How to Cry When You’ve Trained Yourself Not To

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by jacquesdurocher/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

On a recent episode of Man Up, Aymann Ismail talked to a college student named Sammy, who recently had an intense experience: He suddenly cried for the first time in a decade. Sammy said he wants to replicate that moment and find a way to locate his feelings more often, but he’s not sure how. So Aymann brings therapist Avi Klein onto the show to talk to Sammy. The three of them talked about why so many men resist the urge to cry in the first place and what it might take to get rid of that instinct. Below is a small excerpt of their conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Aymann Ismail: What have you noticed happens in a man’s body when they start to let themselves cry?

Avi Klein: So much sadness is ultimately about loss. We expect things to continue going in one way and then it changes, and that can be so devastating, whether that’s the loss of a person or the loss of an expected outcome. I think everyone is so afraid like, “If I cry, I’m just going to fall apart,” but you don’t. You don’t fall apart. You feel more grounded afterward. You feel better.

Sammy: I guess it contrasts the image that we have of crying, right? The idea of crying is very much one where we’ve lost some semblance of control, but do you think it is helpful in creating control in the long term, kind of? Because that’s been one of the things that has kind of excited me is being able to be in more command in the long term.

Klein: Yeah, I think there are two things. I think all emotions, sort of, have the shape of a wave, right? And they crest and they crash, and so there is that big moment when you’re crying where you do feel out of control, where you have to be sort of vulnerable, and you don’t know what’s going to happen. You’re just in your feelings. But then it ends. No one has ever cried forever, right? We stop crying, and it’s in that moment that you start to feel more in control and more grounded.

Then there’s another way, which is, the more you allow your emotions to exist in you and not suppress them and not push them away, then you’re a more skillful person, you know what I mean? This is less about crying, but I think more men struggle with uncontrollable anger and that’s because, in a way, they don’t want to be angry and they keep it in until it blows up. If you are OK with being angry, then you have so many more options about how to deal with it, but if it’s not OK, then you have very limited options.

Ismail: Yeah. I can relate to that.

Sammy: Is it truly worth it to be pursuing really trying to like get myself to cry? Do you think I’m over-romanticizing what this will do emotionally, or is it truly something that is necessary to a full human experience, in your opinion?

Klein: I think it’s pretty hard to relax when you demand something of yourself, and I think to really cry, maybe reframe your goal from crying to just feeling your feelings and being more connected to your body. I think that is such a worthwhile goal. We need men who can feel their feelings. Whether you cry or not should not be the measure of success there, right? It’s just a biological function, you know.

Sammy: Or like a like an indicator, in a way, right?

Klein: It is an indicator, but there are other indicators. I mean, when I feel sad, there’s a kind of quiet caving in that happens—like a sinking feeling in my stomach. It’s like I see the color blue inside.

Sammy: Really?

Klein: Yeah. I think if you allow yourself to connect to your senses, and think, “What’s my experience inside? What do I see in my imagination? What’s my body telling me? What are my muscles telling me?” it will become more real for you, and that’s all you need to expect from yourself. The other thing I would say, which is tough for men, is that crying is fundamentally a social experience. That’s part of its evolutionary purpose. We cry to indicate to others that we need help, which is very hard for men. Often, I think we would like to cry alone.

Aymann: That’s a good point.

Sammy: That’s what I was thinking. The biggest fear when I told myself to stop crying wasn’t that I would cry. It was that people would see me cry.

Klein: Yeah. That’s a big one. We’ve just hit on such an important piece, which is like, part of what’s telling you to keep it in is, “Are people going to see me cry?” And look, I hear you. It’s potentially embarrassing still, even if you’re OK with it, but what if you’re with a safe person? I mean, I think that’s why a lot of people cry in therapy, but we can cry with our friends and our partners too, and I mean, you have to give yourself space. I would go back to your experience around the person who passed away, for example, because that sounds so important, and it is something that deserves tears. Talk about it. It sounded like maybe you were seeing someone on campus, like a therapist or a counselor or something like that?

Sammy: Uh-huh.

Klein: I mean, just talk about it and really give yourself an opportunity to revisit it. You have to make it visceral, you know what I mean? I would sort of allow yourself to see the person that you lost in your mind, really let that into your body, into your experience, and I would really try and connect to what you want to say to them about how you’re feeling. I think if you spend some time with that exercise, you’re going to feel sadness for sure, and that sounds like what you want to feel.

To hear the entire episode, subscribe to Man Up on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the episode “A Man Learns to Cry Again.”

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/35M7Fsu
via IFTTT