The Psychology of your 20s - 179. Why can't I cry?

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Sometimes all we want to do is a have a big, old fashioned sob and when we can't it leads us feeling emotionally pent up, defective and frustrated. There's an explanation for why we go through periods where we are unable to cry. In today's episode we discuss:  The evolutionary function of crying Crying as an attachment behaviour  The difference between basal, reflex and emotional tears  The 4 major reasons we struggle with crying  How to heal your connection with your emotions  How we process emotions through the body, and more. Listen now when you're in need of an emotional catharsis or could really do with a few tears.  Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%. I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this.

He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On The Look Back at it podcast. For 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me.

I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that. you need to listen to learn the hard way on the iha radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your

podcast hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology hello everybody welcome back to the show welcome back to the podcast new listeners old listeners wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course dive into the psychology of our 20s. Today, let's cut to the chase. We're going to be talking about crying.

It might seem a little bit insignificant to be devoting a whole episode to this. It might seem a bit strange when it comes to our 20s. I think that a lot of us try to avoid crying. But sometimes there is. no better feeling than just having a solid moment to let yourself be in pain, to experience a little bit of self-pity, and to let it all out through tears. And sometimes nothing feels more frustrating than wanting so badly to cry and have that physical outlet for your emotions and being unable to.

It can feel like something within us is blocked, something about us is defective, or faulty because we're not feeling things deeply enough or to the point where we can let it all out and have this like physical expression of what is occurring internally. And I really get that. It can leave us with a lot of, I think, frustration and almost like anger at ourselves and just this like longing for a good old fashioned sob. The truth of the matter is our 20s are really freaking hard. Being human is hard. Life is hard. We are all going. to go through difficult moments and times in our lives where we lose people, we're frustrated by life, we're having a really rough time at work, our boss is an asshole, and being able to

release all that stress, that grief, that anger, that sadness is one of the good parts about being human and having that huge catalogue of emotional expressions and ability to feel emotions. When we feel it. detached from that ability and that happens every now and again. We, I think, feel almost under control, under the control of our emotions. And we feel like there is this pent-up energy inside of us that has nowhere to go, but up and into our brain and cause us more stress and more fear and more anxiety. And tears serve a purpose.

Sometimes they serve as an outlet. that there is nothing better. So for anyone who is feeling a little bit emotionally repressed at the moment, who is finding that they can't even cry in the moments they want nothing more than, that's what we're going to discuss today. We're going to examine some of the reasons psychology and science tells us we need to cry, why we can't cry from emotional suppression to medications or shock, and how we can get back in touch with our big emotions rather than being scared of them.

So let us get into it. To start off with, why do we actually need to cry? Obviously, if we can do it, evolution tells us that it must have served a purpose. Before we talk about that, let's just briefly mention some of the anatomy for a second. Each of us is born with two teardocks in each of our eyes and they have two openings, one on the upper eyelid, one on the, like in the inner eyelid. You know what I'm talking about, close to the bridge of the nose. Now, crying doesn't just occur for emotional reasons.

There are actually three different types of tears. We have basal tears, reflex tears, and emotional tears. Basal tears, they wash away dirt and germs and yucky things, keeping us from getting an infection, going blind, that kind of thing. thing. Reflex tears are what occur when something harmful gets in our eye like a bug or when we're cutting onion. It's responsive to something coming from the environment. And then finally, we have emotional tears. Emotional tears are a lot more complicated than basal and reflex tears, which I'm sure we kind of all assumed at this point. But the thing about emotional tears is that they are not

automatic. In order to cry our limbic system, the part of our brain that regulates our emotions, that part of our brain has to be activated and send signals to our glands to produce tears. And in those tears contains a bunch of other proteins and hormones that we don't find in our everyday basal or reflex tears. Things like potassium, prolactin, which also helps us produce milk. And finally, the big one, stress hormones like cortisol. This is probably our first clue that we're dealing with something a little bit bigger when we need to cry. It's a lot more psychological than just physical. That's because most evolutionary researchers will tell you that crying serves a purpose. Actually, it serves a number of important functions that all have something to do with

how we feel emotion and how we connect to others through mental, physical and emotional expressions of pain. So, firstly, when you are an emotional or physical pain, crying can actually make you feel really good. It can actually provide real physical relief from that pain. When you cry, your body releases hormones such as endorphins and oxytocin, the same chemical structures that we see in pain relievers and opioids. That is why a big sob feels just so good. Even though that might seem counterintuitive because we often associate it with sadness and pain,

really this act is telling your body that something is wrong, something has triggered this reaction, and it needs to do something about it. So it fires up all these pleasurable neurotransmitters and hormones to counteract whatever painful thing is bothering us. There is a really interesting article by Harvard Health that talks about this, and it also speaks on how crying provides an emotional catharsis. It gives big emotions somewhere to go that isn't just running around in our brain in an endless ruminating loop. So it's really interesting because that is not a new idea, right?

Even back in a lot of the ancient civilizations, the Greeks, the Romans, they almost, they almost, saw our tears as having a healing capacity. They were, they would drain us of something negative. They would purify us. And not only has that really like continued to stand, but now there have been a lot more papers and a lot more research into this that is proving that those initial conceptions and ideas were actually pretty close to the scientific truth. Now, crying isn't the only way to do this, you know, exercise is another way. Displacement, as Freud would call it, is also another way taking your pain out on others. But it is the one that seems most accepted and socialized. Of course, if your pet died, you know, you're going to cry. People accept that as part of the sadness.

If someone yells at you, you have this really big emotional blowup or a conflict, again, it seems like the most natural reaction to a painful or uncomfortable situation. crying in this way can also have a self-soothing effect. So this was a finding published by a 2014 study that noticed when people cry, this very act also activated their parasympathetic nervous system, which helps us relax. And once again, we get that intense distress kind of out of the way through the act of crying. we, when we activate our parasympathetic nervous system, a whole bunch of other things occur in our body. Our heart rate begins to slow down, we begin to feel quite tired, and also all that emotion seems,

and that fear really seems to clear. So we're able to think more rationally and from a place of, I don't want to say peace, but from a place of calm. It's also why, after crying, you might feel really exhausted or drowsy, maybe even peaceful, you have involuntarily activated this very important part of your nervous system, but also you've drained a lot of that energy that was keeping you tense and sad and stressed. Now, there's been a bit of preliminary research that has suggested that crying, the reason why it makes us feel this way is because the very act of crying releases stress hormones

through the production of tears, meaning that there is less of that stress hormone, particularly cortisol to go around in the body. I'm going to like just, you know, I wanted to mention that, but I would also say that probably needs to be a bit more research. I don't really see how a few millimeters of tears can have that much impact on the stress response of a 60 kilo, 100 kilo, 150 kilo human. Like it seems quite negligible, but that is another explanation. And the final one as to why we cry has a lot to do with, um, our social evolution. So one of the first things that babies do when they are born is cry. Obviously, that's to get a lot of the fluid out of their lungs, but it's also to get attention.

And then they pretty much don't stop crying ever. Like even as humans, we don't stop crying. But especially when we're babies, like, babies cry a whole lot. And the reason why is because crying is what we would call an attachment behavior. It serves. as a signal to those around us to comfort us. It draws people's attention to us because when they hear those cries, that automatically causes this association with distress. And that acknowledgement of distress activates the part of our brain that deals with empathy. And that is what motivates us to help someone to be pro-social. So crying in children and in adults promotes closeness. It promotes empathy in others.

It promotes kindness because it is intended evolutionarily, biologically, to elicit care and comfort. Actually, attachment theory, very, you know, the first attachment theory paper talks about the role of crying quite a bit. So back in the original studies conducted by John Bolby and Mary Ainsworth, they noticed that children who showed a lack of crying. when their parents left, when they were being comforted by a stranger or were left in a strange situation, those children whose immediate reaction was to not cry but to stay silent, they probably had a disorganized attachment style or an insecure, anxious, avoidant attachment style because they were used to this very innate and instinctual act of crying not being met with the typical response, you know, support, care and love. And so they almost just stopped doing it because they realized that

it didn't serve a function, the function that it should be serving, which is to, you know, receive empathy and receive care and kindness, not just from your primary caregiver, but from other people within our species around you. All right. So now that we've spoken about the functions and purposes of crying, what are some of the reasons that we can't do it? Why can't we cry? That's the real title of this episode. So let's start off with the first reason. Maybe you're just really happy. There is no reason at all why you can't cry. It's just that you have no reason to. That is actually a completely valid explanation for this. We're kind of all on this like very fun roller coaster of life. And sometimes you're just at a high point and you've stayed there for a few months. That is a good

thing. I promise. But I get that sensation and anticipation of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think if you're used to feeling like you're just someone who has bad luck or never feeling quite satisfied or happy and you're in this moment where everything just seems to be strangely going your way, it's natural to be feeling a little bit anxious about that and wondering what's wrong with you, wondering when this is all going to disappear. I want to give you permission right now. It's okay to just be happy and content for a while. But if you're not crying when it feels necessary, like after a traumatic event or something really

hard happening in your personal life, that is probably a sign that your stoicism is going a bit too far and you may be partially disconnected from your true emotions and what's going on underneath the seemingly composed surface. If it feels like an appropriate time to be crying and you can't, The number one explanation is shock. After a loss or even something like a breakup, I hear so many people saying, it's so strange. Like, it's been a few days and I'm completely fine. Like, I haven't cried once.

It's been like three weeks and I'm totally already over it. You know, that is just not probably true. That's not a sign that you just have super quick emotional healing powers or that you've already recovered. What you're actually experiencing is probably shock. So we know that there are a few. stages of grief that we go through after something, after a loss, after something happens. Shock or denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And the depression stage is what I think

most of us think when we think about heartbreak or loss. It's very outward, it's very feeling, it's very visible and emotional, it's probably even teary. But before we get there, we have three other stages to pass through that don't always involve as many tears. Shock is the most significant one. It is a protective or defensive mechanism our brain enlists in the immediate aftermath of something intense or life-changing or painful that helps us compartmentalize emotions until we are prepared or have the mental resources or the mental space to deal with them. So there's an evolutionary reason for this. Back in the day when we roamed the Sahara, we were fleeing wild beasts and lions and warring with our neighbors. we sometimes had to delay an emotional reaction until we were out of danger.

Because heavy emotions during that time could really cost us our lives. It would take our attention off of escaping, off of getting away from a dangerous situation. And this instinct to avoid initially hard, heavy emotions for survival purposes, has carried with us. And so now it's seen in response to different more modern triggers, like a breakup. Your brain is trying to keep you safe for as long as it can by keeping those emotions and feelings almost like behind a mental wall of glass. We can see what happened. We can see that it's going to hurt, but the full impact hasn't hit us yet. It may also be that you know how,

you know how hard it's going to be when you finally let yourself feel what you've been through. So you are trying your hardest unconsciously, even consciously, to delay the inevitable. Even if this isn't entirely conscious, what you're doing is buying into the delusion that putting off hard feelings may mean that they never actually occur. So when the wall comes down and you may not want to hear this, but it will eventually come down. It could be days, it could be weeks, it could be months, even years. that's when we see the suffering we're most accustomed to seeing begin.

The interesting thing is that more often than not, the thing that finally triggers our tears is normally completely unrelated to the initial or predicted source of our sadness and our misery. We can spend like months in a state of just like complete emotional stagnation and numbness. And then one Monday, a random Monday, you miss your bus, your outfit, uncomfortable it's just a little bit too hot and then you stab your toe and the tap just gets turned on and all of those months of pent up emotion flood into your life all it took was for that metaphorical straw to break the camel's back that daily stress of that small thing on top of all of the other

major life events to finally provide a release it feels a little bit unfair I I know, but sometimes the brain and our mind and our psychology doesn't operate according to our rules and what we want. In the meantime, you may not be able to tap into that side of you that really does just want to have a big cry in response to whatever it is. Another reason why you might be struggling with this a reaction is because of medication, specifically antidepressants and SSRI, so selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. They've done studies on this.

It's one of the biggest side effects of being on antidepressants, 46% of people who are on these. Experience, blunted emotions. And although these medications are amazing, they help relieve symptoms of depression, anxiety that have maybe caused complete dysfunction. They can also affect how we experience everyday feelings. So I've talked about this before on the show.

I was on Lexapro for three years. I don't think I cried more than twice over that period of time. And during that time, I went through a serious, like, long-term breakup. My grandfather passed away. A lot of other things were happening in my personal life. And I just couldn't do. I literally, no matter how hard I tried, I could not shed a tear. And it was really strange because I had all the other signs that I wanted to.

I had this tightness in my chest. I had this swelling in my throat. I had this tension in my forehead. It felt like it was going to happen. I was almost there. And then it would stop right short of like a tear. And it was so unfulfilling. And in more serious moments,

it actually did feel like the emotions lingered longer in my body because they had nowhere to go. And that at times made them harder to manage. It made it, it kind of made it seem like they never truly. went away, but they were kind of just always there at a lower frequency in the background. The way that I was talking to my therapist about it was when you have a fly buzzing around your house and you just can't quite catch it and it's not that annoying, but it's still pretty annoying and you just want to get rid of it. You just want to smash that fly. You just want to

have that cathartic action. I know this is a common experience for a lot of other people I've spoken to who are on these medications. And it's kind of like you're forced into this trade-off. Do you want to be able to function and not be overwhelmed by anxiety or depressive thoughts? That's going to mean that sometimes you have to give up your ability to feel as deeply and as intensely as you previously have. And it's a decision that we need to make individually. It doesn't mean that it's not still difficult and there aren't times when you really wish that you had access to all that emotion, your full range of sensitivity and feeling, and just that energy source that you can tap into. Speaking of medications for depression, we should also probably

focus on the impact of those conditions as well on our ability to cry. So I think one of the common misconceptions about being depressed is that you are constantly sobbing, you're constantly a pool of tears. Actually, sometimes you are so sad and forlorn, you just can't cry. This is known as depression with melancholia. You are completely and entirely numb to all your emotions. And in that flat, emotional state, it's not that you just can't even feel the good things. You can't feel anything. Sadness included, because nothing, not even the bad things, the hard things, the painful things have meaning to you anymore. Now, I would say this is a is super rare, but it does still occur and it's worth going further with your investigation

into this if you think it applies. This is obviously a significant change in how we experience emotions and therefore you will need to talk to a therapist because they're going to be able to really tell you a lot more about what creates this situation and kind of how to get out of this complete mental numbness and staleness. Now, let's move on and talk about the reason most people think of when it comes to an inability to cry. I saved it for last. Emotional repression. The unconscious act of pushing down feelings that we see as dangerous or too much. People deal with emotions in different ways. We can respect that. Sadness, grief, anger, whatever it may be heartbreak, they are not a one-size-fits-all experience. Some people have

a very expressive style. They cry very easily and frequently. Often these people are more sensitive. They have more empathy. They've been socialized to be more accepting of tears and crying as a way to manage emotions. It may also come down to factors like they sleep less. They have underlying depressive symptoms like we spoke about. All of these just make us more prone to crying, sometimes for no reason. Other people though are more repressed and they find it really. hard to cry and to express what's going on through this method. And then there's this category of people who may intentionally suppress their emotions to avoid revealing to themselves, not just to others, what they're feeling. Frequently with repressed emotions, you might not even realize you're

unconsciously avoiding your feelings, which is why you might be confused by your inability to cry. That is because the origins of this inability happened a long time ago, often in the past, in our childhood experiences. It could be the case that big displays of sadness, even happiness, were not accepted in your family or culture. They weren't seen as appropriate. And so when you have the urge, you have been conditioned time and time again to suppress rather than feel. It may have been that every time you did cry, you were expressing sensitivity towards your emotions, you were punished for it. And so you have begun to associate the need to feel with punishment and pain and shame. We see this a lot with men.

Society continuously tells them it's not manly or appropriate or how boys should behave. And so they internalize those external attitudes such that their threshold for women. what's, you know, whatever demands tears, it's much higher. And even when they really, you know, when things that really hard happen, they cannot get themselves into this state because they are so used to suppressing this urge. And it carries a lot of shame that also creates a disconnect between us and our emotions. I was lucky. I had a father who probably cries more than my mother, but a lot of people do learn how to process their emotions from the parent who is the same gender as them. I was really lucky. I feel like I grew up in a family who that was always accepted. There was a

natural reaction to tears and I sometimes feel quite sad for people who didn't have this as an example who weren't socialized and raised in an environment of emotional acceptance. As I said before, we have the ability to cry for a reason to provide release, catharsis, as a social cue to notice when people are upset when they need our help. When you are forced to deprive yourself of some emotional function like crying, other things also tend to go off balance. There's suggestions that all that feeling goes elsewhere and it's expressed in more harmful ways like through rage and anger because it needs somewhere to go. And I think that you. think that's a lesson to all of us that suppression and avoidance of emotions, it doesn't mean that

they don't exist, that they cease to exist. They will find a way to come to the surface. They will find a way to get your attention whether you want them to or not. So we've discussed the main reasons for our inability to cry, but what do we actually do about it? We're not going to leave it there. What is the way forward here? Is it to watch as many sad movies as possible or animal rescue videos and like wait until something clicks. Probably not. When we're getting to the root of this, we actually need to take a step back from the tears and look what's underneath it all, a disconnect with your deeper emotional state. So we're going to talk about all of that and more after this short break. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator

available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when

Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What? The hell does George Bush got to do a little count? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s.

To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade. of my own experience in the middle health field and conversations with so many incredible guests.

I'm talking. Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch.

Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth. Or are you a good person because you're afraid. Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely.

And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way. Open your free, Our Heart Radio app.

Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that follow revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct?

I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian, and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When it comes to an inability to cry, The solution is not forcing yourself to cry by any means necessary.

It's not like you have a blocked drain or a pipe. And once you remove the gunk, everything will start flowing freely again. And you're not a plumbing problem. The solution is getting back in touch with what you're feeling when you're feeling it. It's about a deeper emotional disconnect that we need to heal. So let's talk about it. If you've been through a few hard chapters recently or you have been once, as we said, you know, conditioned or socialized, to repress rather than express, your ability to identify your

emotions and what is bothering you has probably become a little bit disorganized or broken. When we see emotions as our captors or as a source of shame, or we perceive them as being stronger than us, that is when we have an incentive to not feel them at all, and that results in that inability for expression and release. To get past this, we can do a few. things and I'm going to talk about three strategies in particular, noticing your emotions in your body, talking to your friends about their feelings and finding a creative outlet. Paying attention to your body is so important when it comes to noticing and making peace with whatever is going on in your mind. We feel emotions in the body. This has been written about so much in the last few decades,

perhaps most notably in the book, The Body Keeps the Score, which mainly talks about how stress and trauma in particular have a somatic form and a somatic impact. It causes chronic pain, hormone imbalance, so much more. On a smaller scale, though, every emotion we feel, we feel it through our neurons. Now, a lot of us think that neurons are only found in the brain. It's a common misconception, but it's actually not true. Neurons are found throughout the body. outside of the brain they're known as sensory and motor neurons. And our brain is in control of all of these. It is the main communicator.

It is the leader. The other thing our brain is in control of communicating with is our emotions. And so there is this connection between what we feel emotionally and what we feel physically because it is using a lot of the same pathways. A lot of those pathways are connected. What that means is that when we begin to use physical cues to notice and identify our feelings, we can really unlock a whole new range of emotions and emotional recognition we didn't previously have. For example, anger is often felt between the chest and the head,

whilst fear is usually felt between the stomach and the chest. Sadness is felt in the face, in the throat, even in our limbs, it makes them heavy. And emotional pain can really be felt all over. A lot of us have become very disconnected from these signs and emotional cues that are present in our limbs and in our muscles and in our bones. If you're struggling with emotional expression, tap into what you're feeling through a body scan. And how you do that is you focus on each area of your body from your toes to the top of your head and you pay attention. What is causing you discomfort? Where is their heaviness or tightness? Where is their pent-up energy and excitement and like tingling? And what is that trying to tell? What is that?

you. Those sensations are not there by accident. That is your brain trying to communicate something to you that you may have previously stopped yourself from recognizing because you are trying to compartmentalize and protect yourself. As you do that body scan, consciously tense and then relax your muscles, particularly your face and your shoulders. Now, I sometimes do this when I'm trying to fall asleep and when I consciously turn my attention to these parts of my body, it's really only then that I realized just how much just like tension and like anxiety and stress is being stored in those areas. If you can, you should do it right now. Let all of those muscles relax. Let all of that tension in your shoulders go for a second and then try it again. Let them go even looser and try your

forehead. Drop it as a low as you can. I'm literally doing it as I'm speaking right now. Feel how your eyebrows move closer to your eyes. Feel how everything around your skull just seems to loosen. You might even get like a little tingle. And can you notice just how much better you feel? And can you also pay attention to what's coming up for you? That is really the first step in this process. Observing and discerning how emotions are sitting in your body and what different emotions feel like for you. Secondly, talk to your friends about their feelings. When we are disconnected from our emotions, sometimes we no longer have the words to explain what we're feeling. And that's where talking to people you trust can be so helpful.

Not only do I think they give us a lot of language for what we're going through, which I always find super helpful. They also offer support and a place for vulnerability, a space for openness that maybe we just haven't had before. We've never been permitted access to. I think one of the crazy things that always comes up for me is just this constant epiphany that you are not the only one. Nothing is experienced in isolation. So much of what we experience in our 20s and beyond is universal. And it's made a lot easier with community and support. And someone who is going to sit across from you and say, I'm witnessing your life. I see what you're going through. That is really, really hard.

hearing someone else say that validates so much of what we're experiencing. I have had that happen where just someone says like, I'm so sorry, I can see that must be so painful. And just that acknowledgement like makes me burst into tears. I think become really curious about other people's emotions as well. Ask questions. Listen, other people crave to be heard as much as you do. and in response, share your own feelings. You know, as humans, we have this beautiful superpower that we can connect through emotions and through vulnerability.

And as we get better at being vulnerable with other people, we get better at being vulnerable with ourselves, having a sense of acceptance that this is okay, this is normal, other people are experiencing this. I am not defective. I am not faulty. There is nothing wrong with me. And the tears might not come instantly. But there is this incredible.

level of acceptance and this increased level of recognition for what you are actually experiencing. And there's just this increased level of just kindness in your life, which I think everyone can really benefit from. Finally, look for an outlet, especially one that is creative. There is no one way to feel. I feel like I have mentioned that a million times in this episode. There are so many other ways we can channel what's happening in our bodies, firstly, but also in our minds into something that is tangible and it doesn't have to involve tears or crying.

When that thing that we choose to use as our outlet is creative or physical, it also allows us to use these parts of our brain that we may otherwise be neglecting or just not using as much. It makes us feel less inhibited. It frees parts of us that otherwise have nowhere else to exist. that is the power of of creativity. And I've talked about this on the podcast before, but after my first big breakup, I tried anything creative or with my hands that I could.

I did painting, I did pottery. I even did weaving for a while. It's not as fun as you think. It takes ages. But it just felt like my brain was opening up and noticing a whole new world, both externally and within. There is a reason why art therapy is so popular

because we are finally waking up to the fact that doing something purposeful and meaningful and artistic and creating something rather than always feeling like the world is taking things from us. It helps us regulate what we're feeling. Our emotions are a huge source of inspiration and they want a place to go there looking for an outlet and maybe right now that's not crying for you but I think the more you, the further you get in this process, the more everything else seems to loosen up. If you want some further evidence of this as a really well-known UCL study that was conducted in part with BBC Arts. And what they found was that when they gave people the space to be creative, especially in response to big, large, scary

emotions, it didn't actually matter if they were even objectively good at it. It was just the participation in the act that counted. Make bad art. Express everything and anything. And you will slowly see how your access to your emotions becomes expanded because you, you know, you you begin to see them in a positive light as a source of inspiration and motivation and of creativity. Finally, I say this in a lot of these episodes because I just think it's so true. Be gentle with yourself. Imagine that the person sitting in front of you who is struggling with their emotions with their ability to cry is five-year-old you.

You wouldn't yell at them. You wouldn't shame them. You wouldn't get angry at them. I know it's frustrating. I know sometimes we just long for that catharsis. and release of a good old-fashioned cry. But you are not defective, you are not faulty, you are not a psychopath because that isn't available to you at the moment.

There are so many reasons and very valid explanations for why this is. But there are also so many ways through. You are doing the best you can. You're probably managing a lot in your life right now and your brain is trying to help you in some way. but I often find when we finally get to a place of feeling emotionally safe and secure, the tears will come. So thank you so much for listening to today's episode.

I hope you got something out of it. I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you learned something from my experience. You know, that's always the mission with these episodes is being like, you know, your 20s feel super isolating. I'm there with you. You're not alone. There are so many people who are going through.

something similar. As always, if you did enjoy this episode, please feel free to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Wherever you are listening, I, you know, I don't know if people really know this. It's kind of just me running this podcast. I don't really have like a huge team. So I'm still the one who reads all of your messages and all of your reviews and all of your comments and it really makes my day. So also if you have an episode suggestion, I say this at the end of every episode. Please feel free to DM me at That Psychology Podcast. I would love to hear what you have in mind.

And if you want to see what I'm doing in my own life as a 20-something-year-old, feel free to follow me at Jemma Speg on Instagram. And we will be back on Friday with a new episode. Until then, stay safe, and we will talk soon. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%.

I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO percent on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hand. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84's big to me. I'm Sam J.

And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick you here, unpack what went down and try to make sense of how we survived it with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Kier Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest, conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does

not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the iHeard radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.