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?
I usually cry a lot and always have been. In my 20s I got diagnosed with Depression etc. Whenever I was in a clinic the other patients were telling me how jealous they are that I can cry so much. I never understood them, because it‘s very exhausting to cry constantly and it changes NOTHING.
After some years, suddenly, I couldn‘t cry anymore. Still depressed, but now I couldn‘t express my pain anymore. It was horrible, I mean crying constantly is horrible too, but in a different way. It felt like I would feel better if I could cry, even though on a rational level I knew I wouldn‘t. It was a weird feeling. I do cry again now and I think both extremes are similar bad.
The thought that crying doesn’t do anything is misguided. It actually changes a lot internally. Like, sure, it doesn’t change your material circumstances but it absolutely has a proven effect on our mental well-being and ability to regulate emotions.
It helps us to process emotions of grief and tension. It’s catharsis. It has a physiological effect on our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. That exhaustion is the release of tension that, without it, the body isn’t recovering from.
So, on a rational level, yes, crying does actually make people feel better in the long term, even if it doesn’t immediately show signs of effectiveness.