"Do not apologize for crying.
Without this emotion, we are only robots."
~ Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
Virtually every week, I sit with someone who apologizes for crying in my office. I'm simultaneously surprised and saddened that they would feel this need. As a therapist it is my work to help people get into a deeper touch with their emotions. And when we go deeper, we may experience feelings that bring up tears. It's normal to cry. It's a release to cry! It's powerful to cry. It's OK to cry! And, I believe, it's necessary to cry - to allow or to give ourselves the moments of being with ourselves.
Crying does not make you or me weaker. It helps us reconnect to ourselves...the part of ourselves which is raw and authentic and often, disconnected. If even a part of me is disconnected, then it takes a lot of work to keep that part stuffed down. The energy needed to stuff any feelings is depleting when in our lives we should be about energizing and building up! What if I suggested that your tears, my tears, were all of the unspoken words we've held inside..the words which may have been brought forth but not heard by another?
It's a leap of faith to cry the 'old' tears. Trust me when I say that I know this of which I speak. I've cried the old, buried, abandoned tears. I've cried deeply and painfully. I've reached down to the core of me, down to the toes and cried it out. Sometimes one tear at a time,sometimes in floods. I know how initially draining this can be and then....how calming the release feels.
I know that if my clients have held back their tears, there is the fear that the tears, when allowed to flow, will NEVER stop.
They will.
I will hold this truth for you, or someone you know. I will trust that with the right person, in the right moment, you will find your tears and feel them begin to wash away the pain or the hurt.
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