“Dr. Kovitz looks at him over his notepad. Phil notices then the two
boxes of tissues on the table. He wonders absently how many people
cry in this office every day. He wonders if Dr. Kovitz empties the bin
between sessions so it won’t look like the saddest room in the world.
He wonders what this man would do if he just lay down on the sofa
and cried and cried. But the thing is, if he let himself do that
he would probably never stop.”1
Recently I had the chance to unplug for a few days and read some light-hearted reading. This paragraph jumped out at me. The character is experiencing a therapy office for the first time in his life. His description of the therapy office made me chuckle as I thought about the two tissue boxes in each of my offices. It is definitely a Costco staple! In fact, it is not uncommon for tears to appear as people sit in my office and tell me about some of the challenging things they are dealing with.
Photo Credit: Andrew Lozovyi
I’ve noticed a few things about tears. Firstly, I’ve observed that it is not uncommon for people to apologize for crying. I wonder if many of us got the message as children that we shouldn’t cry or that crying was not ok? It got me thinking, how many sayings do we have that teach us not to cry?
Big boys/girls/people don’t cry
Who’s cutting the onions?
I’m not crying, it’s just allergies
It’s ok, don’t cry
It seems I more often hear “Sorry for crying” than simple acknowledgement and acceptance of tears. My response is often, “No need to apologize for tears. It is absolutely okay to cry! You’re not the first person to cry in this office and you won’t be the last.”
We do have expressions that tell us it’s ok to cry as well. In fact, public figures both past and present have acknowledged emotions and the need to express them. 2
“People cry, not because they’re weak. It’s because they’ve been strong for too long.” – Johnny Depp
“It’s better to cry than to be angry; because anger hurts others, while tears flow silently through the soul and cleanse the heart.” – Attributed to Pope John Paul II (potentially authored by Stefan Cardinal Wyszynsky)
“If somebody hurts you, it’s okay to cry a river; just remember to build a bridge and get over it.” – Taylor Swift
So if you are someone who apologizes for crying, I want to let you know that it’s okay to cry! Tears are just an indication that something emotional is coming up for you. Tears can signal sadness, frustration, anger, happiness, tenderness, and many more emotions. Emotions are just indicators that something is going on inside us. If we can learn to welcome them and invite them to teach us, it often gives us greater insight into our experiences.
Photo Credit: Anemone123
The second thing I’ve noticed is that people often worry that if they start crying, they’ll never stop. I find sometimes we believe a statement because it is experienced so intensely without stopping to think about the reality of it. Have you ever seen someone cry? Have you observed that they were never able to stop crying? The absurdity of it becomes apparent when we picture the reality of this statement. I have met many people who have cried. All of them have stopped crying. In fact, sometimes after or with tears comes laughter.
Tears are in fact a release of emotion. Keeping tears inside ends up hurting us and can make the emotion even harder to carry and process. Novelist Paulo Coelho is credited with the saying that “Tears are words that need to be written.”
So, if you are someone who holds tears in, who fears them, who feels like if you ever start crying you will never stop, perhaps there is room to allow the tears to write the emotions of your heart. Perhaps there is opportunity to allow the emotional words to be expressed and embraced so that you can experience a lightening of the load of suppression.
Let me conclude with this quotation which may be a rewording of a passage written by Samuel Johnson in “The Mother’s Assistant” (1845):
“There is a sacredness in tears.
They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.
They are the messengers of overwhelming grief,
of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”
Questions for thought:
What messages did you get about crying as you were growing up? Who sent you those messages? How did you process them into unwritten rules about crying?
When did you last cry? What emotions prompted the tears?
If you allow yourself to cry when tears arise, how might that feel different than suppressing the tears and not allowing them to speak?
NOTES:
1. From “Someone Else’s Shoes” by JoJo Moyes
2. Quotations have been credited to the best of my ability to find details on the authors
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