Seeing Through Tears

Crying and Attachment

Judith Kay Nelson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135412630
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

Seeing Through Tears is a groundbreaking examination of crying behavior and the meaning behind our tears. Drawing from attachment theory and her own original research, Judith Nelson presents an exciting new view of crying as a part of our inborn equipment for establishing and maintaining emotional connections. In a comprehensive look at crying through the life cycle, this insightful volume presents a novel theoretical framework before offering useful and practical advice for dealing with this most fundamental of human behaviors.

PART I

A Theory of Crying

CHAPTER 1

There Is More to Crying Than Meets the Eye

Andrea, a nurse at a local hospital, called me one day because she was concerned about Sharon, a patient whom she had been unable to console after a chemotherapy treatment. Andrea had tried repeatedly to reassure her, saying that crying was understandable and even healthy under the circumstances, but her words had no effect. Sharon was increasingly desperate—almost angry—because she could not stop crying. She just kept insisting that “having cancer is bad enough—crying only makes it worse! I have to stop.” Expressing her fear and grief in tears clearly was not helping.

Knowing of my long-standing interest in crying, Andrea asked if I could help. I saw Sharon that same afternoon and at first I, too, tried to reassure her that crying might help to bring comfort as she faced this life-threatening illness. As a way to help her accept it more, I even suggested that the medications she had been given might be physiologically inducing some of her tears. However, as with Andrea, Sharon was unmoved by my efforts. All she wanted to do was to stop crying.

I asked then if she could tell me why she was so vehemently opposed to shedding tears. Not crying, she said, was a lifelong credo learned in childhood from her mother, whom she described as an “iron lady” with a serious drinking problem. Her mother would tolerate no “baby” behavior, no weakness and no neediness of any kind. At the first sight of a trembling lip or tearing eye, she would rage: “My mother died when I was 5, my father when I was 8 and I never cried, not once. What could you possibly have to cry about?”

I knew then that something much deeper than being taught to value self-control was at stake. Sharon obeyed her mother's teachings not just to get approval; she did it in a desperate attempt to get some mothering. Her only hope of receiving nurturance—and what she received in that department was slim indeed—came from being strong enough not to disturb her mother's hidden fragility. Sharon had to be like a mother, strong and caring, to her own mother to get what little emotional sustenance she could.

For Sharon, crying meant attack and banishment rather than connection and care. Her need for comfort at the hospital was the very thing that made her hate crying. In her experience, it brought the opposite of what she needed: isolation instead of connection. She could not bear to cry because it would make her feel more alone. Her only means of connection to her loved ones was through taking care of them. She had no hope that anyone would take care of her. She had to gain control so that she could return to the security of her responsibilities for family and work. Being there for others substituted for having others be there for her—it was her only source of sustenance.

Sharon was dealing with the tremendous stress of her illness and treatment. After hearing her history, I could see that she needed her coping mechanisms back as quickly as possible. This was no time to add to her pain and stress by focusing on her monumental sense of being alone and vulnerable. Understanding the horrible anguish crying created for her, I changed my tactic. Instead of trying to help her accept crying, I shared every technique I knew to get crying to stop: inhaling, eating, diverting her thoughts, renting comedies—anything that would alter the physical and mental stimuli for shedding tears.

My nurse friend's attempts to reassure Sharon were based on the commonly held idea about the universal benefits of crying: “letting go” of emotions is good and “bottling them up” is harmful. This idea originated in early Freudian theory, which held that suppressing or repressing emotions—”damming them up” was a frequent metaphor—could lead to symptoms like anxiety, depression, or unexplained physical ailments. In Studies on Hysteria, Breuer and Freud (1893/1955) referred to tears as “involuntary reflexes” that discharge affect so that “a large part of the affect disappears.” Using the German term “sich austoben ,” which means to “cry oneself out,” they indicated that feelings build up and crying helps them dissipate.

In early psychoanalytic theory, emotions were seen as quantitative, capable of building up to a certain level of pressure and needing then to be released or discharged in order to prevent psychic damage. In contemporary psychoanalytic theory, emotions are no longer seen as quantitative but rather as ever changing, interactive, and communicative. However, the earlier view of crying has persisted in informing popular psychology and clinical practice. Magazine advice columns proclaim messages such as “Go ahead, cry yourself a river—it's good for you,” or “Cry now, you'll smile later.” In clinical literature, crying is generally treated as a necessary and important component of a successful therapy process. The words “the patient cried” are often used in clinical articles to imply that a good thing has happened and the therapy is moving forward, as if this were self-evident from that comment and no further analysis required. Culturally and clinically, crying has been oversimplified and misunderstood.

The “crying-is-good-for-you” credo has also been used in an attempt to promote social change by encouraging emotional expression. In the 1960s, young people first began to challenge the ideal of emotional control and encouraged each other to “let it all hang out” and “tell it like it is.” Educators and social activists questioned the value judgments that labeled crying as “weak” and female and waged a campaign to make it more acceptable. The classic children's record in the 1970s, “Free to Be You and Me,” included the song “It's All Right to Cry” performed by stereotype-defying football player Rosie Grier. Therapists, in keeping with these trends, have emphasized the positive benefits of crying as a way to help it gain greater acceptance for men and women. A psychologist, for example, gave this advice: “You should take advantage of a crying session. Get it all out. You'll feel wonderful afterwards.”

Has there been any change? On the surface it would appear so. Most people, if questioned, will agree that crying is a “good” thing. Ask them, however, if they feel all right about crying in front of other people, or even by themselves, and a different picture emerges. Many people, men as well as women, remain conflicted about, confused by, and vaguely ashamed of their crying.

Leslie made the women's consciousness-raising group laugh when she said, “My husband thinks crying during an argument is inappropriate; he thinks pounding on the wall is more appropriate.” Ruthie was serious when she said that she was never comfortable crying at her work managing a construction firm: “I have to argue rationally in the business world. If I feel close to tears, I walk out and come back when I am composed enough to continue.” Jane was clearly opposed to any crying—hers and everyone else's: “Crying is like diarrhea,” she said, “because you can't control it.” A man I know told me that he cries easily in conversation at parties or meetings but he does not like it because people get overly concerned and think something terrible is wrong in his life.

A number of women also disagree with the often-quoted maxim that crying is “all right for women.” Barbara told the group she found that idea ridiculously off-base:

They say boys are taught not to cry. Okay, but so are girls! Women are supposed to be strong and not show that they feel pain, like you are not supposed to cry during labor or when someone dies. Everyone thinks they should be like Jackie Kennedy and keep it together so they can comfort everyone else.

Many people, female and male, feel uncomfortable when they cry and many more struggle with how to respond when they are in the presence of someone else's tears.

Putting a positive spin on crying has not succeeded in undoing the ambivalence about it because we have been addressing the wrong issue. The problem is not with emotional control; it is with emotional closeness. Crying is above all a relationship behavior, a way to help us get close and not simply a vehicle for emotional expression or release. We do not cry because we need to get rid of pain, but because we need connection with our caregivers—literal, internal, fantasized, or symbolic—in order to accept and heal from our pain and grief. Crying is not about what we let out but about whom we let in.

Beginning in infancy, the reason that we cry is to beckon our caregivers and to keep them close and nurturing. Crying disturbs others for a reason: so that they will know to come and help us. In fact, crying not only alerts caregivers to our need for them, but also unsettles them to the point that they feel viscerally compelled to respond, even if it is inconvenient or annoying and even though they sometimes ignore the message. Crying, along with clinging, sucking, and smiling, is one of the inborn attachment behaviors that help keep infant caregivers in close proximity. With many repetitions over time, the infant–caregiver exchanges evoked by these behaviors that stimulate closeness and regulate arousal help to establish and maintain the attachment bond.

Throughout our lives, crying is one of the primary ways in which we ask for, and know when to give, love and care. At a small family gathering recently, sitting on the bed at the Holiday Inn, I began crying when my grown daughters asked me to tell them more about the reasons why I separated from their father 17 years earlier. As I spoke, my sister moved closer to me on the bed and my niece got up from the floor and came over to hug me. No matter how much crying I do, I doubt that the sadness of the divorce will ever go away. I hope it does not because the tears and the sadness are a reminder that I still feel connected to those family years long ago. Not the crying itself, but rather the comfort and care that I receive from my loved ones, has enabled me to heal and move forward in my life.

Theories of Crying Based on Emotional Expression and Discharge

A view of crying as emotional expression is inadequate when it comes to formulating a comprehensive theory of crying throughout the life span. The first problem emerges from the fact that virtually any emotion in the human repertoire may be expressed by crying. It is impossible to classify different types of crying by compiling long lists of the emotional reasons for which people cry at various ages. The end result leads to a collection of overlapping feelings that form multiple meaningless and indistinct categories.

A second problem in formulating a theory based on emotional expression alone is that the “emotions” of infants are based on physiological states rather than cognitive ones. Their crying is therefore irreconcilable with a theory based on emotion and catharsis. The developmental line is missing between their tearless and noisy cries and those of adults who cry tearfully and silently about pains that are thought induced and only rarely physiological.

Gender differences in crying also make no sense from the standpoint of emotional expression. A need for discharge and catharsis does not explain lopsided crying-frequency statistics—women cry from two to seven times more frequently than men. Crying is a biological behavior that is part of the human condition from birth onward and a theory of crying needs to reflect that.

On a practical clinical level, too, a theory of crying as emotional discharge can lead therapists and health professionals into some brick walls, as it did with my nurse friend Andrea as she tried to reassure Sharon about crying after chemotherapy. Alvin, a therapist in one of my consultation groups, questioned his “burn-out” factor when a patient of his was sobbing and he could feel no empathy. From the standpoint of discharging emotion, he thought he should be wholeheartedly supporting her tears but that did not fit clinically for the situation. A discharge theory of crying does not help other clinicians who struggle with their own impulses to cry in a therapy session. They are left to wonder whether their crying helps by serving as a role model or is interfering with the patient's process.

Of the few clinical writers who have directly explored questions related to crying, most see crying as a release valve for pent-up feelings. Some directly assert that crying is a form of catharsis and healing in and of itself. Others see crying, or suppressed crying, as a symptom, again from the standpoint of repressed or suppressed affect in need of discharge. Clinical theorists who have alternative views see crying as a learned behavior, a form of nonverbal communication or a call of distress.

Some of the early psychoanalytic writers looked at crying as a symptom of castration fear or penis envy. Phyllis Greenacre (1945a, 1945b) wrote several articles comparing urination and weeping, which she related to various manifestations of penis envy. Her early work focused on literal tears shed in a psychoanalytic session rather than on the larger meaning of crying behavior. Twenty years later, Greenacre (1965) wrote another article reflecting some of the changes in psychoanalytic theory. In that article she looked at the association between weeping and loss and anticipated a relational view of crying as attachment behavior triggered by separation.

Another psychoanalyst, Lars Löfgren (1965), described adult crying as equivalent to the tantrum crying of infants and children. He thought of crying as affording adults a safe, acceptable way to express aggression that could be harmful to the individual or a relationship if it came out directly. Ambivalence, as well as aggression, might be purified of “negative feelings” if it came out in the form of tears.

Two decades later, Wood and Wood (1984) discussed tearfulness from the standpoint of layers of consciousness. Instead of looking only at the current trigger for crying, they assumed a link between present and past. Adult crying, they wrote, represents “a variety of stages of development, times and places” at varying levels of consciousness (p. 132). They also viewed crying primarily as emotional expression and, along with Löfgren, saw it as regressive and utilizing “primitive, infantile and early childhood pathways of expression” (p. 132).

Cathartic therapies are those that actively encourage the expression of emotion. Crying is often a centerpiece of the theory and the therapeutic experience. Some of the more well-known cathartic therapies (bioenergetic, Reichian, gestalt, and primal) suggest that crying in and of itself can bring relief from psychological suffering and symptoms.

Thomas Scheff (1979) advocated cathartic therapy in the 1970s, the decade when it was most prominent and visible. He suggested that the therapist should actively encourage crying. He advised therapists to assist noncriers by helping them to establish “optimal distance” from their painful stimuli. The therapist would encourage patients who were too cut off emotionally to embrace emotional triggers. For those whose losses or traumas were too overwhelming, the therapist should help them to get greater distance from the pain.

As an example of helping a person who needed to move closer to his feelings, Scheff wrote about a man who could get only as far as a slight lump in the throat by saying to himself the phrase “I hurt a little bit.” Scheff suggested that he repeat the phrase over and over until he began to cry. At first it was tense and painful “like the dry heaves.” After 15 or 20 minutes, however, his tears did begin to flow and in the end he cried almost daily for a year. On the other hand, a man whose father had attacked him with a knife was unable to cry until Scheff helped him to get more distance from his pain. To accomplish this, Scheff asked whether he could recall any good times with his father. The patient smiled, recounted a memory, and then burst into tears.

In his book, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness: The Negative Affects Silvan Tomkins (1963) focused on the centrality of crying as an expression of emotional distress. He analyzed a wide range of childhood transgressions that may lead to punishments or harsh interferences and thus to crying. If a child is curious about a breakable vase, for example, or overly exuberant or getting in the way while playing or trying to help, the parent's reprimanding response may cause the child to cry. Such negative childhood associations between distress and crying, he suggested, explain how crying in adulthood can be triggered by any “affect or group of affects” or even by “no affect” (p. 52).¹

Cry-inducing distress, he wrote, might also stem from behavior such as being passive or active, bold or cautious, friendly or reserved, or by external events such as separations, war, illnesses, and all manner of personal misfortunes. His conclusion that crying could represent distress over any affect or combination of affects, behaviors or situations clearly illustrates the problem with trying to understand crying from the standpoint of emotional expression. The question, “Why is that person crying?” keeps branching out to infinity. Even trying to find a common link in “distress” leaves out experiences of crying that transcend personal distress and instead express love, awe, joy, and union or those in which distress is mixed with these positive emotions.

Cognitive theories hold that affect is determined by the beliefs that a person uses to structure his or her world based on past experience. Emotional reactions, including crying, that are inappropriate or excessive signal dysfunctional thought patterns or cognitions. Cognitive therapists Beck, Rush, Shaw, and Emory (1979) are among the few writers who discuss how to handle crying clinically. They believe that patients’ crying should be handled according to the meaning that it conveys. Some people might benefit from encouragement to cry, the...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I A Theory of Crying
• CHAPTER 1 There Is More to Crying Than Meets the Eye
• CHAPTER 2 The Circle of Tears Attachment, Loss, Crying, Caregiving, and Reattachment
• CHAPTER 3 Protest, Despair, and Detachment A Classification of Crying
• CHAPTER 4 Crying at the Source The First 12 Months
• CHAPTER 5 Crying Is for Broken Legs and Lost Friends Crying in Childhood
• CHAPTER 6 Crying Lessons and Caregiving Responses The Social View
• PART II The Clinical Assessment of Crying and Caregiving
• CHAPTER 7 Healthy Adult Crying or Inhibited Crying, and Healthy Adult Caregiving
• CHAPTER 8 Symptomatic Adult Crying and Inhibited Crying
• CHAPTER 9 Tears as Body Language
• PART III Crying and Inhibited Crying in the Therapeutic Relationship
• CHAPTER 10 Crying in the Clinical Hour
• CHAPTER 11 How Therapists Deal With Crying and Caregiving, Including Their Own
• PART IV Attachment and Caregiving: Beyond the Personal
• CHAPTER 12 Transcendent Tears
• Notes
• References
• Permissions
• Index