Is it normal to become emotional during your sessions? I have my first session tomorrow and I'm worried I'll be crying the entire time.

Happy Tuesday friends. Question for you all: I have recently started ERP therapy (about one month ago) and I feel in a way it has helped. But I also notice that I feel the thoughts I do have are SO intense that I feel like I’m gonna explode and then I’ll cry and get upset but then feel better after having a “freak out”. Does this happen to any of you guys? Also, I told my therapist yesterday some of the exposures we had been doing made me uncomfortable. Like really really uncomfortable. She made me feel a little bad about not doing it and stated this would prolong my progress if I didn’t do it. I’m not sure if I should push my self to do this exposure because she told me to or to stick up for myself and move at my own pace. Thanks everyone.

I feel like my therapist knows my issues well enough by now, why haven’t we started erp or why hasn’t she given me any strategies to help when I’m triggered? I’ve had 4 sessions. She just says we have to stick to the method that she works by, but if I don’t know when we will start the work that actually helps me, how can I feel confident in sticking with the therapy? I am so unsure. I keep asking her but she never gives me an answer. It’s not too much to ask to know when the help will actually start is it?! If the next couple of sessions go by and we still haven’t talked about strategies or erp, I will get so anxious because I can only afford 12 sessions 😔 I don’t know what to do. People are saying to be patient and go with it, but I can’t trust it. I would have expected to start some sort of erp plan. If in the next couple of sessions we haven’t started it, what should I do? (I get really triggered by phrases like red flags or that doesn’t sound good in the comments, just objective advice would be so appreciated 🙏🏻)

I just started working on my first exposure today with my therapist after screening and creating the lists for several weeks now. We did an exposure together and now I feel 100x worse than I did coming in. I won’t go too into detail but it involved looking at a VERY gory image that had to do with my fear of natural disasters. I called my mom and talked with her and she was shocked and wondered how in the hell that would help me! I agree. Did any of y’all feel this way when you first started or is this just not the right kind of therapy for me?