Feeling Emotionally Drained After Therapy: 4 Tips To Manage Your Therapy Hangover

Is it normal to feel exhausted and fatigued after an emotionally open and vulnerable therapy session? Absolutely.

Therapy is hard work, especially when we unpack stories and experiences we’ve suppressed for years. Sometimes, you leave a session feeling extra tired, disoriented, and uncomfortable.

This is like the equivalent of moving your body and exercising after a long period of inactivity. Your body is acclimating to the stress and changes now that you are becoming more active.

Similarly, if you’ve been suppressed, avoiding, or holding back parts of yourself or your emotions for years, releasing a bit of your thoughts and feelings may bring about discomfort and exhaustion. Engaging in emotional work and processing is work.

4 tips to managing your therapy hangover

1. Take care of yourself and take it slow

   • If you can, try to schedule nothing after your therapy appointments so you have a break to transition back into your day. Or schedule lighter activities, meetings, and assignments, rather than something important and overwhelming.

   • Do all the things that you’ve learned in therapy so far. Take deep breaths, practice self compassion, be kind to yourself, reach out to loved ones, listen to a favorite piece of music, eat something delicious, etc.

   • Allow your nervous system, mind, body, and spirit to integrate everything it’s doing

2. Move your body and get of your head

   • Our bodies hold tension, aches, trauma, and more. Simply moving your body can do wonders for these sources of somatic distress.

3. Journal

   • Try to get your thoughts out of your head onto paper. For some reason, I find it more helpful and alleviating to physically write with a pen onto a piece of paper rather than typing it on my laptop or phone.

4. Tell your therapist

   • When clients tell me about their therapy hangover experiences, I can adjust and adapt their treatment plan accordingly.

   • Maybe the pace of therapy needs to slow down and we are processing trauma too quickly. Perhaps things are overwhelming right now because of life transitions and changes.

   • We can learn new skills or practice old skills to compartmentalize feelings and thoughts before leaving session. We can go over a plan for the rest of the day and the following day for support and care in case the fatigue is especially bad.

Confronting the truths about ourselves we want to hide, disavow, or suppress is liberating, strange, and beautiful, yet also humiliating, painful, and terrifying.

I remember my own journey in therapy as a client as my truths emerged and re-emerged, I felt emotions I’ve never thought were possible and wanted to hide in my apartment for weeks. Yet, on the other side, now I realize this was part my healing journey. Healing is worth it.

TLDR

• Feeling fatigued and/or emotionally drained is unofficially called a therapy hangover.

• A therapy hangover is “normal”

• A therapy hangover is like going to the gym or moving your body after a long period of no movement/exercise, it is exhausting and draining on your body

• Ways to take care of yourself after a particularly draining therapy session includes: 1) Moving your body, 2) Journaling, 3) Engaging in self care and things that feel good for you, and 4) Telling your therapist so they can gauge and work with you to either slow down the pace of therapy or find ways for you to feel more in control before you leave session.