New to EMDR - Arousal?

Hi, I (F, 40s) just started therapy for the first time in my life to work through childhood trauma. My therapist guided me thru EMDR (tapping myself - in a video session) during our 3rd session. Although I do have some sexual trauma to work through, the memory I targeted was not sexual in nature, it was related to my fear of abandonment.

Ever since then (it’s been almost 2 weeks) whenever I think about the EMDR process, I become sexually aroused. I think this is because I felt really vulnerable, and like I was giving up power and letting someone control my body. (I realize that it’s not supposed to be like this, but that’s how I felt). I also have a pretty severe medical phobia and have sexual thoughts related to medical/clinical things, and the process of EMDR felt very clinical to me. I’m ashamed to admit that since this experience, I have masturbated more than once to the thought of ‘submitting’ to EMDR.

Last week, my therapist asked about doing another EMDR session. I told him I was afraid to because of how upset I was after the first session. I explained everything I felt except I didn’t mention the sexual arousal. I did say that it made me feel very vulnerable and a bit violated. I’ve also had some positive outcomes, and I’d like to keep doing EMDR, as I’m hopeful that it will work for me.

Do I need to discuss the sexual arousal or is this a normal part of the process? I did not experience arousal in session, it wasn’t until the next day that I was processing and thinking about it, that my brain sort of framed it as a sexual submission thing, and now I feel like it’s fused with that.

I’ve only had 4 sessions total. I was a little surprised that my therapist jumped right into EMDR - I thought we’d spend some time talking about things first. Going into EMDR I felt like he knew almost nothing about me, like we hadn’t even discussed a basic social history, like my upbringing (we never discussed my parents or if I have any siblings). The first time I mentioned my dad was in the memory we used for EMDR. Are we moving too fast?

He has been discouraging me from fully disclosing any trauma details in conversation, according to him, in order to establish trust first, but I don’t understand how we can do EMDR for trauma without talking about the trauma first? As I’ve said I’m new to therapy so I don’t really know what to expect and I’m trying to just go with the flow. One of the main reasons I wanted to do therapy was to finally be able to tell someone my story, and it’s been frustrating that he’s been steering me away from that. (One reason for his approach could be that I told him that I suspect I have borderline personality disorder and one of the things I frequently do is get involved in emotionally intimate relationships very quickly, so maybe he is trying to make me pace and learn earned disclosure).

Sorry for the long post, would appreciate any thoughts! In case anyone is wondering why I chose a male therapist, (probably due to my trauma) I am not comfortable with females in general and I am very wary that they are judging me and I thought I’d be able to be more honest and open with a male therapist.