I have never cried in therapy. I have been seeing two ts for about a year. When the one I have been seeing longer even mentions it might be possible for me to cry in front of her - I have a physical reaction of panic - which she can see and then has to sort of talk me back down. I have tried therapy two other times in my past and I never cried there either. I really do not cry much (maybe twice in the past 5 years and those involved serious illness and death of two beings I was quite attached to)

Hi HIC and Stoppers,
Just wanted to comment on both crying and the emotional damage.

First off, as far as crying is concerned, it's neither a requirement nor a problem. Some of it is just temperament. I, for example, can cry about a well done McDonald's commercial. My kids entertain themselves when my family watches movies by betting on when I'm going to start crying. As you can imagine, I cry A LOT in therapy. (I suspect that my T's kleenex budget did a steep drop when I stopped coming regularly. ) But not everyone will, nor do they need to. My husband and I saw my T for marriage counseling also, and my husband became concerned about the same thing. We'd go into sessions and I would hit intense emotions and be sobbing for awhile and he finally asked our T is he was doing it right, did he need to do what I was doing to heal? And my T was very clear that it wasn't necessary. So therapy should be someplace where you CAN cry if you need to, but I don't think it should be a requirement.

All that said, I know it took me a really long time to allow myself to actually feel my feelings. They were too scary and confusing and I didn't know what to do with them. So I would hold them in as long as I could and then they would kind of burst out, spewing everywhere. I held things so tight, that my T once told me it was actually ok if I made a noise when I was crying.

quote:

No matter how intense and personal the subject matter, I either discuss it with an air of cool detachment, mild frustration, or occasionally embarrassment.

HIC, this really struck me. It sounds like you have a pretty good lock down on your feelings. I am guessing it might not have been good thing to express your feelings or needs as a child?

Which brings me to the emotional damage. I prefer to think of it not as pathological but as development gone awry. There are fundamental skills all human beings need to learn: to identify our needs, to make our needs known and to tolerate our own feelings. If we grow up in a secure, loving environment these skills are taught to us implicitly by interacting with an attuned parent. But if we don't have that, often we can move into adult hood without the ability to regulate and tolerate our own emotions. To feel ashamed of having needs, let alone expressing them. And the experience of not having dependable care can instill in us a very deep belief that the universe is a hostile place, we are not worthwhile and our needs will not be met. These beliefs become a filter so to speak, through which all of experience with people passes.

A good example HIC, was you going straight to "I'm not crying, I must be a freak" instead of "hey, some people cry a lot, some people don't."

so I think your T's hesitation was probably about the recognition that you may not have learned everything you needed to growing up and that your experiences have also instilled some very deep beliefs that helped you survive at the time but are no longer needed and may actually be hurting you now.

There's a strange dichotomy in therapy. On the one hand, it's a place where you can learn to understand yourself and why you do what you do, and hopefully learn to have compassion for yourself. But it's also a safe place for you to examine yourself and see how you contribute to your own problems so that you can change the things you think need changing. My T and I used to call it "gently pushing" yourself.

And it most definitely is reparable if you're willing to do the work. It can be difficult, confusing and painful, but it is possible to heal. Our brains never lose their ability to change and learn new things. It's harder as an adult, but it's possible.

AG

Thanks for the very helpful and thoughtful reply, AG. It was interesting and made sense. Hmm, lots to think about.

Stoppers-- yeah, I can relate to what you wrote about the scariness of even thinking about crying in therapy. I don't so much panic as freeze up, but we do seem to be similar in this regard. Thanks for sharing your experience.

I totally get how you feel here helpincompassion: I too feel that I cannot cry very well. I also feel that I must try and cry to keep her sympathetic attention toward me. I feel like a fraud because there is a possibility that I wind myself up a bit to get into the mood so that she can sympathize with me and tell me 'its all okay'.

I guess it leads to the same idea of infantile attention seeking where one did not receive enough care in early years.

But generally I feel emotionally numbed. When I talk about my parents I feel very cut off. I can brush them off and say 'Meh, I don't care about them. They're just people. Live or die, I don't care' and honestly, I feel nothing.

But in real terms honesty, I have no idea. I fear that my feelings are so welled down that I will never get to the core of them. I feel too detached from caring about what happened. However I live my life in a random spiral of chaos so this attunes me to believe that the way I function in life is due to adverse and negative effects of younger years.

I guess what we can do is keep going to therapy and let ourselves be. If we don't cry, we don't. If we do, thats good. I have a tendancy to intellectualize every minute part of everything which puts me into panic over lots of things.

But I say, there is hope. Perhaps for many of us who has undergone a lot of trauma it might take significantly longer in some situations, but lets keep at it I guess!...

Hey Nada,

Thanks for the reply. I can relate to a lot of what you wrote here-- confusion about where the feelings are, and what the feelings are, as well as sometimes feeling like a fraud. Occasionally I feel that what I present to the world (and my T) is a mask, but then the mask feels as real as anything else, so I'm just not sure.

I feel like if the fragmented bits of me could somehow interact and get to know each other more, I'd be experiencing more wholeness and serenity. One of my goals for therapy is that it will help facilitate this process. Here's hoping. Good luck to you, too! Keep us updated on how things go.

Hey heldincompassion,

No problem. Thanks for your lovely post.

I'm in a very mixed state of confusion at the moment. I've been lately feeling that I live in a variety of subtle masks that are tailor made to fit the world and for each person too.

My childhood ups and downs were absolutely normal from aged 0. So I often find it very hard to understand emotions. Sometimes I really nitpick and ask friends what it 'feels' like to feel this or be inspired etc.

I've had a grueling 2 weeks and I keep assuming that it was all my fault because I could have easily stopped thinking.

With the mask saga, I feel exactly the same. I can't even tell that I'm nervous with her. I don't connect to my feelings well even if I am feeling them. I realized that I was very nervous in front of her and I still am. I feel very uncomfortable for some reason.

Here's hoping to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Good luck to you as well. We shall pull through!