Depression
You're driving or at your desk and the tears arrive and you can't trace them to anything.
You’re in the kitchen. You’re at your desk. You’re driving. The tears arrive and you can’t trace them to anything. You weren’t thinking about something sad. You weren’t even thinking about anything in particular. You wipe your face and pretend it didn’t happen. It happens again the next day. Then twice in one day. You start to wonder if something is wrong with you.
The tears are routing around whatever you’ve been refusing to look at.
The crying still arrives.
You very likely came up in a household where crying wasn’t allowed, or where it was met with mockery, irritation, or punishment. You may have grown up with a parent whose own emotions took up all the available room and you learned to swallow yours to keep the peace. You may have been the kid who got told to stop crying or you’d be given something to cry about. You may have lived through something painful in adulthood that you handled by keeping moving, and you never went back to feel any of it. The lid you put on then is the lid that’s still on now.
Every time you suppressed the crying, you added pressure to whatever you’ve been collecting. What’s inside doesn’t get smaller because you ignore it. It gets bigger. Eventually it spills over without your permission. The “no reason” part is the most distressing. If you knew the reason, at least the crying would make sense. The reason is something specific you’ve been keeping out of view. You’re doing what you trained yourself to do, which is keep the lid on. Your body is doing what bodies do when the lid stays on too long.
The crying is the system that was holding everything in, finally giving.
If you also feel numb between crying episodes, see I feel nothing .
Strategic therapy locates what’s underneath the lid and gives it a place to go that isn’t your face at a stoplight. We don’t ask you to feel everything at once. We give the pressure a controlled outlet so the crying stops being the only valve your body has. The episodes quiet down because the pressure that produces them is no longer building unattended.
You’ll keep driving. The tears will arrive when you’ve decided they can, not when your body forces the question.
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