Crying is as essential as having a poo...

Basically this week has reminded me yet again how important and necessary it is to cry and yet how we still get so weird about it.

I released the final episode of my Soulful Storytelling 'grief' series this week and it has been such a fulfilling experience for me to have conversations with people about their experiences of grief. Naturally in some of those conversations tears showed up. When some of them were talking about the person who died or remembering how they dealt with hearing the news. But after our conversations lots of them said how much they had enjoyed the conversation and how cathartic it was to share their story out loud in the presence of someone else.

I have had some weird issues in the past with crying. It wasn't something that was encouraged in my family. It wasn't berated, but there was definitely the message of 'don't make a fuss' (i.e stop crying). I have no problem with other people crying in my presence, I guess with my background of coaching and working with people in difficult situations it has become familiar to me and I see it as a necessary release of emotion. However, I still have to actively work on allowing myself to let go and have a good cry. 

When I say 'actively' work on it - some of my tactics are putting on sad songs and bringing it on, thinking of sad things or just walking to somewhere beautiful and taking in the magnitude of the world. If I haven't cried in a little while, I can feel a build up of emotion in my body, it shows up as a tight lower back, tense shoulders, headache, my body just physically aches. I compare it to being constipated. Emotionally constipated. And we all know how good it feels when we've had a good poo eh..... We feel lighter!

The thing is crying does not always equal sadness. We can cry from frustration, overwhelm, anger, joy, laughter, stress. Our body releases stress hormones and toxins in our tears, which soothes our central nervous system with oxytocin and endorphins. You know that relief you feel afterwards, that lightness.

When you think of it like this, it would make sense to cry more often. Like opening the valve to release and process our emotions regularly rather than allowing them to build up.

How do you feel about crying? Do you cry often? Do you cry alone or with others? How do you react to other people's tears?

I am curious to know......

PS - If you like these little thoughts you can follow me on Instagram and subscribe to my podcast