Posted by HannahW on October 3, 2003, at 23:47:58
In reply to Re: Why can't I cry Therapy is Hard » HannahW, posted by Poet on October 3, 2003, at 17:03:49
> my husband has only seen me cry once: when my cat died. That was 8 years ago.
I was always afraid or too embarrassed to cry in front of my husband too. But then after I started to allow myself (or rather, after I started to force myself) to cry in front of him, I found it to be very comforting. Nobody loves me more than he does. He doesn't even seem to notice that I look funny when I cry. If you can, in the name of deepening your intimacy, cry with him, you might be surprised that he doesn't think you're silly and that he loves you all the more.
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>I wish I could just let go and cry when I need to, especially in therapy. I mean, that's the one place where it is definitely okay to cry.That's going to be a really tough one for me. It's hard to imagine crying while somebody else is in the room, but who doesn't cry with me, or give me a hug, or anything. When/if it happens, I'll feel like an absolute idiot.
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> Now that I am staying in therapy, maybe when we figure out how I can get self esteem, we can work on why I keep my emotions deep inside me. Hmm, maybe that's why I have no self-esteem? There's no room because I store all those tears?I used to struggle with self-esteem in a big way. I worked on it a lot in therapy a long time ago, and I think the big breakthrough for me was when my therapist told me to think about a little newborn baby. The baby is all wrinkly, and demanding, and never thinks of anyone but herself, but yet she DESERVES love, just because she was born. She didn't earn it in any way. It's just a natural fact that whoever you are, regardless of how needy you are, or what sins you've committed, you DESERVE love because you were born. I always try to carry that with me when I'm tempted to think that I have absolutely nothing to offer anyone.
For me, the refusal to show emotion is a way of life. Most of the time, I don't even realize that I look so stoic. If I don't share my emotions, then I'm not vulnerable to someone rejecting me because of them. It's a defense mechanism that I developed in grade school because I needed it. Now that I'm an adult, and live and work in a safe environment, I don't need that mechanism anymore. But I honestly don't know how to function without it. What does it even look like to show emotions? (Sounds like a good post topic.)
> We have one thing that even she now refers to as "what you can't talk about." I think she says that thinking I'll suddenly start blurting it out, but I don't.
Do you think you'll eventually reach a point where you can finally talk about it? I'm hardly one to give advice here, since I have stuff I hate to talk about too, but whenever I talk about something that feels SO hard to talk about, I found it really wasn't so bad after all, and actually felt pretty good to talk about things that seemed so horrible and secret and dirty and find that the person didn't feel any differently about me afterward. They were only horrible and secret and dirty to me, but not to them.
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> I hope it helps you that you have a sister in therapy issues. This site is definitely helping me and I only found it a few weeks ago.It absolutely helps! I love having a sister! Thank you for sharing with me. I've also only been here a few weeks, but it helps me tremendously. I'd be nowhere near as far along as I am toward healing if it weren't for the insights of the people on this site, and just for the knowledge that I'm not alone after all.
poster:HannahW
thread:265259
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030925/msgs/265415.html