Something to Cry About

I’m been thinking about this for a couple of days. Where can people go when they are hurting? Where can someone go when they need to cry? Where is a safe place for us to feel our pain? When I was a kid, I was sometimes told when I started to cry, “You want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about.” It was scary, it was not a comforting thing to hear, and it made me angry. But if it wasn’t safe to cry; it wasn’t safe to get angry.

Sometimes I was told to “Go to your room if you’re gonna cry.” This was a little better, I could go to my room, cry and scream into my pillow and think about how much I hated my mom, who was usually the one I was angry at. When my older sister was mad or sad, and went into our room to cry, I’d try to comfort her, but she’d just yell at me to go away and leave her alone. It was that sad/mad combination.

When my kids got angry or sad, I’d try to ‘talk them down.’ I’d heard that if families just talk about things, things are OK. My kids didn’t buy into that for a minute and saw that it was my discomfort with their discomfort that drove me to try to insist that they talk about ‘it’ whatever it was.

They were right, I was totally uncomfortable with any of them feeling sad or being angry. I felt like I was a bad mom if my kids weren’t happy 24-7. And other people’s anger made me very anxious, as anger wasn’t dealt with very well in my family of origin. All kids, and all people feel sad and mad, not just happy and content. And they don’t necessarily need or want to talk about it, just then. Maybe they need to just feel the feeling(s) and process it themselves. Perhaps permission, by way of parental non overreaction would be best. I slowly learned to leave my kids alone to calm down and soothe themselves.

I’ve been thinking about this because a couple of days ago in my therapist’s office, he noted that I might have to feel the sadness of something that I’ve been hanging onto in order to get past it, and I told him flat out, “I don’t want to feel that.” And I didn’t and I don’t and furthermore, I’m not sure how or when to feel that. Seriously, I sat there in his office noticing that I had approximately 5-10 minutes of my session left and thought, “How in the hell can I feel sad for 5 minutes and then wrap it up, wipe off the tears and go back into the world and go to work?”

But I did feel sad for a bit, it welled up and I sat there and felt it. It was OK. I went into the ladies room down the hallway before I got into the elevator, wiped my face a bit, pinched my cheeks, smiled at myself in the mirror and walked to the elevator, down to the first floor and out into the world, nobody noticed that I had been sad for a bit.

In our busy lives, we have to find ways and make time to feel our feelings. Isn’t that what a kid having a temper tantrum is? Feeling his/her feelings-right there in front of God and everyone and it makes parents crazy. But it seems to make kids resilient. Maybe we can find a way legitimize temper tantrums, for all of us. Make it acceptable to carve some time into our lives for emotions. Find us all a safe place to go and cry, wipe our eyes, and come back out and face the world, a little more whole.