One tear and I freeze or go into the shake freeze state.
I have something similar. This has been a progression for me though. As I started to learn how to pick apart the primary and secondary emotion thing that JL spoke about, I noticed that my body responses changed. And those changed body responses allowed me to tie a singular emotion to that body response.
So for me it worked (and is working) a bit like this.
Sad is a tough emotion for me. I don't think I ever had time to be sad. And I either ignored it and moved forward or I slept (which now I think was a freeze before I even knew I froze). So here I am reverse engineering. When I figured out what it felt like to feel sad (not sad and mad and frustrated and tired and hungry and pissed off .... but JUST sad, I actually had a flashback to and incident where I was crying beyond any type of crying I have ever seen in anyone. As I was glimpsing this incident in my mind, I teared up. No noise, just teared up. And it wouldn't stop. Like a steady stream of tears that could go on for hours.
What I have been doing with this is trying to connect with that incident - but intellectually. What does one feel and do - how must one feel - when one is sad? What other words can I grab onto that may fit how that felt? Grief? Betrayal? Despair? Then I acknowledge (while still crying and this is hard because my go to is to be pissed off at myself for crying) that yeah, maybe it was more than sad. Maybe it was grief. Maybe it was.... (you know where I am going with this). When I hit the right word I stop crying. So can you find another word intellectually that might be stronger than sad? See if maybe that will help nail down why your body is tearing? I usually find that the closer I get to the emotion involved, the less the body is needing to show me that it is in distress.
If this doesn't connect with you, no worries, I won't be offended at all but will be sorry I wasn't able to help. -)
The advantage in understanding and identifying secondary emotions is that one can then work with them. Simply slowing down enough to clock the feelings we have about our own feelings can truly result in a better understanding of how to manage them, how to shift them, how to connect the dots between those feelings and the distorted thoughts or (negative) core beliefs that inspire them.
I have a posting in that 'feelings' thread about this happening to me with the feelings of disorientation, frustration and something else all rolled in together and teasing them apart. It really blew open my ability to be open to experiencing these shitty feelings one more time.
For me the word overwhelmed means I have a whole wackload of feelings spinning around and if I can name even one of them, I can feel myself lighten like crazy. Many times right after that another 'feeling word' pops into my head and so on. I think that process of naming an emotion with a real word (even if wrong) really changes the trajectory of healing. I am also finding that role of those spinning emotions has been to suppress my fear of experiencing anger over something. So maybe be forewarned because I am in this anger stage right now that is seriously screwing with my head. But at the same time it is super freeing and I am realizing that anger is helping me naturally put boundaries in place and to defend myself again rather than freeze on the spot.
