Teach Your Son That It's Okay to Cry: How Suppressed Emotions Lead to Illness

Today, we'll talk about the importance of allowing yourself to cry and how suppressed emotions often lead to chronic illness.

Hello, my name is Karolina and welcome to my podcast Heal Yourself. In this podcast, I will share my personal healing journey along with the experiences I've gained as a guide in helping others heal their body and soul and I hope that these insights will empower you to embark on your own path to self -healing. Today we'll talk about the importance of allowing yourself to cry and how suppressed emotions often lead to chronic illnesses.

A few weeks ago I saw a little boy follow the bike. He fell head first and broke his lip but there was blood streaming down his face and he could be just about five years old and he was there with his dad and his dad ran to him. He checked if everything was okay and the moment he got there he just stopped the boy crying because he was hysterical obviously because there was blood everywhere obviously he was also feeling a lot of pain and the first thing that the dad did was okay stop stop crying it's okay you are a boy boys don't cry you are strong no you don't have to cry like this it's okay it's don't worry it's it's nothing it's nothing it's just a little thing no problem you don't have to cry boys don't cry and the boy stopped crying and I was thinking to myself if that happened to me adult woman I would fell head first from my bike broke my lip and I would be blood streaming down my face, I would need at least five minutes of crying to actually just work through this shock and let my body to calm down and because it's a huge stress obviously if something like this happened and you need to give your body some opportunity to take care of it and I would not be able to just the moment it happened stopped crying and just pretend nothing happened and it is something that is so widespread boys don't cry and of course the dad he is acting from his heart he doesn't want his little boy to suffer and he just took something that his own dad told him and he just took it like this and put it straight on his little boy not knowing that this kind of limiting belief can actually cause huge problems in his future life.

Have you ever wondered why some people who smoke 20 cigarettes a day live up until eight years old and others actually die of lung cancer when they are 50? What is the difference between these two people? And this missing link could actually be the way we deal with our emotions because in one study they did exactly this, that they observed for many years people who were smoking and some of them developed lung cancer and some of them didn't. And the one thing that was actually connecting all of those who actually developed the illness was the inability effectively dealing with one's emotion and the tendency to suppress them. Even though for girls, for some reason crying is actually okay, even I developed this limiting belief that I have to be suppressing my negative emotions.

For me it was part of my toxic perfectionism and I saw negative emotions as something that would actually make me imperfect, showing that I am actually weak. And so based on this belief that I got when I was little, I learned to completely suppress, not even feel anger. I would say I never get angry, I don't even know what anger means, I just feel sorry for other people but never angry. And tears, I would rarely ever cry, never. in public and even if I was alone, if I just couldn't suppress the tears anymore, I would just let myself cry just for a little bit until I was able to actually stop it and never actually went into a deep, full cry and sadness and I was actually perfectly okay like this. I didn't think that I have any problem. In fact, I thought that I am amazing, that I don't express emotions hysterically like some other people around me and that it is definitely not something that I should be working on.

Well, those who cannot handle their emotions and they actually express them, those are the ones that should be doing something but me, I thought I am amazing and I was fine until I reached the age of 27. And as I shared in the first episode of this podcast, out of nowhere, in the most beautiful period of my entire life, I started to suffer from very serious mental problems. I fell into a deep depression. I was waking up in the middle of night in a panic attack, crying and not being able to breathe. I started to suffer from really heavy anxiety. It was difficult for me to just perform normal things without being scared, without being anxious. I would wake up every day already unhappy, already in tears, and I just didn't know what on earth was happening, where it was coming from. I was, I really, from outside, it seems that I have everything. Everything in my life was perfect, yet I was so unhappy. And I reached out for help.

I started therapy, but for some reason, in my case, we were not really getting anywhere, and probably I needed a lot more time to even understand where I was coming from. And at that time, I was ready to actually give in and get prescribed some antidepressants because I just couldn't function like this anymore. And the cloud above my head was just so dark, I just couldn't see through. But at that time also, I started to think a lot about my previous experiences with ayahuasca, which I had when I was 20, during my travels around South America in Colombia. ayahuasca itself and all my experiences with it could give for at least 10 separate. episodes and I will record those episodes in the future because I think it's very interesting and could be helpful for many people but in this case I'll just share part of the first ceremony that I had after I decided to fly to Mexico and find a shaman and to do something about my mental problems.

There was not a regular way to treat it but I felt that this way could be the one that could alleviate the problem but also teach me where is it coming from, what did I do wrong, where did I make mistake to make myself feel so horrible. And so during this ayahuasca ceremony in Mexico, I fell and I saw in the vision my depression as this dark, black, heavy wall just being pushed through my body, through the muscles, just being pushed bit by bit, starting in my feet, so in one of my legs and just being pushed by really millimeter by millimeter up and up and as it was pushing up, it was collecting all the darkness, all the heaviness and all the sadness from the whole space of my body. And it was such a painful process. It was not just hallucinating. I could actually feel this heavy, dark ball being pushed through my muscles and through my bones bit by bit and collecting all the sadness and the ball was just getting bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier until it went through both of my legs coming up through my lower belly and through my spine just pushing up bit by bit, getting bigger and heavier and heavier and then it was collecting all the things from my hands and from my back until it reached the center of my chest where I just, it was just such heaviness, just such pain on my heart and then from there, it started to push up again, so bit by bit, all the way through my neck and then to the center of my head where I could feel.

I was thinking my head is going to explode such pressure, such heaviness, pain, it was really one of the hardest thing that I ever experienced in my life but because of the previous experiences with Ayahuasca that were also not always just pleasant and knowing how much it has helped me. the past I just gave myself completely and I just trusted the process. I trusted that what is happening is happening for me and that I am going to come out of this much stronger and probably healed. And so as it pushed in the middle of my head getting bigger and bigger and the pressure getting stronger and stronger until I thought my eyeballs are just going to fall out of my head, the moment the heaviness and this depression, this darkness from inside me and this heavy ball just get pushed out through my eyes as tears.

And I started to cry and for me that time was something very difficult to do, to cry in front of people because... If I ever cried it was somewhere hidden and I would never let myself to go full -on like this and there I was in a circle full of people that I have never seen before and I was just hysterical like this obviously all these people they were totally busy with their own stuff and they didn't care about me at all, but I just didn't feel comfortable doing it. But again after some while I just gave a notice like okay I have if I have to cry I cry and I just I just let it go and I just oh my god just tears tears rolling down my eyes and The moment I let myself cry I saw in my vision in front of me there was my ex -boyfriend on the floor and it was the boyfriend that I broke up with Exactly one year before I started to have all these mental problems and to break up was my idea But the problem was the way I did it. So as most thing in my life I just did completely without emotions it was a serious long -term relationship we have been together almost five years and We have been talking about starting family together about the marriage

He was ready to move from London to live with me in Prague He was saving for a long time for our travel around the world like we had everything planned together our my life was him in it and the same thing it was for him and One day I just decided okay I'm not in love anymore. And this is actually not the man that I want to spend my life with which Was a good decision But I just I just did it like this and I just told him. Okay, I'm not in love, we are breaking up, you deal with it the way you want, and I am leaving, I'm going to Africa taking care of kids in orphanage by. And that was it. I didn't shed one tear, I didn't experience any sadness of just leaving all this behind, I didn't experience any fear of not knowing what is going to come, the fear of starting everything from the beginning, I didn't experience any sympathy for him and for just completely ruining his dreams and breaking his heart, just any emotions that I had about it.

I completely suppressed and that time I thought I actually didn't experience them. I thought that I am so amazing I can just finish relationship without any crying any emotions whatsoever and just mentally decide this is what I want to do and just do it but it actually broke me into pieces inside but I didn't know and the moment the very moment I maybe felt some little emotions I just push it straight back in and didn't even let myself experience it and I just pretended no emotions are there but those emotions there are there and all this energy and imagine what kind of energy so anger how much energy if you actually get angry and you start throwing things and you raise your voice and you start shouting all this energy you don't even know where it comes from and it just comes it's like a just explosion and this explosion you just leave inside you and same the sadness what the deep strong feeling how much energy it takes to actually start crying and experience the cry cry something out of your system and all of this you just leave inside and it's there and it keeps just bubbling up and bubbling up and you add this blocked emotions and this block emotion and until your body is like okay like there is no more space inside and we just can't do it anymore and it shows itself as some mental illness depression anxiety or you name it or as in my case together with the mental issues it shows as something physical because I actually believe that this last suppress emotion was not the entire cause for my tumor but it was the last thing where my body just said okay enough is enough and we have to send her some really strong signal that she just cannot behave in this way anymore and she has to do something about it. And so as I had this vision of my boyfriend on the floor just destroyed after the breakup and me crying and I was crying for two or three hours. You usually lose the sense of time so I don't know how long it exactly was but it was a long time.

I have never cried so much and so long ever in my life and as I was crying I was just repeating. I am so sorry that I hurt you so much. I am so sorry that I caused all this. I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please forgive me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I hurt you so much. And I was just repeating this in my head and just crying and crying and I had no idea where all the tears are coming from, but they just kept coming. And I experienced this kind of cry just twice in my life, second time and some other instance when I just really some long suppressed hurt and pain. And it really felt like there was a bottle or a box of pain and sadness on my chest. And then someone just took the tap out and the water just started to slowly come out through my tears, I was just coming out and out. And although I was feeling all the pain, all the sadness, all the sorrow, it was actually such a wonderful, relaxing feeling. It was such relief. It was really someone took something heavy that I was carrying on my chest and was slowly releasing it bit by bit with every tear, my whole body just getting lighter and lighter. And as I was crying, the space around me started to fill with my tears and the surface of the water was just slowly coming up and up and was higher and higher. And so I was crying more and more. The surface was coming up and up and up until it was reaching my chin and my mouth. And I started to feel this horrible panic that I'm actually going to drown in my own tears. And the water was just this dark, horrible liquid around me. very cold, was just not a nice feeling. And as I was feeling this padding that I'm actually going to die, drowning in my own sadness, I just heard my own voice telling me, just relax, it's all okay. And the moment I relaxed, this horrible, dark cold water turned into this warm and kind of pinkish liquid.

And it was like, I'm just lying in a bathtub, and there was a farm on top of the surface of the water. And it just lifted me up and I was floating, still in my tears, but now the tears just felt beautiful, so relaxing. And Ayahuasca has such a beautiful way of teaching in metaphors. And through the experience with her, there are so many moments when you just understand something. And it is not just this kind of understanding when you read something in a book and you understand it logically, it's a deep down understanding on a level of your soul, like it becomes your new truth. And the lesson that this metaphor was teaching me and the truth that I understood was that tears are not something that takes you down, that you have to drown yourself in, but it is something that can actually lift you up and that can support you and relax you. And I can heal my sadness only by experiencing sadness. The way that we deal with our emotions is often something that is just rooted deep down into our personality as something that we carry most of the time from our childhood. And to change it and to rewrite this limiting beliefs that are usually not ours and are just taking so much from our life is not a simple process because we have learned it so early on and then we spend the rest of our life just getting better and better at it with every new emotion, just suppressing it even deeper and deeper.

And we train so much that now to let it go can be quite complex and a long journey, but I promise you the journey is definitely one that is worth taking and uncovering all these things and learning how to experience your emotions and how to deal with them, how to let them go because many of us we experience emotions, but then we hold on to them and we hold on to our emotions. sadness and we hold on to our hurt and even this is a skill the ability of letting go but I believe that you listening to this episode can be the very first step that you can take on this journey and trust me when you start this journey it will turn into something beautiful and it will be an adventure there are many ways how to let go of suppressed emotions my all -time favorite meditation hypnotherapy many of my clients already the moment I just changed the tone of my voice to more relaxing the one that I lead my meditations with they already start reacting to it by yawning, by sneezing. During the meditations, people cry often, or they laugh. Even this is just some expression of energy, just letting something go. People start coughing as well.

And during our retreats, we also do a lot of meditations like this. We do the inner child meditation that I include in all of the retreats that is a very beautiful way how you can connect with that part of you that might be feeling all those emotions that you don't let yourself to feel. And during this meditation, they can just leave your body, liberate you just a little bit. Sometimes people start crying only after holding some yoga position for a longer period of time because you go deeper into opening your hips, for example. And again, some tension, some stress, some blocked emotion, just get released from your system and it comes out. As tears, sometimes I just place my hands on someone and just this mindful, present conscious touch is the trigger for them, the permission to let go and release something. We also do the soma breath, which is another beautiful way of accessing some deeper parts of you. As I was talking about my ayahuasca experience, it can be similar but much milder and easier experience that will also let you liberate from some stuck emotion. And it's amazing because it's something that you can actually control because it's just your own breath. There's no psychoactive substance.

So you can decide if you want to. to breathe deeper or you actually want to take breath and just slow it down. It's all in your hands and again people experience huge releases, sometimes even mild visions, sometimes laughing, sometimes screaming is a beautiful liberating experience. And that said I would like to invite you to some of our retreats. As I describe it, it can be a beautiful healing liberating experience. The connection that is always made between all the people that come to the retreat is really incredible and we are always able to create this beautiful safe space where no one is afraid to express themselves and to express emotions. And apart from being amazingly healing and relaxing experience, It is always also in some beautiful environment, in some beautiful location. There is amazing food. We go and see wonderful places. It's very relaxing. There's a lot of meditating, a lot of relaxation. Just a wonderful retreat away from your everyday life. So if it sounds like something that you would like to experience yourself in the description of today's episode, you will find a link that will take you to the page where you can see all the current retreats and all the dates that we have for this year. And I will be so happy to actually see some of you in one of our retreats, and having the opportunity to actually meet you in person and talk, it would be really wonderful. So go and check it out, and I hope to see you there. And as you go into the description, don't forget to also check out today's meditation. The meditation that I will be sharing with you today is a beautiful practice that will help you get more in contact with your own body and with the sensations and emotions that you actually feel in different parts of your body, because every emotion actually starts as a sensation somewhere in our body.

And this is usually the first thing that when our subconscious feels and it has the habit to suppress the negative emotions, goes and just suppress it. And if you actually learn to feel even this first instance of your emotion just showing up, you can be in control to just decide not to suppress it this time and just. let it go through your body and actually just leave afterwards. So this meditation is called a body scan. You will find it in the description of today's episode. Again, let me know how you liked it. Let me know if you have any questions regarding the retreats, if you have any questions regarding anything that I have said. And if listening through today's episode, you felt like it is actually something that might be also your problem. Just know that there are many ways and that you just by listening to this today, you are on the right path. And if you are in the role of a parent, just realize that it's all in your own hands.

Okay, thank you so much for being here with me today. I really enjoyed today's episode. I hope you liked it too. As always, if you would like to share it with anyone or publicly on your social media, I will be beyond grateful. It would really help me a lot. Thank you so much for all your support. And now I just wish you the most wonderful rest of your day and I am looking forward to seeing you very soon again. Take care.