The Healing Power of Crying

When I mentioned in my last newsletter that I’d be taking a few weeks off from the blog, I anticipated that I’d be pretty booked up with some wellness projects, coaching, training, and work demands but Ohhh.. did I underestimate just how FULL my waking hours would be.

Over the past few weeks I was so so grateful to receive some big opportunities to expand and grow myself, both work-wise and blog-wise. I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone as a coach, as a speaker, as a writer, and it felt so good to be moving in the direction of where I want to be.

Along with this myriad of wonderful Opportunity came a host of other not-so-great side effects though.

Loads of Stress.

Overwhelm.

Deadlines.

A never-ending cycle of things that needed to get done without enough time and space to do them in.

Days where my energy was being pulled in so many different directions that when I finally took a moment to stop, I realized I’d forgotten to breathe. Where doing my chakra cleanse at the end of the night felt like bliss – I could literally feel the accumulated mass of outside interactions and demands pouring from my body… and then I’d go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.

This is life sometimes, yeah? It asks you to rise to the challenge and carry on when what you really want to do is throw it all up in the air and escape to some magical paradise where hardships don’t exist.

Despite all my meditations and journaling and eating well, these chaotic past few weeks have taken a toll on my body, accumulating and manifesting as tenseness in my muscles, an ache in my back, a knot in my throat, a pulsing headache that creeps into my work day and lingers until I finally close my eyes to sleep.

On days like these, when facing so much exhaustion and overwhelm and a bazillion other cascading emotions, sometimes you just need to have a good, long cry about it.

And I’m not talking about a sprinkle of tears – I mean one of those full-body crying experiences. The ones where by the time you’re done, your face is puffy, your eyes are swollen, you’ve used up a million tissues and you feel physically spent like you could sleep for days.

I love these moments because once they start I often cry and cry and most of the time I can’t even pinpoint exactly what I’m crying about. It’s just a flood of emotion and crying seems to be the best way to release it all and just get it OUT. I always feel so much lighter after a good cry like this, like my insides have been cleansed – it feels invigorating and therapeutic. In fact, if too much time has passed where I haven’t had a good, satisfying cry like this, I will literally do things to provoke myself into shedding some tears, whether that is listening to an emotional song, watching a sad movie, remembering a past loss, etc. For me, I’ve come to realize that fully feeling in this way, is what makes me feel alive.

If this sounds a bit odd to you, I totally get it. We live in a culture that discourages feeling uncomfortable emotions and generally looks down on crying. Consequently, so many of us women have learned to suppress the urge to cry in order to fit in, to be strong, to not show our vulnerability and humanness. How many times have you felt some strong emotion come up but quickly swallowed it down, pushing it away? I used to do this all the time and still find myself doing it sometimes out of habit.

The thing is, when we don’t allow ourselves to feel all of our emotions, we don’t get to process and move through them.

This is how painful emotions get lodged in the body. Although we may not be aware of their presence, they do manifest themselves eventually – be it in the form of uncontrollable outbursts, pain, illness, disease. When we’re not willing to fully feel the pain and hurt and resentment etc, our loving faithful body takes on what we’re not able to deal with – for better or worse.

Crying is such a powerful gift that can move us through these emotions so they don’t build up and accumulate.

I’ve had a few of these big crying spells over the past couple weeks and I gotta say, each one was SO healing for me. This stuff needed to come out. Such a huge energy of release that allowed me to express everything that was bubbling up, let it all go, and move on feeling so much clearer and rejuvenated.

As I’ve delved more and more into yoga and energy work over the past several years (practices that have allowed and encouraged me to keep opening my heart), I’ve become much more comfortable with crying and letting my guard down. And what I’ve noticed is, gradually I’ve become a lot more sensitive as a result. The hardened exterior I once kept up has slowly melted away and it’s much easier for me to become affected by… well, everything! I consider this to be a good thing. With increased sensitivity comes the ability to feel the depth and richness of ALL emotions.

We become more open to life when we choose to feel.

In the past, I used to believe that crying and showing tears made you weak. Now I believe that it actually makes you stronger. You are allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to let go. To feel it all, to feel all the pain and scary feelings and grief. This takes strength of character to delve into seriously uncomfortable territory and allow yourself to fully sit with it and express these painful feelings. It takes courage to admit that you can’t do it all or don’t know how to, and simply surrender to that place.

This is something I’ve been gravitating to more and more over the past several months. Feeling the emotions. Expressing the vulnerability. Being ok with ALL your emotions, even the icky yucky ones that you don’t really want to think about, let alone invite in. I’m sure you’ll see me writing much more on this topic down the line…

For now, I turn it over to you, lovely. When is the last time you had a good cry? Is this something you shy away from or do you welcome the tears? When you’re hurt or upset or (fill in the blank), do you search for things to make you feel better or do you surrender to the emotion and let yourself fully feel it? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

With open-hearted acceptance & hugs,
Diana x

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