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Join certified trauma professional Dr. Amy Hoyt and licensed therapist Leina Hoyt, MFT at https://www.mendingtrauma.com as they teach you how to recover from trauma and cPTSD. Trauma shows up in our everyday reactions and sensations and recovering requires a multi-prong approach that considers the mind, body and spirit. Dr. Amy and Leina will teach you the most emerging research and skills to empower you to overcome your past traumas. They address nervous system health, somatic therapy, trauma, cPTSD, EMDR, Neurofeedback, IFS (Internal Family Systems therapy), and many other modes of recovering from trauma. As mental health experts, sisters and trauma survivors, they teach you the tools that actually helped them recover, are backed by research and have helped thousands of their clients. Each episode is packed with clinically effective methods as well as scientific findings to guide you through your own trauma healing journey. Whether discussing cPTSD, PTSD, medical trauma, somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, EMDR or neurofeedback, Amy and Leina will help you recover from trauma so that you can reconnect to yourself and others.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (02:11)
Hi everyone, welcome back. Today's episode is a suggestion that came from one of our members of the Whole Health Lab. And as we were speaking, we were talking about crying and how crying can be so extremely helpful for self -regulation. And she said, have you done a podcast about that? So here we are, why crying is good for you and how it helps us regulate.
Leina (02:38)
Yes, I think it's a really great topic because some people never cry. I mean, I think those are people who have a lot of trauma, but most of us have times where we cry, even if they're rare. culturally, what I notice is that anytime somebody cries, they always apologize.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (03:02)
That's a really, really excellent point. So even if you are someone who cries, it seems that there's some shame around crying.
Leina (03:12)
Right, yeah. And I think that's super unfortunate. I think the other thing too though, it's not only shame. I think it's also a lot of vulnerability. And I think that when we're crying, we can feel really overwhelmed by vulnerability. And so we can become, we try really hard then to stop the crying.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (03:22)
Mmm.
Yes.
Yes.
So I am one of those people that my whole life would never let myself cry. I mean, I don't know what age that started, but at some point I remember making a decision that no matter how hard I was hit or what happened to me, I would never let them see me cry.
Leina (03:44)
Right.
Right, that makes sense.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (03:58)
Well that did not serve me well.
Leina (04:00)
No, it made sense and it didn't serve you well.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:03)
Yes, because then I became very angry and anger was my go to emotion for regular quote unquote regulation, right? It was not regulating anything, but it felt very powerful to have that tool. And it wasn't until, you know, again, doing the trauma work, not just talk therapy for
Leina (04:06)
Right.
Yep.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:33)
20 years, but actual work on trauma that I realized the essential role that crying plays in regulating and started to allow myself to cry and it is uncomfortable. It's super vulnerable and I hate it.
Leina (04:49)
Yeah. Yeah. You've gotten, you've gotten really good at it though. I mean, what I've really meant is, is that you've gotten really good at allowing yourself to cry when you have emotions. That's what I meant.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:55)
Hahahaha
Thank you. Yes. I'm a really good crier, y 'all. That's right. So why is okay, so a couple things. Crying is very vulnerable, as you stated. And I think, I think a lot of the things
Leina (05:15)
You'd win the gold medal.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:34)
That help us regulate do leave us in a vulnerable position because we're not armoring up.
Leina (05:39)
I would agree.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:41)
And for those of us with trauma, you know, we usually are armoring up, whether we're avoiding, whether we're fighting, whether we are collapsing, right? So fight, flight, freeze, those are all mechanisms to protect ourselves that started during the trauma and kind of keep going unless we intervene.
Leina (05:51)
collapsing.
Right. And they've outwarned their usefulness at this point in our everyday life.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:10)
That's right. That's right. So crying is one of the absolute quickest ways that our body can get back into regulation.
Leina (06:25)
I think that's astounding.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:26)
Isn't it? It's like a superpower of the body. We know that when we cry, we release endorphins, essentially, that help us feel calm afterwards. There is a sense of relief that comes. It is for me, it usually produces a headache.
Leina (06:42)
Mm -hmm.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:54)
which is another reason that it's hard to cry because there's like a period where you have to rest after crying.
Leina (07:02)
Very good point, yeah.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (07:03)
which is another self -regulation tool that the body is imposing on us.
Leina (07:09)
Yes, and most of us don't believe we have time to rest.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (07:13)
Yes.
So what is your experience, Leina, with teaching people how to allow themselves to cry? How does that, how do we get past kind of those barriers that we have that are at this point, they're so strong? Yes.
Leina (07:35)
and ingrained. Yes. Right. Well, I use humor sometimes in my office. So people will cry in my office and then they'll apologize. And I'll say, don't worry, I have three more boxes of Kleenex in the cupboard. Right. I like to laugh with my clients not at times that minimizes their experience or their pain, but that is one way that I've handled it in my office.
Sometimes that would be absolutely inappropriate. And so I remember a session I had yesterday and I said to my client, you need to have some tears? Is that gonna help the emotion move through your body? Will that bring you some relief? And she said yes, and she was able to cry a little bit. So there are different ways to deal with it. And sometimes we're gonna be in a place where crying is actually not
going to be helpful or emotionally safe for us. So if I burst into tears in the middle of my work environment, that is not advisable. And so part of what we need to do is figure out how to contain what we're experiencing and then later experience it instead of trying to stuff it really far down so that we can ignore it.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:01)
Hmm. That is tricky because what I experienced is that if I, if the moment comes where I'm really overwhelmed and I start to cry and then I try and contain it, I don't know how to retrieve it and go back to it.
Leina (09:04)
It is very tricky.
Right. Yes. And maybe that's one of the ways that EMDR is so powerful is that it helps us get back into some of those emotions without having to delve into detail or talk about every single thing that happened.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:37)
Yeah, I think as you said, there are times when we need to contain it, but I think this episode is really about not containing it because I think all of us are masters at containing our crying.
Leina (09:47)
Right.
Mm -hmm. Yeah, so the goal then becomes how do we stop this automatic stuffing that we tend to do?
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:58)
Exactly. Exactly. So what other I know when I was in rehab, one of the best tools that I was taught by my therapist were to identify my primary emotion in that moment. And of course, it was always anger. I was a really angry person. Yes. And, and so then they would say, okay,
Leina (10:18)
Mm -hmm. Well, you had good reason.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (10:27)
what's behind that anger. And that was really helpful for me. And so now what I do is I, when I have a primary emotion and it could be anger, could be sadness, could be, you know, it's typically the emotions I don't want to have where I start probing what's behind that. Yes. But with that probing usually comes to a very vulnerable state.
Leina (10:46)
Yeah, they're uncomfortable.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (10:57)
And that vulnerability is usually, it really usually is sadness.
Leina (11:02)
It often is. Sadness, fear, yeah, yeah. Those tend to be a lot of what's underneath a lot of our reactions.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (11:06)
Mm -hmm. Overwhelmed.
So I would say that teaching ourselves, allowing ourselves to cry is probably one of the most powerful tools we can embrace in order to release trapped emotion. So we know that the body keeps the score. We know that trauma is held in the body, even in the cells at the cellular level.
Leina (11:28)
Mm -hmm.
Yes.
Correct.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (11:43)
It actually, you know, can be passed down for up to eight generations, through our DNA. I mean, it is, it is a physiological effect on us. If we allow ourselves to cry, doesn't mean that there won't be negative consequences of the trauma or the event, but what we're doing is we're releasing. So we won't trap more emotion. Cause I don't know about y 'all, but I mean
Leina (12:06)
Exactly.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:12)
part of trauma is just all that trapped emotion that was not safe to process in the moment.
Leina (12:20)
Exactly. When I'm doing EMDR and internal family systems and people have an emotional reaction, I encourage them to, you know, if it feels okay to you, really let those emotions flow through you because we want them to stop being trapped in you. We want your body to be able to experience those and then let them go.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:40)
Yes.
Yes. So even though this is a very short episode, just understand the main message is we really want you to understand that crying is actually super beneficial. It allows you to regulate very quickly. It is one of the best ways to process trauma and pain. And we want to encourage you to just allow yourself to feel what you need to feel. It will get
It'll go a lot quicker and your journey of trauma healing will start to actually pick up. It'll be a lot quicker to process.
Leina (13:26)
Right, the Buddhists have a saying that, that which we resist persists. And with emotion, there is no truer statement.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (13:33)
That is.
Yeah, yep, absolutely. And so, use the tools of noticing without judgment and allowing yourself to feel what you need to feel. I think those are the two most powerful tools in terms of allowing ourselves to cry.
Leina (13:55)
Thank you, Amy. I love how committed you are to this because I know you encourage me sometimes too to cry.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (14:03)
Yes, yes. Well, thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to being with you next week.
Leina (14:09)
Take care, everybody.