The Rise Of Crying Therapy (And Why It Works)
In fact, as Maria Lodetoft, a holistic practitioner who leads workshops geared towards helping people feel comfortable among the tears and screams of themselves and others believes their rising popularity is due to the idea that crying in public can sometimes feel less scary than crying to loved ones.Many people carry their sadness alone and feel ashamed of it. A shared space removes that pressure. No one asks why you are crying or whether your reason is valid. You are simply allowed to feel.“It’s easier to cry with strangers sometimes, rather than to allow the people closest to you to know you are not ok,” she tells me. “The people we love are more likely to jump into trying to make us feel better, rather than allowing us the space to just cry, and this often stops the emotional release.”Her workshops include a variety of different practices and exercises to trigger emotion, culminating in encouraged crying. “We ask clients to write love letters to themselves and then read these aloud. There’s something really powerful with vocalising what you have been holding,” she says. “We never attempt to stop the crying or to shorten the grieving process either. For some people, that means they will cry for 10 minutes, and everyone else will just hold the space, not talking or interrupting or moving on, just being there.”And it’s not just cathartic for the person crying, it’s important for the people watching on too. “We have a tendency to jump to try to make someone feel better, but sometimes we just need to cry in order to process. Learning to sit with and feel comfortable watching someone cry is really important. It makes us better listeners, better at processing our own emotions.”Dr Cassidy Blair, a licensed clinical psychologist who also runs crying workshops to help participants work through their feelings and create a space for healing and emotional release. “Today we’re seeing an increasing number of people discover the value in allowing themselves to cry in a supportive environment where they feel safe enough to do so,” she tells me. “The release of tears is typically associated with sadness, but the true value lies in providing a space for healing. This allows individuals to process unresolved and long-held emotions that have typically been suppressed by stress, loss, or unresolved trauma.”Read More“You can’t go back to how things were – that reality doesn’t exist any more.”It’s common for clients who participate in crying workshops to find instant emotional relief when they do cry, she adds. “Crying workshops give you the chance to process your feelings about things that may have been weighing on you for years. Crying is far from just expressing your emotions; it helps stimulate your body to let go of the stress hormone that has built up inside of you, which gives you true physical relief. In some ways, crying helps to serve as an emotional reset so you are able to deal with your challenges clearly and with fewer emotional distractions.”“The best method is crying workshops where the release is through light sensory stimuli rather than intense emotional stress,” Dr Eleni Nicolaou, an art therapist and creative wellness expert, explains. “To stimulate the tears to flow in a natural manner, I sweep the cheeks using a small paint brush dipped in cool water that triggers the trigeminal nerve.
