It's okay to cry. It’s okay not to cry. It’s alright to take your time and wait for the primary emotion to surface and allow the immediate response to hold the space.
Whatever is coming up for you in the moment works or whatever slowly makes its way out after awhile is valid, too. Because emotional responses can be raw, mixed, complex or have their own method of being known.
You may have been in situations where your feelings had to be set aside because your instincts needed to be in the forefront for preservation.
Maybe you had to be in denial about something or quickly freeze in order to postpone or insulate the intensity of shocking news. Later, you’ll thaw and the ways in which it affected you will discern when it’s safe to come out and be processed.
Maybe it’s hard for you to own your feelings and there’s an entire life story attached to the reason why. In the meantime, having outside validation to go ahead and claim your personal innermost experiences has a meaningful impact on your emotional recovery process.
ARE YOU WAITING FOR PERMISSION TO FEEL WHAT YOU’RE FEELING?
Before letting themselves own and experience an emotive response fully, some people look for permission. Somewhere in life, their personal feelings were denied, invalidated, or had to be put away. So now they need to know it’s safe to feel badly about something legit— or even feel positive about themselves. Or that it’s alright to feel courage, it’s human to have grief, and they’re allowed to not be strong, act bold, or let go or hold on. And that feeling let-down or angry is natural, or feeling really good about a success without any guilt is appropriate. Until they’re confident about their emotional autonomy, sometimes validation to go ahead and feel what’s true for them is the special support they’re asking for.
TEARS OF LOSS
Crying is such a natural response to stress and pain. We are able to heal and decompress by releasing emotionally through crying. At the same time, emotional expression varies from person to person and some cry more easily than others for different reasons.
Weeping and wailing as a grief-stricken response is how some cultures openly mourn. Lamenting, holding vigil, rending garments, and other active means are ways people express their primal shared and individual loss.
But when someone dies and you don’t cry or you cannot cry, don’t judge or condemn yourself.
You may not have the same experiences with the departed as those around you. You may not want to demonstrate or act out your thoughts through visible tears. You may not have shared an emotional resonance with the person who passed away, and that, too, is justified. You may be disconcerted or perhaps you’ve not known deep loss— or you very much do know great loss and approaching each passing uniquely is how you’re organized internally, and you’ve found it to be a much healthier process for you.
You may have your own way of confronting the essence of death, voicing sadness or processing internal pain. You may mourn in ways no one understands or recognizes.
Rather than searching your soul for a trace of something to help you exhibit a cultural or group-accepted form of sorrow, be with what feels real for you right now. Your vulnerability is not in question and your being is enough.
And if you are concerned you’re not able to cry and want to explore the possibilities as to why, there may be a medical, psychological, or specific reason which can offer more understanding. Over-exposure to trauma or chronic stress can interfere or block our bodily responses like crying and in its place present an alternate response, reflecting an act of self-preservation.
I often look at it this way, some people shed invisible tears. Sometimes the quiet ones cry silently. In the end, however we’re uniquely, individually wired to respond to sorrow, sometimes palpable tears fail to express the immensity of our grief.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking the time to visit and leaving a heart or comment. I hope my words find ways to comfort or reassure you. If you think someone might find this free newsletter validating, please share.
With love, care and kindness,
Susan
I’ve been needing to read your words about grief for a long time. They help a lot.
Hi Susan and Jeff,
As Jeff knows I “…have been in situations where my feelings had to be set aside…” primarily because I was silenced, under threat, and prohibited to speak about ANY of what I had been forced to carry when certain non-dual teachers deliberately foisted their own karma on these shoulders to ensure their lies would never become public knowledge.
It's not my job to embrace the darkness and pain that those teachers have projected upon me….that darkness that belongs to them…and is for *them* to process.
It was not until many years later…and beginning with Jeff’s ‘Writing Our Way Home’…that I began the very slow-unwind of telling my story and unearthing feelings that actually belonged to me. It was only then that I began to cry over what had been described as being ‘buried alive’…an accurate description.
Telling the story…in as much detail as I can put on a public platform…has turned out to be the most profound aspect of healing. The part I cannot express publicly concerns my family, especially my 2 kids but including 4-generations of my family. Yet…the controls over my family were one of 3 main reasons for reporting…the other 2 being my own self-respect and The Truth.
I’ve never been a crier but these days I notice when crying comes most naturally it’s almost always with regard to the 10+ years that were, literally, taken and that I now find myself at 72…with my family deliberately separated to ensure those lies would remain buried.
Warmly,
-Leslie Read@ integrityintruth.com