Cry if you need to. Really.

When we need to cry, we need to cry. 

There’s nothing shameful about it. 

There’s nothing “weak” about it. 

And, believe me when I tell you, if you’re feeling the need to cry, you absolutely “have something to cry about.” 

Lots of us grew up with lots of explicit, negative messages about what crying means. 

We don’t like to cry, for a lot of reasons— chief among them that many of the things that make us cry are sad, upsetting, or otherwise overwhelming. 

But it’s more than that. 

Crying feels to a lot of us like an uncontrollable experience that we don’t understand very well— some kind of hate it. 

Trauma survivors in particular hate things happening to us or inside of us that we cannot control or understand. 

Many of us went for years feeling like we had to hide our emotions to be safe. 

Revealing our emotions often left us vulnerable to people who might use our emotional reactions to manipulate or mock us. 

So, we got really good at “masking,” hiding what we’re feeling or experiencing, often behind an unbothered poker face. 

But crying— crying has a way of cracking the ol’ poker face, doesn’t it? 

Crying is famously one of those physiological reactions that can betray our inner feelings— especially fear or pain— to people around us. 

So— it makes a lot of sense that many trauma survivors absolutely hate that feeling that we’re in danger of breaking into tears. 

For some of us, getting tearful represents a “failure”— a failure to maintain the illusion that what’s happening to or around us, isn’t affecting us. 

Some of us decided that we weren’t going to cry, ever, because we weren’t going to give our bullies or abusers the satisfaction. 

Make no mistake: crying isn’t some sort of “failure’ or capitulation to our bullies or abusers. 

Keeping ourselves from crying isn’t particularly “sticking” it to our bullies or abusers. Believe me when I tell you, they couldn’t care less whether we conquer our urge to cry or not. 

Your mileage may vary on whether crying is or isn’t a particular problem for you. No one, including me, can tell you whether it is or isn’t the “right” thing to do to cry. 

What I can tell you, though, is that it’s real important to our trauma and/or addiction recovery that we not shut our “parts” or inner child down in our attempts to avoid crying.

It’s real important we not shame or mock ourselves for wanting to cry. 

It’s real important we not reinforce our bullies’ or abusers’ narrative that we “don’t have anything to cry about.” 

(Many of us remember, with chilling clarity, the declaration, “Stop it, or I’ll give you something to cry about.”) 

It’s real important, in sum, that we meet our need to cry the same way we meet any and all of our emotional and physical reactions in recovery: with compassion, with patience, with radical acceptance. 

I know. Crying is very often no fun. (Yes, I know, there are such things as tears of joy and tears of laughter— but you know that’s not what I’m talking about in this blog.)

But the essence of recovery is meeting our “no fun” moments with compassion, patience, and acceptance. 

Even if we don’t feel like it. 

Especially then, actually.