How Do You Cry In Therapy?

[Cool Cat]

I haven't cried in about 3 years, I'm nearly 20.
My therapist asks me if I'm holding in the tears and if I am, I don't feel it.
I really want to be able to cry and I don't know how.
Has anyone here had success? And what works for you?

 

[TonyG]

As soon as I talk about my trauma I get tears and a lot of emotion,

 

[ghotiff]

I don't "do" emotion so I very rarely cry.

Do you have other emotions. Do you feel anger, sadness etc?

Why do you want to cry. Because you feel it, or because you think a "normal" person would?

 

[Cool Cat]

I feel other emotions. I would like to 'release' my feelings. I've brought it up in therapy before how I'd like to cry, should I do it again? Or is it one of those things like if you're trying too hard you won't?

 

[ghotiff]

Absolutely. If it's weighing on your mind and you trust your T, you should bring it up as many times as it takes to resolve it.

I don't know to answer your other question. I don't like emotions and I try to avoid them. My T (I think) is planning to work on this.

 

[Cool Cat]

What are the barriers that stop trauma people crying?

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

Sometimes it's easy for me to cry and sometimes not. I rarely cry for long though. Crying was not safe in my past, therefore, it is not safe now. My therapist encourages me to cry but sometimes even when I feel like crying, I can't.

 

[Cool Cat]

My therapist encourages me to cry but sometimes even when I feel like crying, I can't.

Thats exactly the same for me

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

My therapist keeps trying to reassure me that it is safe to cry now and perhaps some day I will believe that. For now it's hard and I just kind of accept that.

 

[franciemarnie]

When some part of me felt safe again, I was able to cry. I came out of the Freeze of Fight, Flight, Freeze or Collapse. I didn't not cry on purpose for so many years. Trauma put me in a Freeze state involuntarily.

Sad music has been most powerful to jump start it.

For many years, I had no idea I was sad. It was buried in my body and ultimately manifested in physical pain. I only know that because the pain went away when I cried.

Crying is often not an automatic response to feelings of sadness for me. Sometimes I can only tell I am sad by how badly my feet hurt or my face hurts or my stomach hurts. Sometimes it is very hard to release. I often feel nausea when I am sad. My system is messed up.

But it's getting better.

When you feel safe down deep, the feelings will come - and the release.

 

[joeylittle]

What are the barriers that stop trauma people crying?

All sorts of things. There are some days when I can't stop crying, and other days when I can talk about and process my trauma for 90 minutes and not shed a tear. It's nothing to do with what things were "worse" or "easier" than others, I know that much.

Crying is a response to certain kinds of emotional stimuli. There's a neural connection between the tear duct and the part of the brain associated with emotion. Emotional tears actually have a different chemical composition than, say, tears you might produce because of an irritant in your eye. The chemicals are mostly hormones and some minerals.

If you don't cry at any emotion (not just sadness; frustration, while laughing, beauty), then there's something your mind is suppressing (or "deadening") in your emotional centers. It's probably happening out of a self-protective impulse.

It's interesting in relationship to your other thread in here about shaking, because the parasympathetic nervous system is also irritated at the same time one has a crying response. I'm not a researcher, but it seems possible that the shaking you are experiencing is basically 1/2 of the emotional crying response.

I wouldn't stress about it, there's nothing extra-wrong with you. Do you remember the last time you cried from emotion? Do you have an especially negative memory of that time? Or in general, have you had negative responses to crying in your life, either from others or yourself? If you're a man, this could be compounded by the social idea that "men don't cry", which can cause them to strengthen their inhibitors.

(I can't cite because this is all pulled from books - but if you want me to look for web sources, I can. I hate using wikipedia but this is actually a very decent summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crying)

 

[Cool Cat]

It's probably happening out of a self-protective impulse.

It's interesting in relationship to your other thread in here about shaking, because the parasympathetic nervous system is also irritated at the same time one has a crying response. I'm not a researcher, but it seems possible that the shaking you are experiencing is basically 1/2 of the emotional crying response.

Do you remember the last time you cried from emotion? Do you have an especially negative memory of that time? Or in general, have you had negative responses to crying in your life, either from others or yourself?

Thanks so much for the great response! I dont know what the parasympathetic nervous system is but if they are related, does that mean I have hope of being able to cry in a session? I think I just had negative responses to crying my whole life. I was never much of a crier from a very very young age I remember how I would suppress crying, but I still would cry sometimes. It was really then when I wanted to cry years after, I realised I wasn't able to. I'm not a guy btw.

Everyone keeps saying it's about feeling safe enough to let yourself be vulnerable, then howcome when I know I am safe in a session I don't allow myself to truly feel safe? What works for you? Are there things you can do to help this?

In the past I could often be moved by music or a film, even I remember once seeing another person crying and nearly crying myself because I didnt know what she was crying about (I was 13 and a girl had just found out her best friends mum had died)