CRY OUT LOUD!

Sometimes the best you can do is CRY.......It’s just a normal response to an emotional state, pain or grief. But beyond deep sadness there is feeling. It’s the pain that our lips cannot explain. Most people are overwhelmed and don’t even realize it. You may be heading home from work sitting in traffic, and all of a sudden tears begin to fall. In that moment you probably are thinking, what is wrong with me? Why am I crying? I’m not even sad! If you are unaware of the amount of stress your under, stress finds a way to express itself, whether you are expecting it to or not. Stress lives in the body and crying is one way that stress finds a release. So pay attention to the amount of stress you’re under, it may be contributing to your experience of crying for no reason.

Crying is a social expression of overwhelming sadness (and in some cases happiness too but that’s different). There are plenty of psychological and well as sociological constructs related to crying. These beliefs are held by some or all of us. Let me try and explain some of them here. So that we can all understand that crying or not crying is not really the issue, what we believe about crying however, is......

Some of the more positively held beliefs about crying:

·        Crying is about being in sync with emotions

·        Crying expresses an ability to feel emotion

·        Shedding tears means you are more human

·        Crying helps us feel better and we feel less pain

Some negative connotations about shedding tears:

·        Crying, especially publicly, is a sign of weakness

·        Crying is associated with being feminine

·        Crying makes us vulnerable and we feel exposed

·        Crying is a risk, based on the outcome of it

 

Not being able to cry is really not a deficit in the lacrimal glands or that one is dehydrated and there are no tears left. At a psychodynamic level, if a child was reprimanded in childhood for crying in public (usually by a strong and influential figure like a parent), this child would grow with the subconscious but strongly rooted belief that crying is wrong and hence this person would not be able to cry even when grown up. Whether this would be associated with another psychopathology like depression and anxiety, or the person could be suffering from apathy and not feeling emotions; will be determined only after detailed evaluation.

Crying is usual, normal, commonplace and something everybody does, Just that each one has different proportions and frequency of this behavior. After a while crying is not even associated with emotions. It becomes a conditioned response.

The mirror neurons in the human brain are wired to instill an emotional reaction exactly like the one perceived by the eye. Or sense the pain in the the mind. So if one reads about a brutal murder or watches a movie where someone is in pain and crying, we could feel the same emotion and shed dears even though this has nothing to do with us. But everybody’s mirror neurons are different, and so is their ability to cry. A doctor may cry when he or she sees their own child bleed but might not cry when a patient comes into the emergency room for treatment. Psychiatrists feel the pain of their patients but do not cry when their patients cry before them. But when they are hurt they might cry too.

Crying is a very learned behavioral response. Something deep down in the subconscious mind signals the lacrimation (crying) process and that is why we cry. So not crying is not a disorder. I’ve seen several clients come forth with this issue and after very detailed evaluation, it has been enlightening to know and understand reasons, make them aware of it, and well, empower them to cry more easily.