Your Tears Are Important

By Dr. Hillary McBride

Shared With Permission

The tears we never cried, the sadness we weren’t allowed or able to feel doesn’t go away until it is able to come out.

It is not until we are safe and brave enough to feel it that we can get access to it again. Sometimes it means we feel the pain long after the injury happened, after the numbing and avoidance has worn off and we thaw out inside.

It can be scary and alarming and confusing to have too much pain surface, especially when we feel so far from what happened. Especially when we were unable to feel in the past, or unable to do so, our ability to feel is proof that something is different, even if it feels worse than the numbing ever did. 

When we weren’t shown how to be with our feelings, and they start to come up again, we can be afraid that they will never end- that is usually proof that we weren’t shown how to feel them until they do end, or the intolerability of the feeling was too much to bear on our own. 

Difficult Feelings do end, even if it takes some time to get there, and lots of waves of processing everything that wasn’t felt. 

I’m thinking of each of you who are now actually making space for what you were never allowed to feel, and are brave enough to allow it to be here, even when it is painful, scary, and uncomfortable for you and others. 

Your tears are medicine. Your tears are important. Your tears deserve to be cried, and they can be here as long as they need to.

Dr. Hillary McBride is a registered psychologist, a researcher, author and podcaster, with expertise that includes working with trauma and trauma therapies, embodiment, and the intersection of spirituality and mental health.

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