I’ve been going through a lot recently. Multiple jobs, bills piling up, and my current relationship is falling apart. I want to cry. To bawl my eyes out and scream at the top of my lungs. But I can’t. It feels like there’s a wall between me and my emotions. Anyone else deal with this?
Yes and I’ve been there. It took me a lot of conscious effort to get past that wall.
It’ll sound weird and it’s possible you might feel a bit inhibited but I strongly recommend trying. It’s just getting your locked up nervous system to cooperate. Kinda like pushing a car to start it up.
Use music with any of these if you want. Find the safest place you can.
You can just go somewhere in nature and sit there until tears come. Sometimes you need to just create space for it.
Another is to actually just make noise. Moan. Shout. Or just hold a note. Whatever. Just keep doing it for a few minutes or so. For whatever reason I like to do this in the car. Not to cry anymore but it’s just become a habit of letting out steam.
Then more involved is to move your body. Shake it. Jostle it. Make more noise and let it sound weird from all the moving. Dance without trying to be good at it. Don’t think about it.
TRE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FeUioDuJjFI
If you feel a lot of inhibition because of the imagined cosmic judge, be gentle with yourself. Some people get this immediately, for me It took a bit of pushing. I had already tried everything else and sure, cried a tiny bit here and there but still felt like I had a fucking ocean on uncried tears in me. I had to learn to go to it via the body, not the mind.
People hate on Yoga and meditation but it does work for this. Problem generally is in finding competent teachers. But I’ve been on retreats where grown, burly men burst into tears because for the first time in their lives, they actually connect with their nervous system, they’re allowed to be vulnerable and actually FEEL their feelings. Instead of “dealing” with them, “letting them go”, intellectualizing them away, suppressing them or drowning them in substances or work/hobby. It’s a hell of an aha moment.
https://youtu.be/VsNcjRSBhGA
This right here!!! Humanity has this artificial divide between mind and body as if your brain was somehow not connected to every part of you. I’ve spoken with people who couldn’t understand the very question “how does sadness feel in your body”. They would explain they thought person x had been mean and that made think it was wrong and that made them think they should do something yap yap yap but never actually answering the question. It’s especially true for men and that’s incredibly sad.
I think people not being able to answer “how does it feel” questions is partly due to the cultural quirk where “what do you think” is replaced with “how do you feel”. Meaning even the asker is in fact posing the question as “what do you think”, rather than inviting actual reflection on one’s emotional state. Think of TV interviews for example.
I also suspect that there’s a subtle desire to make the answer a bit more inarguable. Because it’s socially acceptable to argue about one’s thinking. Less so about feelings. “All feelings are valid” is taken to mean that anything that follows the phrase “I feel…” is automatically true and you’re not allowed to disagree. Which is precisely what the “all feelings are valid” is not about. “All feelings are valid” points to the subjective experience of an emotional state. A war veteran freaking about fireworks is valid. A war veteran saying fireworks mean they are actually getting bombed is not. Rape victim feeling insecure when walking alone is valid. Rape victim saying everyone’s trying to rape them is not. A highly nuanced and volatile issue which people really want to reduce into very simple dogmas.