Crying in Public: Healthy Release or Embarrassing Weakness?
One complaint many of my clients have is their tendency to cry when they get overwhelmed. While crying is a perfectly normal response to pain, frustration, and sadness, it can get in the way. The problem is when those tears start leaking out at inappropriate times, at work, in a big meeting, in the middle of a conflict, with a stranger, etc. Crying is an extremely vulnerable act, especially when you have been told that it is manipulative, weak, or controlling. Crying has gotten a bad wrap--sometimes you just need to leak. But what do you do when your crying goes from healing to embarrassing?
Don't apologize. Once you feel the tears sting your eyes, the first thing you want to do is apologize. Apologizing implies you are doing something wrong. You are just crying and exhibiting an emotion. You aren't hitting or hurting anyone. Remind yourself there is nothing wrong with crying. When you apologize, that makes the other person feel responsible for you and diminishes you as well. Own the fact that you are crying without apologizing.
Take a Step Back. Tears are most likely coming from a place of frustration and anger. As women, we are often taught that anger or frustration is not ok, so we push it down until it bubbles up as tears. Give yourself a chance to pause and breathe. If you can keep talking, do so, but if not, ask to continue the conversation later or ask to take a break and come back to you.
The goal with these two steps is to break the cycle of—start crying—ridicule self—assume everyone else is ridiculing you—apologize profusely—cry harder. Instead, turn the cycle into start crying—breath—remind self that crying is ok, it is just an emotion—keep talking or ask to take a break—return and keep going.
The first two concepts are how to handle crying; this next concept is how to start decreasing the inappropriate crying tendency.
Look back: What is it really about? Too often, my clients get so caught up in the shame of crying that they never look back to see what they were so upset about? What was happening? Were you angry, frustrated, hurt? Did you feel attacked, betrayed, powerless? Start noticing a pattern in what triggers you.
For one of my clients, this process was life-changing. When she stopped apologizing and started embracing that she was a crier, it took some of the sting out of it. She was still embarrassed, and she still didn't like the fact that she was crying, but when she stopped apologizing, it just was "just something that happened" rather than the significant EVENT it had been in the past.
As she started looking back and asking, "what is this really about?" She noticed that A LOT was going on behind the scenes. She realized how much she had swallowed her feelings of fear, frustration, and anger. She felt powerless at work, and when there was any confrontation, she felt more and more powerless and then more and more confused so that she would cry out of frustration. Her crying was a sign of her not speaking up for herself, the incongruence between how she was feeling inside and what she was sharing on the outside. She knew she had a lot to contribute, and she was just scared to do it. Over time we started unraveling her fear, frustration, and anger. We started giving her a voice in our sessions and developing strategies for using that voice in the workplace.
She learned she needed to:
speak up for herself more often in little ways, so co-workers and superiors didn't just bulldoze her
ask for a break or a chance to reflect and come back to the problem
discuss things one-on-one rather than in a large group,
value her inner sensitivity, that piece of her gives her a lot of insight that her co-workers miss out on. She just needed to channel it differently so it could be heard in the workplace culture.
When she has a confrontation at work, her first response isn't crying but speaking up for herself. Leaking is still a part of her life, just not as much as it use to be.