Your Tears: A Pathway How To Become Emotionally Available

This post is not a twirling about the meadows Post but a truth serum Post. It promises the added benefit of feeling better in the long term by getting uncomfortable in the short term by exploring how to become emotionally available. 

One step in learning how to become emotionally available is learning to access the emotions in our hearts. This requires a desire to experience our feelings fully without numbing them with unhealthy relationships, habits, drugs, alcohol, sex, or whatever (insert: your vice here).

To help facilitate this process, we must take the first step and ask ourselves tough questions about the origins of our pain, unhealthy patterns, and unhealthy core beliefs.

Then, we must be willing to carefully listen to the answers and emotions that arise (regardless of how uncomfortable we may become).

Asking difficult questions about our life experiences and relationships is a step toward committing ourselves to the process of change and deepening our level of emotional awareness and acceptance.

The alternative is to trek through life’s journey as a passive participant in your experiences. Then, things start to look like they are happening to you rather than for your benefit so that you can grow emotionally and spiritually, overcoming problems with your life skills and the gifts God gives us (well, at least some of them). 

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Sidebar: This is a Flashforward Post. Click the icon to learn more about the content structure of the LALA Blog. Warning! This post is Real T (truth) and may stir up some strong emotions. It took me about two weeks to write this post. During this time, I carefully reflected on my life journey up to this point-this triggered me to engage in some productive weeping sessions that were quite cathartic and healing.

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There’s Healing, Wisdom, And Emotional Connection in The House Of Mourning

As we courageously peel back the emotional onion, it may scare the poo out of us, and we may be triggered to begin mourning our broken pieces (e.g., failed relationships, missed opportunities in our career, and co-dependency issues).

However, There is healing in our tears. We need to give ourselves permission to cry. Don’t panic! It’s okay; the tears are necessary. We must tell ourselves, “It’s okay to cry and feel the feeling.”

Why is it okay? It’s okay because our tears have a wise purpose, to be cathartic by promoting the release of repressed emotions we may inadvertently or purposely have tucked away.  

But you are not from that camp of people who avoid! You’re different; that’s why you are on this blog- because everything about you is calling you to deal with your problems so you can grow. 

The essence of LALA (Love & Life Antics) Blog is about learning to cope with our adversities more effectively- not ignoring them. Avoidance is the pastime hobby of emotionally unavailable people.

Avoiding uncomfortable emotions is a prime reason we may remain stuck and block ourselves from becoming emotionally available people. Instead of avoiding the reality of painful truths, you need to face the Real T (Truth) and have self-compassion throughout this process.

Let’s say your goals are to increase your emotional IQ and start having more satisfying relationship experiences with others who understand their feelings, empathize with yours, and can reach out and make healthy emotional connections.

In that case, the buck starts with you becoming available to yourself. I often drill this mantra “Take the focus of them (i.e., the person, the problem, it, or whatever), and bring it back to you.”

The Wisdom And Emotional Depth In Our Weeping

Now I am not trying to push religion on anyone, but I have to be me and share that one of my favorite pieces of literature is the book of Ecclesiastes- a biblical book known for its wisdom and poetry. I have to stay true to my spiritual roots (I grew up in the church and my late step-dad was an Elder).

Ecclesiastes 7:4 heralds, “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth and sensual joy.”

Said another way, crying has value and can be productive. It can help us deal with things in life more meaningfully, transcending superficial and material things on the earthly plane.

Tears are emotional guideposts that signal we value the matters of our hearts that money can’t buy. Tears can set the stage for emotional breakthroughs because they hint at the things significant to us and influential in our life, relationships, and work.

3 Benefits Of Tears And Crying Provide Clues About How To Become Emotionally Available

While more rigorous research and testing are needed to fully understand the complex functions of human tears and crying fully, there is enough convincing research to support the conclusion that tears and crying have some positive effects on the human experience and mental health as follows:

1. Tears may enhance one’s emotional self-awareness and demonstrate a connection to important events in their life (Vingerhoets, 2013, as cited in Fiore, Buthmann, & Deckala, 2017, page 134) ¹.
   • In an online publication entitled “The Miracle of Tears” by researcher and Creationist Scholar Dr. Jerry Bergman, he makes a notable distinction between “emotional tears “as opposed to tears caused by environmental irritants (e.g. pollutants, chemicals, toxic substances). He interestingly highlights that “emotional tears”, weeping from the affective dimension, are especially unique to humans.
   • These emotional tears- weeping about a meaningful event or situation- can signal one’s increased awareness of their emotions (the intrapersonal “inner world” experience) and alert others to how one feels. Therefore, tears can have an adaptive social function of eliciting support from others (Keltner & King, 1998, as cited in Fiori, Consedine, Denckla, et al., 2013, p. 45) ². 

2. Crying is an emotional experience that may help to facilitate positive mood enhancement and stress relief.
   • Although it’s not without some debate, the available research literature demonstrates some support that when people cry, they receive some emotional benefit. This suggests that our capacity to have a healthy cry can indicate our level of comfort with our emotions and can be an essential step in the process of how to become emotionally available. In general, it appears that people reported feeling better after crying episodes based on self-reports.
   • This point is highlighted in the research literature review “Is Crying A Self-Soothing Behavior?” ^3, which thoughtfully explores the hypothesis that crying “directly results in mood enhancement and promotes a return to homeostasis” (Gračanin et al.,2014, page 1). This literature review references a study by researchers which evaluated men and women in 35 countries. Most reported feeling better directly after a crying episode (Bylsma et al., 2008, as cited in Gračanin et al., 2014 pg. 4).
   • Research on crying and emotions also demonstrates another interesting dynamic- improvements in mood were positively correlated with the crier being responsible for the crying rather than being triggered by a third party like a family member or another individual striking conflict (Bylsma et al., 2008, as cited in Gračanin et al., 2014, page 6)
   • What does this all mean? I interpret this to mean that someone may foster a sense of healthy emotional self-regulation by “owning” their emotions when they initiate their own crying- demonstrating a subjective kind of emotional responsibility instead of avoidance.

3. The capacity of an adult to cry may be correlated with a secure form of attachment (Nelson, 2008, as cited in Gracanin et al., 2014, page 5)
   • Research on crying and attachment theory holds that crying is an attachment behavior that, in a social context, elicits aid and support from others in our personal relationships. Similarly, one can argue that an adult who can openly cry in front of others is emotionally secure because they’re not ashamed to express their emotions (via the tears that they are conveying) and that this behavior serves as a means of expressing the need for support.

Will You Answer Life’s Call To Fix Your Emotional Detachment?

When facing our past and our contribution to how our lives have unduly unfolded (because of the painful history), the one person who can heal the pain best- YOU- can encounter a lot of resistance. 

Instead of welcoming our emotions with open arms, we may detach from them, choosing to resist the short-term discomfort of what we perceive as “negative” feelings- the ones that don’t initially make us jump for joy through the happy hoops of life. 

When we chronically avoid our emotions, we succumb to bumbling through life. We go on “adulting” (we get older, gain more responsibilities, pursue the car, the condo, “the Benjamins,” etc.), but behind the scenes, when hard times hit, we resort to operating as defenseless, scared, and wounded children in our life, love and relationships.

We may rarely take heed and acknowledge that there’s a younger self that needs to heal, and sometimes, we need to learn to be our own therapist.

Some tears must be shed for the losses and disappointments encountered along our journey. There is no shame in embracing our past (so we can move on from it).                                                                             

What we avoid, our feelings, are a gateway that can show us how to become emotionally available because they demonstrate to ourselves and others how we feel about important things in our life- our emotional capacity. 

In life, we have many choice points inviting us to swing open the door to becoming functional adults. These critical moments urge us to dig deeper by dealing with our past. Notice I said dealing with but not harping on the past. 

Dealing with our past requires a slow peeling back, like an onion, of each of the layers of feelings we have suppressed.

You need to be willing to invest in spending time with your thoughts, feelings, and pain. Then, use the painful feelings to overcome your obstacles!

If we decide to save this Soul Work for a rainy day, life (and God) will usually let us slide for a while, but then those nagging life tests reappear- usually in a more painful Imax Theater high-definition uncut version (like the 9^th Sequel to Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street horror movie).

Don’t Be Afraid To Develop Yourself Emotionally: Do The Work!

We may delay doing the healing work because we are afraid and we get squeamish about our discomfort. Instead, we may prefer to numb our feelings by revisiting an Ex for a second, third, fourth, or fifth time instead of letting go. We may resign to avoiding problems, pretending that they don’t exist.

However, suppose we want the True-self to emerge, to shed the False-self, and discontinue the nightmare of dealing with other people who are duplicitous, shifty, emotionally unavailable, narcissists, takers, and users. 

In that case, we need to embrace getting uncomfortable with going on about our business as usual. 

This means allowing ourselves to face uncomfy things, have a good cry (or many good cries), and letting our emotions surface fully without dialing up self-defeating and self-sabotaging behaviors. 

I know first-hand that we can readily cling to self-defeating stuff. For example, we may move faster than Gazelle speeds to date or have a relationship with the same defeatist bunk core beliefs but expect different results (It took me ten years to break my pattern of EUP relationships. I implore you don’t be hard-headed like me). 

Or, perhaps it’s just cycling through life with a new counterproductive emotional anesthetic like excessive sex, excessive food, or obsessing about why the EUP chump (Emotionally Unavailable Partner) refuses to love you back (go ahead, pick your poison).

Mourning the loss of what we did not have, what we feel was unfairly taken away from us, our failures, and the people who have let us down is essential to healthily moving on from the past.

However, I realize that this post will undoubtedly be met with lots of resistance and perhaps garner few readers because it’s easier to avoid (but I am still hopeful).

Emotional Availability Means Making the Choice Not To Avoid Your Problems

Having a career in the helping professions has taught me that, more often than not, folk would prefer to block out or numb anything unpleasant. I see it and deal with it every day!

People say they want to change, to stop allowing self-defeating behaviors to ruin their lives, and to become emotionally available, but they don’t want to do the work. They would prefer to Happy Go Lucky It through life, Oh Happy Day It, avoid problems, and then secretly hope and pray that things will eventually work out. 

We may tell ourselves, “The Lord will do it. He will make a way!” but often we come up short because life doesn’t work that way (and neither does The Creator). Yes, he will do it when you put in the work!

Life’s universal law dictates that what we avoid will often reappear down the line- in an amplified version. 

You will soon know this to be true if you have found yourself revisiting the same issues and building relationships with similar types of emotionally unavailable people. You will soon discover you are living life on repeat. I used to be a master at recreating my pain. Can I get an Amen, somebody? 

When I first created this blog (inspired by years of experience in residing in EUPville- my own painful Loveantics), I intended to provide a resource for folk to understand how emotional unavailability develops and how to spot it. Additionally, I had a burning desire to assist people in finding a way out of painful relationships. 

After I found my way out, I wanted to share the hope of change- that people who have gotten “caught out there” in EUPville can implement damage control and save their souls from toxic, unhealthy situations, relationships, and people. 

People often find themselves neck deep in the murky waters of these lopsided, non-mutual, soul-killing, self-esteem-shattering, janky, wannabe relationship substitutes.

The other side of pain is that we can stop blaming others and use these painful experiences as stepping stones to our growth.

Don’t Miss the Chance To Focus On Your Emotional Healing

I am a firm believer in developing and operating in discernment- the ability to see the inner workings of things at a deeper level and cut past the surface façade of people, life, and relationships. The core of my writing on LALA Blog reflects this, as does my personal life (Ask the folk who know me. I’ve always been told I am “too deep.” Chuckle).

That said, while I believe it’s of value to develop discernment and understand “The Whys” and “The Hows” of EUPs and other shady varieties of problematic people, I also believe that there needs to be a cut-off point to all the diagnosing and prescribing to understand people’s foolery (for sanity and growth’s sake). 

For peace of mind, We can write off some of the things we are trying to understand about problematic people who are not dealing with their problems as jackassery behavior by people who are avoiding problems (and running emotional three-ring circles around us. Period!)

Yes, this makes them emotionally unavailable, but when are we going to shift the focus from them to us, so we can deal with, feel, heal, and maybe even cry a few tears (or more) to break through our resistance to acknowledging our feelings and pain? Isn’t it time we stop running from and numbing our real feelings?

We fail to realize that many of our feelings are old- unfinished business from the past, our childhood, or way back when some traumatic event happened to us but that we buried for survival. 

In the business of adulthood, we work long hours, get higher education degrees, become validated by social status, etc., but somehow fail to look back to our younger selves and mourn the loss of what we didn’t have and then have a good cry. 

Wrapping Things Up:

We each have a younger self, an Inner C (Child). However, instead of acknowledging our younger self and making a conscious choice to nurture him/her, we betray our younger self by resurrecting the old wounds and hurts we experienced in childhood. 

We do this by repeating unhealthy patterns. We insert our Inner C into our adult relationships with harmful, unavailable, problematic, and downright toxic folk who can’t love us back but cause us pain. Ironically, the pain they cause via their shady behavior signals that something in us needs to be healed. Something that needs healing is our Inner C. 

However, what happens is that we ignore our younger self because it’s tied to our past. Most people would prefer to duck, dodge, and avoid the past. We tell ourselves, “Can someone pass me the check, please? I’m ready to go. Let’s get out of here.” We bounce before we allow ourselves to do the work to achieve our healing.

It’s okay to acknowledge all parts of YOU. It is a vital piece to the healing puzzle. Unconditional self-acceptance is a good litmus test to determine if someone can become emotionally available to themselves. Then, this can translate to others. 

If you can’t accept yourself, how are you gonna’ expect somebody else to take you? Can I get another Amen? 

If you want lasting emotional healing, it starts with understanding the past and your younger self and knowing when to put The Pain Whitewash down (we need to stop covering up our emotional pain).

Don’t forget the benefits of crying mentioned above. It starts with you if you say you want emotional availability in your life and relationships. It’s time to FaceTime yourself. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to feel your feelings fully.

Remember that your tears are the healing cycle’s way of opening the gateway to emotional availability and showing you how to become emotionally available.

What tears have you been holding back lately?

Cheers to your breakthrough!

Remember, no matter what you are going through, you are never alone!

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References:

1. Fiori, K.L., Buthmann, J., Denkla, C. A. (2017). Crying and Attachment Style: The Role of Romantic Relationships. Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences, volume 11, Issue 1, Retrieved August 21, 2022 from https://doi.org/10.5590/JSBHS.2017.11.1.09
2. Fiori, K. L., Consedine, N. S., Denckla, C. A., & Vingerhoets, A. (2013). Crying in Context: Understanding Associations With Interpersonal Dependency and Social Support. Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, 7(1), 44-62. Retrieved August 21, 2022 from https://doi.org/10.5964/ijpr.v7i1.109
3. Gračanin, A., Bylsma, L. M., & Vingerhoets, A. J. (2014). Is crying a self-soothing behavior? Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 502. Retrieved August 21, 2022 from https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00502