Why Are You Crying?

I was watching World of Dance and one of the little 7 year old girls began to cry after her performance as the judges were speaking with her team and they asked how old she was. She just burst into tears and one of the judges asked Why are you crying? And she said, I don’t know! I don’t know why I am crying. And quickly another judge said It’s okay, it’s just adrenaline.

And I thought how perfect was that? To be given an explanation that a spontaneous emotion was caused by a simple body reaction. Perfect. Done. There was no need to delve into some Freudian theory on how she was frightened, or worried about her performance. There was no need to consider any mental reason .. why ask why? It was just adrenaline. Done. Perfect. No shame in crying. No need to apologize or hide it. It was just adrenaline. Move on.

My own swiss cheese childhood coping mechanisms created a tendency to “investigate” everything. As a programmer, it served me well in my early career because everything had a cause and if I drilled down deep enough into the barrage of error messages I could find the root of my problem .. and of course fix it. That paradigm works well for technology apps. But when we delve into the human psyche we uncover layers of conditioned responses, triggered associations, trauma memories and other “stories” that we apply to our current “mood”. It’s like peeling off or putting on layers of sticky wallpaper. We may have dozens of patterns glued to our interior walls, sometimes we can peel them off easily when we see they no longer suit our situation, but other times the glue seems so strong that the best we can do is rip tiny holes and peer behind to see what lies underneath. Thinking of course, that those layers somehow matter.

But what if our emotional state was not in fact determined by the backlog of wall treatments of our past? What if instead our body periodically experiences strong chemical releases (like adrenaline) and instead of trying to figure out WHY we are feeling whatever it is .. we simply notice it without a label, without believing it means something bad? Perhaps the release comes as tears .. or shaking .. or sweating (can you tell I am a menopausal woman?) Understandably we want to figure out the code because we want the sensation to stop. But what if instead of believing that the only way our negative experience will change is finding the “answers” .. we instead are willing to suspend our belief that a reason/cause exists and we simply watch the sensation. We notice what the body feels like. We “accept” the rise and fall of the full spectrum of feelings.

Of course, our habit micromanaging brain will tell us .. NOOOOO you can’t let this go on unchecked! Because it will overwhelm you and you won’t be able to ever regain control. That’s my mother’s voice who use to tell me that it wasn’t okay to cry, because once you start, you won’t be able to stop. Despite “knowing better” my conditioned habit is to avoid tears and terrified feelings because I still “believe” they will take me over and I won’t be able to “stop” them once they pass some potentiometer.

Indeed the snake oil profit moguls depend on our self-doubts to sell their line of “fix–it-now”, “you-need-this”, “don’t-spend-another-sleepless-night” slogans if-you-act-now we’ll throw in another at half price and free shipping. Now somehow, I’m buying TWO of something that I didn’t know I needed any of just a moment ago. But we are desperate to not feel what we are feeling. We are told it’s not natural to feel things deeply. If we aren’t carefree, pain-free, happy-as-can-be all of the time, every waking hour with nine hours of replenishing contiguous sleep each night .. well then that’s a problem and I have the cure right here in my new book; little pill; fad diet; crash course; meditation; spiritual practice; gluten-free; non-gmo; snake oil solution.

Why are you crying? Oh don’t worry, that’s just adrenaline.  Keep dancing.