. This can stir up uncomfortable feelings, especially if we are new to this type of work. It makes sense therapy won’t always feel good.
This work helps our growth and personal development. Even if our feelings get lower after a session, we can remind ourselves that therapy is part of a longer term goal to have a better understanding of ourselves, our relationships, and our life circumstances.
It’s not going to always be easy. You’re not going to always come out of a session feeling on top of the world. The life you are leading is tough and complex. Your therapy should reflect that!
Just because it can be normal to feel down after therapy, that doesn’t mean you should resign yourself to these negative feelings. It can feel unsettling to go through this and it’s normal to question if something’s wrong.
When confronted with these difficult feelings, there are things we can do to process them after a session. This kind of emotional heaviness is also common for those dealing with depression, which we address through depression therapy in NYC.
What to Do If You Feel Worse After Therapy
There are a variety of things you can do for yourself when you notice you’ve left a therapy session feeling down. If you’re confronted with these feelings, consider doing the following:
- Treat yourself!
Whether it’s a sweet treat, your favorite meal, or getting cozy with a book, it is important to take care of yourself as you put in work to feel better and grow. - Accept reality
As we said earlier, sometimes therapy is going to bring up things that are troubling for us. The sooner we accept this reality, the sooner we can feel a bit better. - Write about it
Journaling can be a powerful tool to process your feelings. Sometimes writing about what’s happening in your head can give you an opportunity to let it all out. This could be helpful if you want to unpack things with your therapist, but don’t want to forget about how you were feeling in the moment. If you’re processing deeper issues, our trauma therapy in NYC page shares more about how we work with clients to safely process difficult memories. - Talk about it
Most therapists are happy to unpack feelings from a previous session. Your therapist can help you process why you may be having these negative feelings. You can also give feedback to them if you think their approach to a certain subject didn’t sit well with you.
This list is by no means exhaustive. There are many things you can do to address these feelings when you walk out of therapy feeling a bit down. The important thing is to take care of and keep showing up for yourself. You’re already doing the hard work by going to therapy.
Want to Explore These Feelings Together?
If you’ve been starting to feel worse after therapy, it doesn’t mean something’s wrong. It might mean you’re right where you need to be. At Lightline Therapy, we help high achieving individuals navigate these moments, look beneath the surface, and turn discomfort into personal growth.
Book a free consultation today and let’s explore these feelings together.
FAQs
1. Why do I sometimes feel worse after therapy?
You may, on occasion, feel worse after therapy because therapy brings buried thoughts and emotions to the surface. Even though this feels uncomfortable, it means you’re engaging deeply with the work. Much like muscle soreness after exercise, the discomfort is a sign of growth and progress.
2. Does feeling worse after therapy mean it’s not working?
It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes it actually means the opposite. Therapy requires confronting painful emotions and patterns, which doesn’t always feel good in the moment. The long-term goal is greater clarity, resilience, and emotional well-being.
3. Should I talk to my therapist about feeling worse after sessions? I don’t want them to get offended, be hurt, etc
You should absolutely talk to your therapist about this feeling (as well as any other feeling that comes up too!). Therapy is a collaborative process, and it’s important to talk about when you’re feeling worse. This can help you and your therapist understand what’s coming up and adjust the approach if needed.
And don’t worry about offending your therapist. They’re a professional and this is part of the job. Plus, you talking to them about something so raw and real is actually a great sign of trust. Essentially, it’s an honor to talk about this.
