The Crying Shame

With some regularity clients who cry in my office apologize for doing so. I feel a little surprised by this since I thought people knew that we therapists are used to, and expect, a certain amount of crying to happen while we’re working with someone, and when I point out the jumbo box of tissues and tell them it’s quite alright with me, most people give a little nod of acknowledgement, but remain a bit sheepish about the tears. This cultural prohibition on crying has worked its bony fingers further into our psyches than I thought. I know we aren’t supposed to cry at work except under the most extraordinary circumstances (like someone at work dies while they are actually at work) and I know that men aren’t allowed to cry anywhere except maybe funerals, but aren’t we allowed to cry in our own therapy sessions? I’m writing this to say not only yes, we are allowed to cry in our own therapy sessions, and I heartily encourage it.

Crying has a purpose, and while some crying isn’t therapeutic, most of the crying I see is quite therapeutic. Crying signals a shift in our bodies from the activation of the sympathetic nervous system over to the parasympathetic nervous system. Our sympathetic nervous system activates when we are stressed and need to respond to something threatening in the environment. The sympathetic nervous system is what is active when we are in fight/flight/freeze mode. People do not cry when they are in this mode. If you think back on a situation when you felt this stressed you’ll see that crying wasn’t on the agenda. Imagine you’re hiking and you surprise a bear and her cub. Your brain immediately begins trying to sort out whether to run, fight, or stand your ground (do not run.) Your sympathetic nervous system will stay in charge until you reach the safety of your car, or maybe even your home and your family. Only then will you switch into parasympathetic mode. That’s when you’ll let down and cry (if bear encounters scare you.) Unfortunately, many of us live and/or work in environments that feel like a dark forest full of pissed off bears. If our sympathetic nervous system is activated too much of the time this kind of chronic stress will have a damaging effect on our immune functioning. Therapy can be a place where we feel safe enough from the problem to cry, which will switch us over to parasympathetic functioning. This is a good thing. Sometimes the switch occurs when we give up on solving the problem with fight/flight/freeze, and that can happen in therapy when we recognize our approach isn’t working and we give up. Getting out of panic mode can relax us enough to open our mind to possibilities and solutions that weren’t accessible when we were all stressed out. This cultural edict not to cry is actually thwarting our body’s natural attempt to get us out of sympathetic functioning. Think about how much effort it takes to keep yourself from crying- once you get it over with you can relax and start thinking about things differently. So, go ahead and cry. I won’t tell anyone.