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I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, “The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.”
In a recent New York Times piece, writer Benedict Carey refers to tears as “emotional perspiration.” As an easy crier who sweats a lot, that makes perfect sense. But I’m not ashamed to cry because tears heal in a variety of different ways.
For one, they remove toxins from our body. Emotional tears (those formed in distress or grief) contain more toxic byproducts than tears of irritation, like when you peel an onion, indicating that weeping is surely nature’s way of cleansing the heart and mind.
Second, tears elevate mood. Crying lowers a person’s manganese level, and the lower the better because overexposure to manganese (whatever it is) can cause anxiety, nervousness, irritability, fatigue, aggression, and the rest of what happens in your brain when you or your spouse are in a foul mood.
Finally, crying is cathartic.
You’ve felt the same release that I have after a good sob, right?
It’s as if your body has been accumulating hurts and resentments and fears over the period of a year, a month, a week, or a half-second … until your limbic system runs out of room and then, like a volcano, the toxic gunk spews forth everywhere … onto your sweater, or a friend’s sweater, or onto a Kleenex, if you’re lucky enough to catch them.
That’s good! Because the cardiovascular and nervous systems run more smoothly after some emotional perspiration.
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Previous Posts
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posted 6:33:10am Feb. 16, 2012 | read full post »
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posted 6:00:56am Feb. 14, 2012 | read full post »
Love Deeply ...
posted 6:00:28am Feb. 13, 2012 | read full post » |
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Therese Borchard is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit. Subscribe to Beyond Blue, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.
Meet others on the journey in
Therese’s community group
Ask Therese to be your friend
Therese Borchard is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit. Subscribe to Beyond Blue, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.
posted January 26, 2012 at 10:36 am
I needed to read this today!
After growing up in a family where you were “weak” if you cried, I am finally releasing a lot of emotions that laid dormant within me.
I love the feeling after a “good cry”.
Hoping that more people realize how important it is to allow your emotions to come out rather than bury them.
posted January 30, 2012 at 11:06 am
Yes, I agree, our emotions impact our body. But I think the best to do is to find where does problems come. Job, family, not need to do a therapy, seeing our lives will gives us the answer…
