Post-telehealth therapy emotional dips commonly occur due to emotional processing, session intensity, and therapeutic engagement, representing normal responses that can be effectively managed through proper session pacing, recovery time, and therapeutic guidance from licensed mental health professionals.
Ever felt emotionally drained after a therapy session and wondered if that's normal? Understanding post-telehealth therapy emotional dips is crucial for your mental health journey - and these temporary mood changes after virtual sessions are more common than you might think. Let's explore why this happens and how to navigate these feelings effectively.
Why Do I Feel Down After My Telehealth Therapy Session?
Many people seek telehealth therapy sessions for various beneficial reasons. Virtual therapy can provide convenient access to mental health support, reduce barriers to care, and offer a sense of comfort in receiving treatment from familiar surroundings. Some individuals may also pursue telehealth therapy because it’s often associated with positive emotional outcomes.
However, some clients may experience the opposite effect after their virtual sessions, such as a temporary drop in their mood levels, potentially leading to feelings of sadness or thoughts of hopelessness commonly associated with depression. Understanding the range of possible emotional responses to telehealth therapy may help you better comprehend why your sessions might not immediately make you feel better and how to adjust your approach to gain more benefits from your mental health care.
Potential causes of post-therapy emotional dips
Note that post-therapy emotional dips are not a mental illness listed in the DSM-5. However, this term might be used to describe a sense of sadness, melancholy, or distress after engaging in a telehealth therapy session.
There can be various causes of sadness or depression after participating in virtual therapy. Mental health treatment and emotional responses are closely interconnected; what impacts your therapeutic experience may also affect your mind and mood. Below are a few of these potential causes.
Emotional exhaustion
Low mood after a therapy session could be due to the emotional energy expended during your session. If you’re discussing more difficult topics than usual or engaging in a different therapeutic approach, your emotional reserves may need time to recover. If you don’t provide yourself with adequate self-care or recovery time after an intense session, you may experience an emotional crash, causing fatigue and potentially sinking your mood.
Your first step in addressing a saddened state after a therapy session could be to plan for the next session and ensure you schedule some downtime afterward. However, avoid completely isolating yourself, as connection can be healing during vulnerable moments. Activities that promote emotional regulation, physical comfort, and gentle self-compassion may be helpful. In addition, ensure you communicate with your therapist about the intensity of your sessions and how you’re managing between appointments.
Unrealistic expectations
If you are feeling depressed or unhappy after telehealth therapy, it may help to ask yourself what you hope to accomplish through your sessions. Below is a list of reasons people may be pursuing therapy:
- To improve overall mental health
- To manage specific symptoms
- To process trauma
- To achieve better relationships
- To develop coping strategies
- To gain self-understanding
- To relieve stress
- To address specific mental health conditions
- To boost emotional resilience
- To fix sleep issues
If your primary motivation for therapy is a goal for which you are not seeing results or the results aren’t coming as quickly as you expected, you might feel down and discouraged. It may be helpful to note that therapeutic changes may not have tangible effects in days or weeks. Some therapeutic processes can take months to have an impact.
It could also be beneficial to look closely at the root motivation behind your goal. Is your goal of reducing anxiety about eliminating all uncomfortable feelings? Or is it about developing healthier ways to respond to those feelings? Reframing your goal may help with expectation misalignment.
Another way to reframe your efforts is to try focusing on what you have accomplished instead of what you haven’t. Can you manage emotions more effectively than before? Communicate more clearly in relationships? Recognize unhelpful thought patterns?
Emotional processing
People often engage in therapy to alleviate emotional distress, so some may be confused about how therapy could temporarily worsen it. Therapeutic conversations can be a healthy way to process difficult emotions or experiences. However, in situations involving deep-seated issues or trauma, your emotional capacity may be pushed to its limit, and a therapy session could temporarily tax your psychological resources.
Some people may believe emotional processing and depression are separate experiences, but intense emotional processing, especially of difficult material, can sometimes heighten depression risk and make the following symptoms worse:
- Changes in your sleep cycle, whether insomnia or hypersomnia
- Increased fatigue
- Heightened irritability
- Intensified negative emotions, like anxiety or sadness (can be triggered by processing difficult emotional content)
Some therapeutic approaches may be better than others at managing emotional intensity instead of heightening it. If you are going through a particularly difficult therapeutic process and notice that sessions seem to be making your emotional state worse instead of relieving it, you may want to temporarily shift toward a more stabilization-focused approach, like mindfulness techniques, grounding exercises, emotion regulation skills, or resource development.