Crying Means Healing, And Healing Means Crying

When was the last time you cried? Write it down—all of it. Write down why you cried and how it made you feel. The last time I cried - you want to know? I'm tearing up right now. And yesterday. And the day before that too.

See, all this is new for me. For the past two years, crying wasn't much part of my life. Not because I wasn't sad. Not because I didn't feel like it. And not because I wasn't broken. I just couldn't. I noticed it too. But I just couldn't.

Why? At the time, I thought, well, it's just what it is. Everything is just okay. I'm fine. When in reality, nothing was fine, and I just tried to pull it together to get through my days. It went on for months; trying to hang on so I wouldn't break down. It made me numb. Numb to emotions and oblivious to realize what's actually going on with me.

My emotional response valves were clocked up with worries, anxiety, depression, and unbearable tension. I kept adding layer by layer until it broke. And by it, I mean the way my body and mind was processing emotions. It happened gradually, and the lines blur between realization and acceptance until I couldn't feel anything, but everything at the same time.

It's a strange sensation, much like a dark veil that is between you and reality. It follows you around wherever you go. You can't really make sense of it. You can't really touch or see it, but you know it's there. By trying my hardest to be okay, my body kept compounding more stress, more anxiety until my emotional response system shut down. And by shutting down, I literally mean feeling 0, dead, nadda.

It seemed as my body was trying to protect me from feeling so much that it made me feel nothing at all. I was so empty and numb, but at the same time, I felt overwhelmed, sad, and lost.

I found myself in a situation where my emotional response system was so out of wack and responsible for my crippling depression and anxiety.The more depressed, sad, tense, and lost I was, the more I wanted to cry and let it all go, the more dead I felt inside. It's a vicious cycle.

What's funny in a dark sense is that the perception of showing emotions, especially for a dude in his 30s, is still so messed up. We are conditioned that dudes all need to be tough sons of bitches. Alpha males that not only rule at home but also in the corporate world. Strong individuals who show emotions through their fists.

Sure, I'm exaggerating, and yes, I'm objectifying. But my point is, people close to me were trying to help by telling me to stay strong. Maybe staying strong to them meant many different things, but it meant to not be weak to me.

And weak to me meant vulnerable. Vulnerable means emotions. Emotions equal crying. Crying meant not strong. You see where I'm going with this.

In hindsight, everything makes sense. How could I expect my emotional response system to work when my values and perception of a strong man were all screwed up? My idea of strong meant not showing weakness to others - unless it included a doctor and a prescription to meds. My definition of strength was to pretend everything is okay, even when it wasn't.

I thought of progress as most people would - moving forward with life by clinging on to every inch of sanity I could find, which by default is absolutely insane.

See, real madness starts when you keep doing the same things but expect a different outcome. It's (wrong) expectations that drive you crazy. Not depression. And not anxiety.

My expectations were that meds and pretending nothing's wrong will make me feel better (nothing else) when instead trying to understand why I feel the way I feel and what I could do to change my situation would have been way more realistic expectations. Turns out, questioning your actions and emotions are better metrics than questioning whether meds work or not.

Anxiety or depression starts and falls with emotions, and more importantly, the thoughts we associate with. In my case, my idea of overcoming anxiety and depression by not showing weakness was self-destructing and toxic. Perhaps, if my perception of a strong man would have been different, releasing tension through crying would have been on the cards much sooner.

Crying is actually amazing. There's some pretty wild stuff happening in our brains and bodies when we cry. Apart from red eyes and puffy faces, crying also fires up the release of endorphins called leucine-enkephalins, which act as pain relievers to boost your mood. So at least for me, every time the floodgates open, I feel a sense of release, and the world gets just a fraction bigger than it was.

Without getting too technical or pretending to be a doctor, hardcore emotions like sadness, anger, or stress are processed as signs of danger. Up and until this point, we're all in the same boat. We all experience such moments. The only difference is that people suffering from depression and anxiety have their amygdala (an area of the brain that controls emotional processing) working in overdrive.

The amygdala fires signals to the hypothalamus —a pea-sized gland in your brain that's connected to your autonomic nervous system. Chances are that at this point, you're anxiety is definitely kicking in as the autonomic nervous system jump-starts the sympathetic nervous system and accelerates the fight-or-flight response.

By now, you're riddled with tension and anxiety, and all you want is some sense of release. This is where we throw crying into the mix. Maybe my paragraph on what's happening in our brains is too long - too dull. Still, the point is that with an emotional response system that actually works how it should, crying offers me, you and others dealing with anxiety or depression, a break from it all.

I am not sure who needs to read this, but crying helps me a lot, especially when getting out of bed or getting through the day is hard. Maybe it helps you too.

Let me know, and keep crying.

Life's better that way.