You know who you are. You're the one that's body is constantly rigid and closed off from others. You're the one that refuses to show any emotion that you view as negative. You might feel comfortable laughing and showing job, but you are terrified to feel anger or sadness. You are afraid to express anger because you don't know if you would be able to control yourself. You don't cry because it could show weakness or because you don't know what would potentially happen if you did cry. Would you fall apart? Would you be able to pull yourself back together?

You pay to see a therapist and yet you keep everything at surface level. You avoid certain topics of your past because you know that they increase your risk of showing what you consider negative emotions. You squirm in your seat across from your therapist as you try to explain why you no longer want to talk about a certain subject and try to manage the surge of feelings rising up inside of you. Your therapist questions your refusal to show emotion. She wants to know why you don't like to show or express feelings. As you contemplate the answer to her question, you wonder what could be so bad.

Why are you so afraid of crying? What could be so terrible about expressing anger? Why must you repress everything even though you know that bottling it up is never a good thing. You begin to realize that you have been expressing your "negative emotions" with negative coping patterns. You see that things need to change but you're not sure what to do. You've grown accustomed to being numb. If you stopped coping the way you do, you could suddenly become flooded with emotion. Then what? Who would be there to pick up the pieces? Would you be left alone or would the individual witnessing it become angry? Would you really be "okay" if you let it all go?

You have stuffed your emotions for years. You've stuffed your hurts and fears. You've stuffed the trauma you have experienced and have slowly become like a pressure cooker. You are now nearing an explosion. So, what would happen if you opened up and let a little pressure out bit by bit? You relax, trust the environment you are in, and allow yourself to feel. You allow yourself to cry. You allow yourself to begin to heal.

"Tears have a wisdom all their own. They come when a person has relaxed enough to let go and to work through his sorrow. They are a natural bleeding of an emotional wound, carrying the poison out of the system. Here lies the road to recovery."
-F. Alexander Magoun