Tears For Fears

"Shout, shout, let it all out

These are the things I can do without

Come on, I'm talking to you, come on"

It turns out the lyrics of Tears For Fears, 1985 single, "Shout" are a pretty accurate representation of a significant challenge that cops and all first responders face on a regular basis (**I'm partial to Disturbed's cover; "Shout 2000", but whatever floats your musical boat). 

Before we get into this, I want to put something out there: If you have a vendetta against crying, f'ing get over it. In adulthood, like most men, I went years without crying and prided myself on that (my family would joke that it might be from being the whiniest kid ever and I just used it all up then). If I felt the temptation to cry from anything at all, I would knowingly shut it off because "only weak men cry". That's just pure bullshit. There's a reason humans can cry, and it's an effort by the body to return to a balanced state. Shutting it off sends a signal to our adrenal glands to release stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) in order to do so which keeps us, and in some cases even heightens, the stressful state we are trying to get out of.

That being said, I'm not reaching for tissues every day, not even close. I might not shed a tear for a month or longer, but when the need arises and I'm in an appropriate setting I fully embrace the opportunity. To be honest, I actually felt the flip side of the shame around crying when I first started to work through some of this stuff and put in the work. I felt embarrassed that I couldn't, or that I wouldn't let myself when given the chance. Embracing that opportunity is what I want to dive into here. 

One of the biggest challenges when we aren't at our best is allowing ourselves to fully feel emotion, good or bad, big or small. We are experts at not letting the peaks and valleys get too extreme and staying in that comfort zone of relative dullness. 

For the sake of clarity, envision a peak as joy, and a valley as sorrow. 

Staying in between those emotional peaks and valleys is an easy and enticing thing to do. I've been there, and for longer chunks of time than I care to admit. Often we only think of avoiding the valleys (ex: the anger, the sadness, etc), but the two generally go hand and hand. Often, unknowingly we find ourselves capping the amount of joy/happiness experienced during a "peak", just as we do when we limit the experience of a "valley".

Personal experiences of what that has looked like for me (and still can when I'm not on my game) go something like this:

Avoiding a peak:

1. I'll be playing with the kids and laughing but a part of me will hold back from getting "too silly" and enjoying the experience any further.

2. Maybe I'll get great news, accomplish something challenging, or be given a compliment and instead of really taking in the positivity of that and savouring it, I'll deflect or redirect it to something else. Maybe I'll even say something self deprecating in an effort to shield myself from it (because that makes sense.....)

Avoiding a valley:

1, I'll be listening to a song that really hits home for whatever reason and begin to feel an emotional response. Instead of embracing that and letting it come, I'll inject a steady stream of distracting thoughts to take me out of the experience and back to a comfortable place. 

2. I'll be doing some intentional breathing or a meditation and things get uncomfortable. I could feel the sensation to cry, or maybe anger comes up and just like earlier examples; I either inject some distracting thoughts or I stop the practice entirely and just pretend like nothing happened. 

Hopefully those examples sound somewhat familiar, and from the conversations I've had with many of you that read this I know that they will. So why put ourselves in that uncomfortable place, and how do we do it? 

We need to let this happen because we need to work through our emotions, not continue to relentlessly deflect and avoid them. Every time we do that it adds to our "emotional load". Imagine a back pack of all the shit we carry (stressors, tasks to do, responsibilities, traumatic memories etc). Every time we deflect or shut down a potential release of emotion we just negate the opportunity our body gave us to remove some of that weight in the backpack, and even added a bit more to it (from that release of adrenaline/cortisol mentioned earlier). Chronic stress anyone?

How we break the habit of shutting it off can be tricky. There are a lot of intentional practices that really help with this; however, they are far more impactful and useful when shown in person so reach out and I'll be happy to help or better yet, dive into the next Nine8 group where it can be discussed more in depth. In the meantime, or if you're just to "badass" to actually talk about this: every time you are in an appropriate setting (ex: alone or with someone you are that comfortable with) and the feeling of an emotional response comes. EMBRACE IT. If you are driving and that song is stirring up something big, pull over, close your eyes, maybe even get next level and put a hand on your heart/gut and EMBRACE IT. Let it happen.

If it's a big peak, smile, laugh a little, feel into it. If it's a deep valley, keep breathing and give yourself permission to leak a tear or feel angry (we'll touch on healthy ways to embrace anger soon). 

Odds are the first few times you try to allow yourself to embrace it, old habits will instinctively kick in and you'll shut it down. That's okay, but maybe you get a little closer this time, and then closer again, until the habitual blocks we use to keep ourselves in that middle ground start to fade away. If you've already given journaling a try, this is a great experience to write out so you can better make sense of it. 

A good one I found for intentionally trying to feel an emotion (in this instance crying, because as I mentioned earlier, there was a time when I didn't think I actually could), is to watch a movie that you know you'll respond to........I don't care what anyone says, when Goose dies in Top Gun, or when Shadow makes his triumphant run across the yard at the end of Homeward Bound are scenes that could floor Jeremiah Johnson himself.

This embracing of emotion is an important one folks. I truly believe that it's a big contributor to the appalling statistics that we have in our profession when it comes to longevity and health/wellness. You just can't carry what we experience, with the addition of regular life stressors around forever and expect to get out of this happy and healthy. You need to take charge and be proactive.

To hearken back to the Tears for Fears lyrics:

"In violent times, you shouldn't have to sell your soul"