'Men do not cry'

How does a person feel who needs to cry and who is questioned about his virility, his manhood, for the simple fact of showing his tears in public?

Have you ever, as a very young child, when you started to realize things, surely you They said this phrase after you hurt yourself: children do not cry, those who cry are the girls!? Later, when you were a pre-adolescent and in adolescence, did they tell you again when you suffered some pain, either physical or emotional, but changing the word "child" for "man"?

The truth is that for a long time and, even today, in various contexts and in many societies, it seems a most normalized and most innocent phrase.

They are ideas used with the aim of form strong and unbreakable males, able to control pain, who face destiny head-on, without fear of anything and, on the other hand, distinguish them from women, mistakenly considered the “weaker sex”. But taking a step further, what is really behind that phrase that, as I said, even today sounds the most normal in the male world? What is really hidden behind those four words?

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What can there really be?

At first glance, and without going too deep, two points can be distinguished related to the idea that men do not cry:

Unsafety

The insecurity of not really fulfilling the prototypical male role, insecurity for allowing themselves to gain ground by the feminine role, because if, as a scale it is, what one gains the other loses, and vice versa.

How many times have people who have told us this (including myself) really come to wonder if we are really less masculine, therefore more feminine for crying?

Fear

The fear would be to go one step ahead of the previous point, which comes after insecurity. It is a fear of not being accepted in the peer group, for being considered as the "soft" or the "soft" of the class within a school context, to be considered as persons belonging to the opposite sex by the simple fact of showing the crying; fear that both others and oneself will doubt one's sexuality. This rejection among peers can result in harassment.

How can this affect?

These two points represent the damage that is caused to the person receiving this phrase that learns, from childhood, to repress the manifestation of feelings related to sadness and pain through crying. This learning "tumorizes" inside, affecting their way of being and relating, their self-esteem, internal dialogue, selfconcept and how to deal with conflicts.

Equally, the repression of crying also affects the biological system. For example, with a drop in the immune system, which could lead to different psychosomatic disorders or even fatal cancers, as shown by various studies of people with alexithymia.

A personal experience

An example is a personal experience, something very recent that happened to me just a few weeks ago. On a Saturday night, I lost my father, after a long illness and no less long agony.

That same night I went home with my wife and daughter, my body asked me to cry, because at the time of my father's departure I could not do it because I had not finished assimilating it, what is known as a state of shock. So I decided to view the video of my communion and that of my brother. From the beginning of the first video I started crying and crying, the intensity of the crying surprised me, it calmed me down and I would cry again, repeatedly, when I saw my father younger and stronger, when I heard his vigorous and non-labile speech and agonizing.

I stayed that way until it was five o'clock, almost six in the morning.

The next day, the day of the funeral, I woke up at eleven in the morning, and although I was still very hurt, I could see and notice that the level of my pain was not so extreme, although it was still high. Just minutes later, a relative called me and I told him what he had done, and the first thing he said to me was: why are you doing that? Don't you know that you have to be and look strong this day?

It was at that moment that I remembered the four-word phrase: "children don't cry." I really realized how much damage some beliefs, some rites do and everything related to the same: the non-expression of feelings, emotional repression, appearing to be strong in adverse moments, not admitting that one needs and wants to cry without fear of being cataloged or cataloged as "soft".

Crying is a need of the body

Crying is an outlet for the body, a biological need, and even a right that one has as a human being. Allowing you to feel the pain in the moment you need or feel it (different from enjoying the pain), Allowing yourself to cry is giving you the opportunity to pamper yourself, to take care of your biological and psychological health, it is to love yourself same.

I am going to allow myself to give an example, although it may seem a bit bizarre at first, sex or male masturbation. If this happens, for example, once every four or five days, nothing has to happen, but if the days go by and you don't have the opportunity to ejaculate, what is known as "nocturnal pollution" happens, that is, ejaculate while sleeping, usually accompanied by a erotic dream.

If we extrapolate this example, saving the distances, to the subject of crying, If we continually repress that biological need, there will come a time when it will come out somewhereEither in the form of an emotional tsunami in the face of the slightest setback that comes our way or in the form of a psychological and / or biological disorder.

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Signs, symptoms and recommendations

There are various signs in the form of signs (objective and visible part of an ailment such as the manifestation of crying or some other emotion such as anger, for example) and symptoms (subjective part and, therefore, not visible otherwise, since it is a personal experience of each one, such as the level of pain or sadness), which may indicate what this repression of emotions related to sadness and pain can be a problem.

Although each one can experience sadness in a very idiosyncratic way, the vast majority tend to be shy (shyness can often be the cause of not showing feelings in public for fear of criticism, which is not a major problem if we give ourselves the opportunity to face that pain and not avoid it when we feel more comfortable to cry and feel) when interacting with people, a defensive attitude, communication problems (with friends, family ...), emotional dullness, emotional lability, emotional incontinence, affective flattening, difficulty swallowing when faced with bad news (hysterical balloon), feeling that the world is coming on you, lack of energy, constant fatigue without having done a significant drain on energy, and a long etc.

Given this, I recommend seeking professional help If you feel that you cannot handle these types of sensations and experiences alone, or if it begins to significantly affect some area of ​​your life.

Conclution

By way of conclusion to this article, I would like to encourage making love to yourself in the form of allow yourself to cry and give yourself the opportunity to feel that suffering that is avoidedWell out of fear, well out of insecurity, well even out of laziness.

To paraphrase the psychiatrist and logotherapist Viktor E. Frankl: "Pain gives us the opportunity to know ourselves better and is one of the means to discover meaning in our life."

For this reason, I encourage you that when you hear the four-word phrase "men do not cry," think that men really do cry.

Only people who are carried away by insecurity and fear try to hide those feelings, since they overlook both the benefits that this can bring them in the short term, as well as the long-term prophylactic effect that it can bring them. Focusing only on "what will they say", "what will they tell me", "what will they think of me", "if I cry I am like a woman ..." is counterproductive; They are nothing other than criticisms of us, which come from ignorance, insecurity and fear of others or of oneself.