How important is it to cry?

[texannurse]

Just wondering how important or essential crying is in the process of recovery. I REALLY struggle with identifying and feeling emotions and never cry about the past. Occasionally something said or done in the present causes me to cry but only a little. The only time I really cry is when I'm angry.
Is this just something that will come with time?
Texannurse

[Eyessoblue]

Hi there, I was the same as you and hadn't cried for about 30 years although could feel the tears were there just unable to shed them. I've recently started EMDR therapy and cry all the time and feel so much better for it, my emotions were very suppressed but during the EMDR process you go back to various stages of the trauma and I can't help but cry, it's definitely part of my healing process and now I've accessed my emotions it's much easier for me to cry and definitely a step forward in my healing.

[sanmagic7]

hey,

yeah, i didn't cry for many years except at sappy movies or when my daughters were featured in something.  but never for myself.  it's only been in the past couple of years that i've been able to cry for the losses in my life, realizing the sadness of all the good stuff that was either taken from me or never offered in the first place.

i now am able to feel anger when i'm angry, and that doesn't involve crying.  it involves a physical component (like pounding my bed), a written component (i can feel the anger and write about it accordingly, placing it where and to whom it belongs) and a verbal component (lots of cussing and name-calling there).  i have heard that often women cry when they're angry because they're afraid of actually getting angry, so they soften it up with tears.  just what i heard.

true crying, tho, for the right reasons, for myself, has been a godsend.  it has been cleansing, a relief, a release of toxins, tension, and stress.  it helps me get the poison out of my system, something that i know now i've stored in my body for a long time.  i am grateful to be able to cry now, even tho it doesn't always come easily, even at this stage of my recovery. 

i hope you are able to find the crying that you need.  it's made so much difference to me.  big hug.

[Libby12]

Hi everyone.

As I am still very new to the topic of c-ptsd, am I right in thinking that the inability to cry is often a feature of the trauma?   I realised that I haven't cried for as long as I can remember.   I thought it may be due to anti-depressants, sort of numbing emotions,  but your comments have made me question this. I would love a really good cry and think I would feel so much better for it.

Thanks for listening.

Libby.

[Candid]

Texannurse and Libby12, I too find it hard to identify my feelings at any given time. I'm also scared of them, like if I let myself feel what I legitimately feel, I'd never get up again. As scapegoat in my FOO I learned very early not to feel what I was feeling. I was laughed at for anger and ridiculed for sadness, so I stopped expressing those things and to a large extent tried to hide myself from my family. My bedroom was the garage so it was easy for me to stay in my room apart from mealtimes, while they did whatever they did indoors. All of my siblings came to me with their problems at different times, and when I had a breakdown in my late 20s, the psychiatrist described me as "the strong one".  At that stage I'd become so good at hiding 'unacceptable' feelings that even I didn't know I had them.

Like others here, I often well up at movies.

I believe grief is the top layer, and under that is the outrage. I seem to be at a point of experiencing both of them mingled. At present it's my choice to smother them with addictions so as to go on functioning, albeit in a crippled kind of way. No one 'sees' me any more and I'm kinda disappearing. But these days I do acknowledge to myself that I have these feelings, and that's more comfortable than perceiving myself as a robot.

I don't think we can force ourselves to feel our emotions, but we can certainly make a space for them when they show up.

[Elphanigh]

I too have felt that before. I didn't cry for years, and like Candid had been told I was the strong one. I learned to not feel what I was feeling. Now that I have started EMDR and some intense therapy I can let myself cry. However it still only comes when I am completely overwhelmed. It takes a lot of build up of stress and emotions for me to cry. It is truly cleansing when it happens though, afterwards I can feel like I have released some poison from my body. I hope that helps.

You will find the emotions, and make the space for them as you need to. I am sure

[Candid]

That's very encouraging, Elphanigh.

I hope therapy will come up before I totally fall in a heap...

[sanmagic7]

libby, i do believe that if we weren't allowed to cry for any reason, it's a part of the c-ptsd.  sometimes that could have even happened before we could speak, so we might not even remember why or when it began.

candid, hang tough, my dear.  we're hangin' right beside you!  i'm really glad for you that you can at least acknowledge your emotions to yourself.  you're holding onto yourself in the best way you can. 

hugs all around.

[Elphanigh]

I am glad that was encouraging for you Candid. You are holding yourself up how you need to. I see a lot of progress and strength in your post all the time. I got luck with getting therapy so early. Do you journal? I know you have probably heard that question, but it helped me so much when I didn't have a therapist. It gave me somewhere I could put the feeling even if I wasn't allowing myself to cry or feel them regularly.

Lots of hugs 

[Candid]

candid, hang tough, my dear.  we're hangin' right beside you!  i'm really glad for you that you can at least acknowledge your emotions to yourself.  you're holding onto yourself in the best way you can. 

Thank you, my darling. It all feels very shaky and disorganised right now.

You are holding yourself up how you need to. I see a lot of progress and strength in your post all the time.

Thanks to you too, Elphanigh. When I look back to a year ago, or even the beginning of this year, I can see definite progress. I want my life and my Self back, ya know?

Do you journal?

I've done mobs of it in the past, talking to myself. Could be time to take it up again. Thanks for the thought.

[clarity]

The finances allocated for mental health is ridiculous in the UK. 
I hope that you are soon first in the queue Candid and getting the right help... 

[Candid]

Thanks, clarity, and a  backatcha. I didn't mean to hijack.

[Wife#2]

TN - great thread, I'm glad you brought it up!

This was/is a big concern for me as well. I know that I was able to cry pretty well until my husband started making fun of / getting angry at his oldest daughter, who could cry at any upset. She and I both have somewhat lost our ability to cry. We both want it back.

I do think we become accustomed to stuffing our 'inconvenient' emotions away, then forget to take them back out later. Life just seems to keep giving us reasons to stuff but not unpack! Then, we get the challenge of finding our way back to our emotions, figuring out how to release them without getting overwhelmed all over again, then figuring out how to express them and still feel safe.

It sounds as if EMDR helps with that a lot. Since I'm also not in therapy at this time, I've been trying to figure out ways to do this. One was to tell my husband to shut up when my tears made him nervous. I was watching a movie I know makes me cry, on purpose, because it had been a while since I'd cried. It's also a very triggering movie for me, but I was braced for that part. I needed to shed tears.

It makes sense that we have a hard time matching what's going on with our emotions, then knowing the appropriate way to react. Even when we can identify our emotions, our 'education' was that emotions are scary or dangerous or manipulative. That's not true, emotions are windows into what's going on inside a person. People who really do care about us want that view so they can learn how to bring more joy into our lives and how to avoid causing pain. They can't learn that if we can't express our emotions! Those who don't care about us - well, IMHO, I've got to stop letting them have a say in my emotional life. They don't deserve to have a say. Only people who have a sincere desire towards my best interest deserve a say.

As you can see, I'm a wordy girl. And all this was to say, it is VERY important to be able to cry. Male or female. Young or old. ALL of us have emotions. Learning how to let the real emotion show at the time we're feeling it, well, that's a HUGE step towards health - mental, emotional AND physical. And crying is a huge part of the emotional world. It's as important as laughter.

[texannurse]

I still can't cry and it's driving me nuts. I want to break the tension i feel inside, but it won't break. I saw a new psychiatrist last week and when I was telling her my trauma history, I was just telling it like it was someone else's life - no emotion. She asked me if I could tell her about the dissociation I was doing at that moment. I didn't even realize I was doing it. I just shut down emotionally. I never realized that is dissociation. No wonder I don't feel or cry....

[Wife#2]

It's how you survived. It served you well when you needed this skillset to survive.

At least you do have a good therapist who saw it for what it was! That's a very good thing.

The best news is that feeling all of your emotions, genuinely, in the moment they're appropriate CAN be achieved. Since others had success with therapy and EMDR, maybe that's something you want to explore with your therapist? Or not. It's YOUR life and YOUR recovery and YOUR decision, always.

At least you're making progress. Just identifying dissociation is a good thing. Understanding that you do it, how it happens, why you do it and what you want to do about it now that you are aware. These are all steps in that recovery path.

You are doing tremendous work for yourself! Hurray, TexasNurse!