The Benefits of Crying

Tanya Gill: 00:00:00

Hey, friends, welcome to the trifecta of joy. I'm so glad you're here because I want to talk about something today that I've been experiencing. And I know a lot of others have been experiencing as well. And, and what I want to talk about is actually tears. Yes, that's right, I want to talk about tears. And I guess it really comes down to this. Growing up, a lot of us heard, don't cry, or babies cry or crying as a sign of weakness and, and the truth is that, that tears serve an important purpose. And I had to remind myself of that in this past few weeks, because in this past few weeks, I found myself crying in many different situations. First of all, my first husband, John's mother passed away, I had a birthday, I had some interesting opportunities come my way. We celebrated, Alexander my oldest son's 20th birthday, which, of course, is another anniversary that shines a light on the absence of his father. And we took a small vacation. And in each of those different situations that have happened over the last, literally three weeks, I have experienced tears, and I have cried for different reasons. And the thing about it is, is that tears are not always about pain. Tears can be happy, we can cry. In a situation of feeling relief, or obviously grief, we can cry because we're laughing so hard. Or we can have tears of frustration or overwhelm. And I know for myself that I can find myself crying when I'm exhausted or worried or feeling fearful. And ultimately, I think we need to recognize that tears are a way for us to cleanse, physical, emotional, or spiritual pain. And so it brings me back to an interesting kind of intersection. Because for those of you who are familiar with the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, it was created by Jack Canfield and Patti Aubrey, and I had an opportunity. So I'm going to give you a little storytime I had an opportunity. Many years ago, when I was a top leader with the intimacy company, passion parties that no longer exists. And when I was part of that leadership, I had an opportunity to go to Santa Barbara for a special training with Jack Canfield. And there were about 20 of us in the room. And it was shortly after John, my first husband had died.

Tanya Gill: 00:03:05

And as Jack was being so inspiring and talking about all of these amazing ways to show up for ourselves, I found myself crying. And I was crying because of overwhelm and grief. And it all just felt like how could I feel happiness after what I had experienced and losing John, Jack, in the middle of speaking, literally walked over, stood in front of me, crouched down and held space for me. And I started to apologize for crying. I was like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And he looked at me and he said, Please, don't apologize. Tears water, the seeds of growth. Now, in this last three weeks, there was an opportunity for me to go and meet Jack. But I couldn't because of everything else that was going on. However, a friend of mine got a copy of Chicken Soup for the grieving soul and Jack actually inscribed it for me. So on June 22, he wrote Tanya, remember that tears water the seeds of growth, sending you lots of love Jack Canfield like, I was so touched by that I again, guess what, I cried, I cried. And those were tears of joy and probably a little bit of tears of longing because I had hoped to meet him in person. But ultimately, I let those tears come and the reason I'm sharing this with you is because I want you to remember that those powerful words, tears water, the seeds of growth, like honest to goodness, I have said this to so many people so many times because we do find ourselves apologizing for crying. So whenever someone apologizes for crying, I simply hold space for them and say, tears water, the seeds of grow. Now, here is the thing, you probably can relate to some of these tears, how many times have you found yourself crying in the shower, or crying in the car on the way home from work? You know, maybe even crying on the way home from doing something wonderful, because you feel guilty for having that wonderful experience. I know that there are people out there, I have spoken with people out there who have these kinds of experiences. And then they feel guilty for crying. And what I want you to know is that there is so much power, in crying. And when I talk about tears, watering the seeds of growth, it really does come back to what I talked about in the trifecta of joy, which is honor, empathy, love and presence. With that honor, empathy, love and presence, you allow yourself to do something that your body naturally wants to do. Now, when you came into the world, the first thing you did was cry. And the doctors, the nurses, your parents, they wanted to hear that cry, because it was so important. The first cry is how a baby's lungs adapt from receiving oxygen from the umbilical cord to receiving it instead, from the outside world.

Tanya Gill: 00:06:54

It is a connection with the outside world. So you know, like, honestly, listen to how precious that cry is. And think about the power that that cry has. And the thing about it is that as we continue through life, we somehow start to message that crying is that sign of weakness, or it's bad. And we tell people Oh, don't cry, it'll be okay. And when we say that, by the way, we're saying it for ourselves. It's because we, as someone who's in proximity of those tears feels uncomfortable. It's also why people apologize for crying, because they know that it's possible that the other person feels uncomfortable. So saying, It's okay, tears water, the seeds of growth gives people the opportunity and the space to actually cry and own it and feel okay with it. Now, here's the other piece of all of this, that's really important for me to share with you. When it comes to crying, there are three different kinds of tears. The first kind of Tears is reflex tears. And that's like you get dust in your eye and your eye waters to clear out and keep your eyeballs safe and clean. The second kind is continuous tears. And those are basically 98% water, and they're used for lubricating your eyes. So I gotta tell you a story. Back when I was with passion parties, another leader that I worked with, actually was born without eyelids. And so she didn't have the ability to blink. So she didn't have that natural lubrication. So she had to leave her eyes all of the time. And then when she was sleeping, she actually had to put lubrication in her eyes and sleep with goggles on sidebar, but the thing about it is that we have continuous lubrication of our eyes and it's 98% water. The third kind of tears that we have are the kinds that we're talking about today, which are emotional tears. And where the continuous tears are 98% Water, emotional tears have been found to contain stress hormones and other toxins. When you cry, you are cleansing. And there are actual scientific benefits that I found related to crying. So first of all, it's soothing. It is a soothing experience because research shows that crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system. And this helps your body move into rest and digest. And it's why we feel tired after we cry. So we may initially feel very, very high energetic emotion But we later go into that rest and digest. And we feel that tiredness and that need for rest after we cry. So it's for that space of soothing, when we cry for the long periods, it dulls that pain, and helps us ease the physical and emotional pain. So please remember that oxytocin gives you a sense of calm and well being and helps again, add to that self soothing space. You know, when I talk about honor, empathy, love and presence, I talk about it from a space of moving through some of the hardest things in life, including grief. And grief is a process. It involves periods of sorrow and numbness or currently. And when I say that tears, water, the seeds of growth. And I say that, because Jack Canfield is, I'm thinking you're connecting with yourself. And if you're connecting with yourself, you're in a growing process. And tears are a build process. Because as the oxytocin and the serotonin, and the endorphins, and the self soothing, are about restoring emotional balance. So we do cry, not just when we're sad, but when we're extremely happy when we're scared. And even when we're stressed. There is research out of Yale that says that it is actually crying is actually a way that we naturally restore our emotional equilibrium. So it's actually the way we recover from experiencing strong emotions. It is a recovery mechanism that is built in. And if you think about it, it's a recovery mechanism that we used. When we came into this world, we were recovering from that experience of getting the oxygen from the umbilical cord, to the oxygen from the world around us. And those tears and that crying was an important piece of your evolution into being a human on the planet in this place in this time in this space. It's actually really incredible how powerful our tears and crying can be. And, yes, you know what, I am sharing this not just because of me, I'm sharing it because