How Do You Cry In Therapy?

[zaniara]

Are you taking some kind of medication? Some meds can make it impossible/hard to cry.

For me it took about one year or so of intensive therapy, 1-2 times per week, before I cried. Or I did shed a few tears a few times for others- like when we spoke about when my father physically abused our dog. - My therapist wanted me to watch sad movies to try to trigger crying.. He also tried to stop me when I was trying to distract my self/him the few times the tears were close.

For me it had to do with the fact that I was so shut down, dissociating so much and also with trust. Crying when I was little could please and get my abusers even more excited. ("Oh, see she likes it so much she cries.. " etc. ) Or it could trigger more aggression.. So to cry was connected to humiliation as well as danger.

Now I cry so much some times I can't even speak. It feels less humiliating and hopeless though. (and I trust my therapist A LOT now)

 

[Suzetig]

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?

This has been a huge issue for me, I know my therapist is a safe person for me and yet I've struggled and struggled to get to a point of feeling safe with her. I don't think there's anything you can do to "make" yourself feel safe, it happened as the relationship grows, you become confident in your therapist, respond to his/her (hopefully) consistent response to you and his/unconditional acceptance of you. There's no magic wand to wave on this and I've found it's been very push/pull for me where I've trusted one week and completely pulled away the next.

I didn't have the initial problem with not crying - I started seeing her when I was in crisis and pretty much cried for 3 months - but more recently it's felt harder but I think that's because we're tackling some very deep seated issues and its taking time. Which is really a mantra for therapy I think, it just takes time.

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

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?

My therapist says that the unsafe years lasted a long time and I grew up with that part of me not feeling safe. It's going to take a long time to undo that and work through it. Those aren't her exact words, but that's the general message.

 

[Friday]

Personally, I only cry when I am (or believe myself to be) utterly helpless. The exact opposite of safe. If I'm safe? Pshaw. Not gonna happen.

The thing about safety, though, is that it's a feeling. Not a reality. You can feel safe in the most precarious and dangerous of positions, and feel completely threatened and exposed in the most mild and unlikely for anything to go wrong ones.

In my experience, the more often you have that "safe" bubble burst? The less often you trust a situation which may look/feel safe to others. A suitcase left unattended isa completely normal thing to see in the States. Heck, my son left his backpack wedged under the seat of a bus, with a blinking light coming from it (marvel no one stole it) and the "soonest" we could retrieve it was after a 4 hour loop. The city metro here has thousands of bags, holdalls, backpacks, etc. forgotten on the busses in a big depot down town. Jump the pond? Bomb squad called in minutes of seeing an unattended bag. I called metro here in a tizzy, in a complete state, because my head was overseas. Bus XXXX, the blue and white bag, it's my son's. It's got his medication in it. Which precinct (police)... Oh. It's still on route? WTF? Oh. Right. States. Cripes. Ahhhhhhhhh. My head is made of oatmeal. But here in the states we haven't had 10,000+ explosions over the past 30'years from backpacks. Unattended bags "feel" safe. Whatever. Someone forgot it. Elsewhere, bags "feel" dangerous. Safe bubble was burst too many times.

So while your mind may be perfectly aware you're in a drab and boring building, with an adult you trust? Your brain is saying : Nope! We've done this before. And it ended badly. We shall stay alert, thanks anyway!

 

[joeylittle]

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?

I'm with @FridayJones - I never feel safe. I think the process has more to do with addressing the events in your past where you stopped yourself from crying, or where you got a negative response from crying. You created a block for yourself out of what might be a minor trauma. You need to work on the block. Them's my two cents.

 

[Cool Cat]

My therapist says that the unsafe years lasted a long time and I grew up with that part of me not feeling safe.

That is a very good point. But is there a way to cry in therapy without spending years and thousands of euro on it? I'm 19 and the stuff only really stopped when I was 18.

In my experience, the more often you have that "safe" bubble burst? The less often you trust a situation which may look/feel safe to others.

I had the safe bubble burst all the time. So being able to cry is all about feeling safe?

Is it not numbness that stops you from crying?

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

But is there a way to cry in therapy without spending years and thousands of euro on it?

Well, I don't think that my therapist is implying that it will take an equally long time to feel safe enough to cry, but just that it will take time. I don't know if being able to cry is all about feeling safe, but it's definitely a huge issue for me.

 

[Eagle3]

Crying always made my abusers taunt me even worse, so I learned to never cry in front of ANYONE. I would hold it in and wait until I was completely alone before giving into the tears. Even when I was never alone, I found ways to cry completely silently while in bed at night, trying (and failing) to sleep. Since I am also a highly sensitive person, I was never able to completely stop the tears for more than a couple of days, I just learned to hide it really well. To this day, I hate crying in public and will try like hell to stifle the tears if anyone is looking at me. However, I realized that part of my healing process would require giving into the tears in front of safe people in order to get back in touch with my own feelings. I now cry in front of my therapist fairly regularly, and don't try to hide the tears that leak while watching movies, even if there are other people nearby (I feel relatively safe doing that where I am). It has taken a long time, but crying is a normal part of my existence now, and I can choose when and where the appropriate times and locations are for expressing my (still muted) emotions. When the time is right, the tears will come. I had to make the choice to let them fall, but when I did it was a very freeing experience.