The moment I walked into the building something felt off. A room full of children should be loud and lively and life-giving. Instead, a stiff silence permeated the air. I'd been prepared for a room full of orphans when China had invited us to visit the place where our newly adopted daughter had lived for more than two years of her life, but not for the depressed silence. There were babies and toddlers. There should be crying.
I wandered around in a daze, taking in the futile brokenness all around me. My eyes landed on four or five portable cribs in the middle of the room. The babies...all of them like miniature statues stared blankly into space.
"Can I touch them?" I asked.
When given permission, I ran my fingers down the sweet arm of a little one. I expected a moment of connection. Instead, the infant immediately became agitated, squirming away from me. When we talked to them, they didn't even act like they heard us. Everything about the behavior of those babies was exactly opposite of how healthy new humans act.
Now that I've learned about resourcing our bodies and how our nervous systems were designed, I've realized that these babies were a prime example of the consequences of a lack of love and emotional connection. Likely, they had only been handled and touched for unpleasant tasks such as diaper changes and bathing. Their communication (crying) had gone unnoticed and unattended to until their body and brain just gave up all attempts to be heard. Their cries had been a nuisance and the lack of response to them had trained their little nervous systems to turn off completely. Because God loves us, He designed the body to protect itself in whatever way possible. Without safe outlet for their emotions, the only choice the body had was to switch off emotional capacity entirely.
Many of us were born into a generation that believed that crying was unhealthy, uncalled for, or a sign of weakness. We were told over and over not to cry, that crying is for babies, that it makes you a wimp or a weakling, that it's useless. As science is opening up to us a glimpse into our human design, it is proving quite the opposite. Crying is actually an emotional outlet that helps our body's regulate, comforts our emotional pain, and makes us over all more empathetic and healthier humans. Something's wrong with not crying.
Strong emotions or emotional needs always need somewhere to go. They either need to be met or processed out of the body in some way. Crying is a gift to us that helps us relieve the body of whatever strong emotion that we feel, whether that is grief, anger, or even joy. It's why you usually feel better after a good cry. Tears are a sign that your body has released hormones and endorphins that comfort internal pain and prevent emotional overload.
"But Candace, maybe some people are just not emotional." I'd have to push back on that argument. Unemotional people usually are the ones with the deepest wounds that need attention. Unless a person is without a nervous system (you'd be dead), they are born into this world with emotions. Scientists don't even believe that anyone is born a psychopath or sociopath. You can have some genes that might help you get there faster than someone else, but it takes environmental factors and circumstances for those traits to manifest.
We are a product of our childhood because the early parts of childhood are when our bodies and brains go through the most and fastest development. We are sponges, trusting and absorbing what happens to us and what we are taught so much easier than when we reach adulthood. Many of us lived childhoods that taught us to suppress our feelings and play the part of someone who didn't have them. But emotions always need a resolution. Whether that is a need met, a good release, or an action that can be taken to resolve whatever is causing them, if they do not find resolution, they stay in the body and gunk up the nervous system. This causes things like chronic illness, mental and emotional disorders, and unhealthy explosions when the body can't hold any more.
My oldest daughter, that we adopted from China when she was 14, still cannot cry. Her nervous system spent the first 14 years in some form of survival mode, and it's stuck. We are working on it, and she's even gotten to the point where she can cry in a dream and wake up with tears on her face, but even after 11 years of safety and belonging, her emotions are all locked up and pressed down inside. Often, she cannot tell me what she is feeling, even pain.
So if you never cry, there is likely an unhealthy reason for that. It's not that you are a strong person or less of a wimp than everyone else. It's that you are likely living some internal toxicity. You're next move isn't to pat yourself on the back; it's to start the work of emotional healing. Your nervous system needs some attention and some resourcing. And the messages you've believed to your core about emotions need to be changed.
Those internal messages of shame skew our perspective of God's good gifts to His children, ultimately stunting our growth and leaving us with ineffective lives.
I experience this just yesterday. This week, our church held its first services at a brand new location that we just finished building. It's twice the size of the other property and the opening service was packed to the brim. I'd never been to the new property and walking into the vastness of the new lobby with hundreds of other people completely overwhelmed my nervous system. Because I've done a whole lot of intentional emotional work, I recognized that my body and brain were trying to process everything at once. The beauty of the building. The noise. The crowds. The new layout. The pressure of getting in on time and finding a seat. Questions I was being asked by my children. Faces that were familiar and faces that weren't. The great work that God had done in getting our church to this place. It all hit at once, and I felt helpless to stop it.
I started to shake, which is a sign to me that I'm getting close to the edge of my emotional limits. And then I wanted to cry. My body needed the release. I automatically felt shame as the old messages that I've lived with for most of my life ran through my brain...the ones about how useless and weak I was to be on the verge of tears when everyone else in the building was joyous and celebratory and excited. I went back into an old mode of cursing my sensitivities and wishing desperately that I could be like everyone else.
I caught the eye of my sister-in-law, who works at the church, across the lobby, and she immediately came to greet me. I was so embarrassed, because as I talked to her tears bubbled out. I tried to explain, but just felt stupid. After she comforted me, my husband came out of the sanctuary where he'd been finding us seats and suggested that we walk around the building and get acquainted with the new layout. My brain was able to slow down to a pace I could handle and take in my surroundings. I spotted my son, who is interning at the church, and he hugged me. My body started to calm. We then found our new overflow sanctuary, which was much smaller than the main sanctuary, and took seats near the back. I cried through worship, apologizing to God for being such a baby and dishonoring His Name with my weakness. Y'all. That's how deep this messaging has been in my life. I was angry at myself once again for failing to be an example of faith.
And then last night, I prepared to write to my email subscribers this week and realized my marketing plan has me unpacking the resource of crying. As I began to share what I now know about crying, it made so much sense to me why I'd reacted the way I did yesterday. You see, a year or two ago, I would have never walked into that building after seeing how many cars were in that parking lot. And if I'd have forced myself to walk into the building despite my growing anxiety (so I wouldn't disappoint anyone or look like a weak Christian), I'd have immediately had a massive panic attack and begged my husband to take me home. The way that I'd been able to go into that building, recognize my overwhelm, and experience my body's attempt to release and regulate by crying was such a win for me. I not only automatically grasped for time and space to process, but I calmed enough to attend the entire service, met friends in the "packed to capacity" lobby afterwards, and went out to lunch with them. My body had successfully worked through serious overwhelm.
I wasn't weak or useless or without faith, I was healthier than I've ever been. My body has healed enough to react somewhat normally to overwhelm instead of jumping right into extreme fight or flight and sabotaging my whole day and maybe even week. Yesterday wasn't a defeat. It was a win.
But I almost completely missed the win because that old belief system that I've lived with all my life can be loud and unyielding. And I'm still learning how to catch it early and reject it completely. Until we start to tackle those old messages about emotions and emotional releases, we'll keep sabotaging ourselves, turning wins into defeats. We'll completely overlook the health that tears bring to our bodies, minds, and emotions.
Because crying is a gift.
PS. If any of this resonates with you, I'd love to help you start your own work towards physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. I believe they are all inseparably connected and can be permanently improved with resourcing. Visit my Coaching Services page for options.
You can also get a free resourcing assessment packet and join my resourcing email list (full of exclusive resourcing content, offers, and tips) at the same time, by filling out the form on my home page.
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