It’s Okay to Cry: Why Some of Us Struggle with Tears, and How to Reconnect
It isn’t unusual to have felt, as a child, that tears weren’t okay. Perhaps your caregivers found tears uncomfortable. Perhaps they told you that it was better to ‘be strong’ or that ‘worse things happen at sea’.
It’s very common for the people I work with to apologise for their crying or to say something like ‘I don’t usually cry like this’, as if in apology. The most important thing I’d like to say is that there is never any need to apologise for crying. Crying is natural and can help to soothe or release heavy or sad things that we hold. In my therapy space crying is always understandable and welcomed, whether those tears are sad, happy or angry. The same goes for any emotion.
Why some of us were taught not to cry
In many cases, parents or caregivers were only repeating what they’d been told as a child. In many cases (although not all, sadly), there wasn’t any ill-intention or malice in their words. Often, they might have found it uncomfortable to be around crying or sadness or they may have been scared or worried about unresolved emotions within themselves.
Whilst there may have been reasons why crying was discouraged, the impact of this should not be underestimated. Many adults feel shame in crying, and this can hinder the flow of healthy healing and grieving.
How to reconnect with your sadness
I’ll share that when I was a child, I had a fascination with the character Pierrot. For those who aren’t familiar with Pierrot, he is a melancholy clown with a sad face and is sometimes depicted with tears rolling down his face. I seem to remember I had a colouring book of Pierrot and even made some Plaster of Paris models. Why am I telling you this, you may ask! Thinking about it now, I wonder if it provided connection to that sad, disenfranchised part of myself that had been shamed. If you were discouraged from connecting with your sadness as a child, perhaps this might resonate with you. It could be that you loved sad songs or there may have been a ‘sad’ character that you liked (Eeyore or Anne of Green Gables for instance).
Being disconnected from our sadness is being disconnected from a part of ourselves and sometimes, as a child (and even as an adult), we can find creative ways of connecting with that sadness, intentionally or otherwise.
If crying doesn’t come easily to you and you suspect that letting the tears flow could help you to become more connected to yourself, counselling can help you to reconnect with your sadness in a calm and non-judgemental space. In counselling you may learn to re-parent your inner child so that they know that it is okay to cry. When crying becomes easier over time, it can feel less like a tidal wave and more like a gentle, cleansing release.
There are also ways that you can reconnect with sad parts of yourself outside the therapy room. Journaling can be a wonderful way of doing this. If you plan on journaling around this topic, it’s a good idea to set a time limit and plan some nourishing self-care for afterwards. Questions that you could ask yourself in a journaling session could include (please know that there are no right or wrong answers here, just your answers):
1. When did I lose touch with the sad part(s) of myself and what was the reason?
2. What were the messages I received around crying as a child and what do I think about those messages now?
3. How can I reparent my inner child to let them know that it’s okay to cry?
If there is a sad book, character, film or song that you connected with as a child, you could journal around this. For instance, what is it about this character, film, book or song that was particularly resonant or likeable for you?
You may wonder why you would want to connect with your sadness in this way. ‘Perhaps it’s just better to leave it where it is,’ you might say. If this is you, I completely understand where you are coming from. It does seem like a strange thing to invite the sadness in, but by doing so we welcome back disenfranchised parts of ourselves. We can feel whole again. It may feel difficult to start with but over time it means that we are also more able to access joy, happiness and excitement.
If you are interested in connecting with the different parts of yourself, I am running four therapeutic writing workshops in May called Ink and Insight. Over the four weeks we will connect to ourselves through Nature, Body, Dreams and Stories. Find out more about Ink and Insight here.