CRYING DURING CONFLICT
There is so much living inside our tears. Our heartache over not being heard. Our grief around not being met. Our loss of happy childhoods, battle-free and filled with wonderment. Our tears map the topography of all our stored emotional responses to warm and positive memories, as well as fearful, shocking news, and even our astonishment and gratitude.
In times when we feel ourselves losing control over a situation, namely conflict, we might not want to resort to crying, knowing once it starts, it’s too overwhelming to regulate.
What seems more upsetting about crying during conflict and resolution is discovering you’re not only incapable of holding back an avalanche of tears, but unprepared for the accompanying spurts of sobs and weeping aloud. Maybe it doesn’t always happen, but whenever it does, you might understandably come away feeling defeated and misunderstood.
What’s your history when it came to crying?
Were you someone who needed to hold your erupting emotions inside for specific reasons? What were the conditions like for you as a child as far as sharing, displaying, and being honest about your griefs, pains and injuries?
Did you have to endure enormous changes which seemed to consistently occur suddenly, shifting and quaking the only ground you had to rely on?
And were you the child who vowed to never be caught crying before the world, or your parent, or the system you were raised in, as a way of forging your own personal strength against the quickening waves threatening to engulf you?
And so now, do you as a fully-grown adult, ever feel stunted or ill-equipped in the throes of confrontation, argument or conflict—and even in the attempts of clearing the air and sharing in the design of fresh resolution?
Do you, instead, feel yourself tearfully bottoming out in the heart of human struggle, and afterwards suffering an anguish of being misunderstood, along with a guilt that comes with being seen as someone whose cries are viewed or labeled as manipulation?
There are reasons we do what we do and respond in the ways we respond.
For me, it was important to create my very own ground support after childhood developmental trauma created a number of emotional set-backs. Like many children, I did have to manage my emotions in an unhealthy fashion. I put feelings away and make a personal vow of silencing my cries as a child’s way of coping with chaos and confusion and curtailing incoming challenges. As a result, it was difficult to readily trust the ground for opening in therapy settings earlier in life or vocalize my deep disappointments.
Recovery requires just as much patience, love and care as it needs. It’s equally vital to not beat myself up, if during conflict, I ever get pushed beyond my limits and I collapse inside my tears. It has taken time to understand my conditioning, coping mechanisms, and boundaries. These are areas I must cherish in all honesty. One day, I decided not to allow judgements about my performance as a human being push me into darkness. It was time to grow and heal as a healthy adult, which meant making real important decisions.
Making Adult Decisions
Creating the ground support for stability can involve learning how to manage the array of emotions we all experience and how they intersect with reality or interface with another’s material, and anything else in the field attempting to destabilize. Like when outside emotions are projected onto you, or when tactics are utilized to pressure or sway you into feelings you didn’t birth in the first place. Owning what’s yours and discarding what’s not yours is part of the process of recovery and further establishing emotional autonomy.
Strengthening ourselves with positive reinforcement is an active exercise for building an inner strength we’ll increasingly depend on to move through debate, confrontation or conflict without breaking down every time.
Like myself, you can begin by underlining some basic but decisive statements on a regular basis until they become integrated. Statements like: I am a grown-up person learning more and more about how I’m built and how much I can endure. I believe I’m deserving of space to secure the language which best articulates my emotional state so I’m clear. I’m allowed to give myself time to craft the words to convey the extent I’m able to stretch my energy so I know it for myself. And, I am worthy of ascertaining my limits and abilities before I stand in the fire.
These decisions are graces you may not have been aware you could possess because you were not fully developed or you didn’t have them modeled to you.
Despite forming decisions which increase your resiliency, they might pose an issue for someone else. You will recognize them later as essential unfoldings of your maturity, while to another person, they appeared as rules they shouldn’t have to honor. And often, these decisions must be recited as affirmations of necessity until you feel your spirit regaining strength.
We don’t want to become evasive and avoidant in our ever-thriving adulthood. Neither do we want to pick up every stick on fire and burn up our precious energy. Determining your individual limitations, setting personal boundaries, and learning potent language to represent yourself becomes the new foundation to see you through. When you dedicate time and effort to these imperial areas of your humanness, you will begin to see a shift in your fortitude. You will hold your ground. You see, you are returning to the scene of the injustice, thereby empowering the overwhelmed child with each attempt you make at changing behaviours, breaking harmful patterns and functioning within your newfound sufficiency.
In the end, it’s okay to cry unexpectedly because that’s the beauty of our vulnerability. It’s okay to not cry while you’re managing your big feelings, because we all have big feelings that require guidance and expression. And it’s okay that you did cry but it’s waning as less problematic because you are making valuable progress in your journey back to sovereignty.
The point is, everyone has an area either under construction or that’s not in proper working order all the time. Others find a way to bail out of confrontation or challenges by getting loud, abrasive, or severing from their listening skills or willingness to bridge. So don’t let anything shame you into believing you are a bad person because you haven’t worked this out entirely. Yes, breaking down in the center of conflict before achieving resolution is frustrating for you and likely others who encounter this trait, but it’s not the end of the story.
We’re often reminded how it is we can’t control others or the events we’re met with, but we can do certain things to cope with our pooling emotions as a result of them.
Dear Reader, if anything in this newsletter speaks to you, inspiring you to look at something within, remember to take your time and move with love and care into the origin of your wounding. You are not broken and past expiration. You are deserving of gaining a fuller understanding of yourself, the complexities of your plight, and what’s caused your discomfort with specific triggers, circumstances or feelings that might be blocking your ability to communicate or remain engaged when faced with a legitimate concern or dialogue.
You’ve longed to feel safe and trust the ground will support your truest expression, and that by doing so, your inner world won’t crash and burn. You don’t have to thoroughly break apart every time you desire to be vulnerable. Deep down, you want to take your rightful place in the art of resolving conflicts or simply managing everyday tension. You never enjoyed feeling destroyed by the storms of turmoil or found contentment in being misinterpreted.
And when it does happen, when the tears begin to swell, you want to know there are those who comprehend — knowing it’s okay to cry.
With love, care and kindness,
Susan
A reassuring reminder that our emotional journey is valid, and progress is achievable, even amidst tears. Thank you for this!
I am a big fan of Philip Shepherd and his book 'Radical Wholeness' which contained a foreword by your husband Jeff Brown. Philip describes how we have basically two 'brains" - our logical head-brain and our sensuous, intuitive gut-brain. He also observes how our culture has become unbalanced preferring rationality over emotionality (patriarchy personified).
How did we get to the point where showing natural human emotion is shameful? Why do we deny the wisdom of our emotional expressions until the dam breaks and we are overwhelmed? I remember a discussion with a woman about the therapeutic advantages of crying and her fearful dismissal of my advice. "If I begin to cry, I might never stop."
Modern communications has dramatically expanded our experiences in the world. A catastrophe in China receives the same attention as any number of domestic tragedies. Perhaps my friend was right. If I fully felt and cried for every disaster or injustice, would I ever stop my grieving? Your advice about picking your battles and respecting the limits of personal resources is an antidote to despair and nihilism. On the other hand, walling ourselves in a cave of emotionless cold logic is a stunted, hollow existence leading to chronic ennui and soullessness.
Philip Shepherd describes how the head-mind and gut-mind are connected and in constant communication through the vagus nerve. Optimally we should have a dynamic balance between our two consciousness centers applying the best mix of logic and intuition to the present situation. Sadly, our social programming has disrupted this homeostasis resulting in what Philip calls the "tyranny of the head". We can, as you suggest bring ourselves back to center and live lives of full potential and experience, but realizing we are learning a new skill and will likely make blunders and regress under stress. Practice may not make perfect, but it will make us better humans...