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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 9 of 9. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by kellyr. on November 24, 2004, at 21:52:45
my T doesn't understand why i wouldn't cry when i talk about my fathers suicide or the abuse i went though as a child. the only thing i can come up w/ is that when i was a kid my mom beat me when i cried, so i try hard not to cry in fear of being hit, i know that my T isn't gooing to hit me, but all though year of it made me a scared adult-child. does anyone feel this way?
Posted by alexandra_k on November 24, 2004, at 21:52:45
In reply to time to cry or not, posted by kellyr. on November 24, 2004, at 17:58:30
Yeah, I understand you. If my mother saw that she had succeeded in upsetting me then she would have ammunition to continually use against me. I learned pretty quick to dissociate from my feelings of pain and hurt and humiliation etc etc to a state of numbness.
That is still kind of my strategy for dealing. It is kind of automatic I guess. Even though I know rationally that it is okay to express that stuff now in some settings I still just go all numb.
I don't know what is to be done...
Posted by kellyr. on November 24, 2004, at 21:57:06
my T doesn't understand why i don't cry when i talk about my fathers suicide or about all the abuse i have been though, i guess if i cry it would help but i cann't. does anyone feel the sameway? when i was young i got hit if i cried by my mom so i don't cry. if i cry would it help or just make me look like a baby? i sometime think that i'm better if i don't cry that i must be doing ok if i can hold it together, but my T think that i haven't dealt w/ it yeat, that cring would cure me from being suicidal myself, and i can go on living happier. sounds like a fair tale or something, i don't think i'll ever be happy.
Posted by crazychickuk on November 24, 2004, at 21:57:06
In reply to no time to cry, posted by kellyr. on November 24, 2004, at 13:51:14
Hey , theres nothign wrong with good cry now and then... you have so much inside you thats building up, and its taking its toll i mean by that, that its coming out on you a different way, ppl deal with tings differently...
and YOU WILL be happy one day... we all will be...
and if u wanna cry then cry so be it.. sumo wrestelers cry, i seen one..
take care xx
Posted by Daisym on November 24, 2004, at 23:23:13
In reply to no time to cry, posted by kellyr. on November 24, 2004, at 13:51:14
Oh Kelly, Please believe that you will someday be happy. It is important to have hope.
As far as crying, it can take a long time to build up to it. I automatically shut down tears when they spring up, a learned response to "tears don't solve the problem" I heard as a child. It has taken a great deal of work to learn to cry in therapy, including my therapist telling me to "leave them" when a couple of tears trickled down my face.
There have been a handful of sessions that I actually ended up sobbing from a deep, dark place. Usually these happen when the younger parts of me are "out" and telling stories. The first time this happened I tried to stop really, really hard. I kept apologizing and he just kept saying, "the rules are different in here. It is OK to cry. You need to cry. I want to see your tears..."and on and on. It was nice to hear his voice and be reminded that I was in a safe place.
And your therapist might be right. I've felt less suicidal as I have been able to let it out in therapy. Healing doesn't seem so impossible after sessions like that. In fact, I've read that there is research that shows that happy tears have a different chemical make up than sad tears. So different things are being released.
All that said, there are no rules that say you MUST cry tears to grieve what happened to you. We all find our own way. Therapy isn't about right or wrong, it is about your individual journey.
Hugs from me.
Daisy
Posted by cubic_me on November 25, 2004, at 10:36:54
In reply to no time to cry, posted by kellyr. on November 24, 2004, at 13:51:14
I really understand how you feel, I was never beaten for crying, but I was shouted at and it was made very clear that crying was wrong and that 'good' people don't show emotion etc. Like you, I find it very hard to show emotion now.
In my teens I began to understand why I had not cried for so many years, and why I couldn't cry. At the beginning I had learned to stop myself from crying when I wanted to cry, and eventually I stoped myself from crying so early that it was unconcious - I never even felt that I wanted to cry. It has taken me a long time to get to the point where I can occasionally cry on my own, although it is rare. Luckily my T understood why I couldn't cry, during our termination session she said that she would expect a few tears, but knew that it was not going to happen. Sometimes during therapy she would sit there, and I felt like she was waiting for me to cry, but I told her that there was no chance of me crying.
The first step for me was to allow myslef to feel my own emotions - to let myself feel sad, or angry, or whatever, you can't expect to express things when you have shut down your feelings of some emotions. I still feel like I need to have something to cry 'about', even tho rationally that is not true, and I can't cry infront of anyone, but I'm still working on that. I have to keep reminding myself that sometimes people like to see our vulnerable side - it endears them to us.
Posted by sunny10 on November 25, 2004, at 11:03:41
In reply to Re: no time to cry » kellyr., posted by cubic_me on November 25, 2004, at 10:36:54
Kelly,
I think most of us here would agree with your post.
We learned to shut down when things get tough. Self-protective for whatever the reason.But if you have landed in therapy, you know that you need to work through that stuff. And you can- you will; just takes a little time, that's all.
Stick with it- we'll be here to listen whenever you want to talk about it.
-sunny10
Posted by alexandra_k on November 25, 2004, at 18:14:17
In reply to Re: no time to cry, posted by sunny10 on November 25, 2004, at 11:03:41
What got me crying was mindfulness meditation. The idea is to just focus on how it feels to breathe; in and out nice and slow and whenever your mind wanders to other things to just notice that and bring your attention back to your breathing.
I started out with doing 5 minutes and then built it up gradually over a period of weeks to 40 minutes.
Then what I found is that I would feel this immense pain and start bawling. There was nobody around to see me or anything. It was hard but I found that for a period of a couple of weeks I would just cry when trying to do meditation.
But for some reason I felt better after, though it hurt like hell at the time.
I learned that the feeling passed. After a few weeks the crying stopped. I guess part of not being able to cry for me was terror that if I started I would never stop.
Posted by rubenstein on November 28, 2004, at 11:11:32
In reply to Re: no time to cry, posted by alexandra_k on November 25, 2004, at 18:14:17
I have a really tough time crying as well. I have almost broke down in therapy but never all the way. It bothers me that I can't cry, I really don't know how to fix that issue of mine...so anyway I emphathize with you and am thinking of you.
rubenstein
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