Do you struggle to let go of things that hurt you? Try crying! Crying is nature's inner cleansing process. Tears are literally the way in which we cathart our sorrow and emotional pain. If we do not shed our tears, we do not release our emotional responses to the things that hurt us. We become psychically congested.
Some think that time is a great healer; it is, but healing takes longer and unexpressed emotion has a horrible habit of re-appearing in inappropriate ways.
The image from Alice in Wonderland speaks about why emotions are suppressed and why going to the place of pain is so avoided. Once you begin releasing the tears or feeling the pain you may not be sure it will stop or maybe the control will be lost and the flood of tears will fill all the space around you. Crying was easy for me when I was a very small child but I was forced to stop by an abusive mother. Getting back through that door has been a struggle ever since. Recently, I find that I tear up at what feels like the oddest times but maybe they are just effecting me in a way that causes my feelings to reveal what’s going on inside of me. This post is so important and creating a corner on the blog on the plum tree where emotions will be the focus is such a brilliant idea. It will help many. I have not tried to run from my emotions but they are elusive. Fear that I will overwhelm others or myself causes me to retreat from them but that was the past. I have been working for years in psychotherapy to break through that barrier wall that was built so high. I am slowly knocking out bricks that prevent me from breathing and from seeing the light out of the darkness. If I take a deep breath, it helps to calm me and the emotions are able to come to the surface. It is the “negative” emotions that personally speaking, I and others are afraid of expressing for fear they will harm others and become destructive. I look forward to reading more about what you have to say on this subject. This post is the perfect opener to triggering people into even acknowledging the subject. Myself, I am a thinking person with underlying feelings filtering into my thoughts and I fall for all the traps that society has placed on the unacceptability of expressing ones emotions. Grief is always cut off short with a cliched line: “Aren’t you over that already. it’s been at least two weeks.” Now the DSM-V wants to put grief under the category of a mental illness if you haven’t worked through it within a reasonable amount of time. Now who determines the length that? Anyway, I love that Dr. Niamh Clune, on the plum tree, is bringing this subject forward by creating a corner where emotions can be examined and discussed. Thank you for this post. Once again I find your brilliance is being used for healing. J.K. the secret keeper PS. The subject "Do You Cry?" has been an obsession for me most of my adult life. When I have experienced extreme trauma, I cannot stop crying but when an occasion comes in my life where tears would be a natural reaction, I fight them. I get a lump in my throat and swallow down the feelings. There is definitely a shame factor involved in expressing my tears. If anyone sees me cry, I think I would feel embarrassed and/or mortified that they witnessed me in that emotional place. My response, I am sure, is triggered by the reaction I received from my "Bitch" mother, which was torturous and unnatural abuse, with the intention of stopping my tears and the sound of my crying. To her there was something terribly wrong with the act and sound of crying. It was one of her more maniacal obssessions that has left a scar then prevents me from giving myself permission or allowing myself to cry. I want the release. Maybe, sometimes I try to hard, but I want the tears to flow when they need to. I am close but have not fully arrived.
“Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”
~Brian Jacques~ Taggerung