I See A Lot Of Ya’ll Self-depreciating Over How Much You Cry And Like…generally Speaking, Crying

i see a lot of ya’ll self-depreciating over how much you cry and like…generally speaking, crying is a very healthy process. it’s an important means of 

expressing & processing strong emotions

relieving stress

experiencing catharsis 

moving on to a recovery period

this mindset that people just need to train themselves out of crying…that really worries me. bc the alternative is to repress those feelings instead of expressing them…and from firsthand experience i can tell you it is very much not worth doing that. i’ve been there, i’ve done it, i’ve bought into that mindset. i thought it would make me stronger and less vulnerable. instead i fell so out of touch with myself, it took years of therapy for me to learn to identify my own emotions again. i literally forgot how to tell when i’m upset or sad, bc my body had been trained out of expressing it. that’s an extreme scenario but it’s not uncommon, and if you spend too much time criticizing yourself over your own emotions, it can creep up on you.

i like to think we all know how harmful it is to tell children to just “stop crying, dammit.” turns out, the same is true for adults.

 just. please change the mindset that being visibly upset is somehow shameful. if you find yourself crying a lot, that probably means something in your external and internal experiences needs to change: you don’t deserve to feel angry, frustrated, frightened, sad, or upset so frequently that it distresses you. those are only supposed to be sometime emotions. 

but telling yourself to just. stop crying, or to stop feeling what you’re feeling? that’s harmful, and it doesn’t work. no one controls their emotions out of sheer will–at best we shut them down, and then pay heavily for it later. if we want our minds to feel better, we need to give them assistance, not threats. threatening or bullying our bodies and minds to behave the way we want them to will always backfire.