Hi! I’m Lilith 
and I’m a crier.

 

While you can’t control the reactions of others, nor should you concentrate too hard on things that are out of your control, it can be helpful to understand how and why others react certain ways to public displays of emotions, especially when you perceive they’re uncomfortable.

 

Thea has a simple answer: “Because we aren’t ok with vulnerability in ourselves or others!”

 

She adds: “Sometimes my daughter cries and I want her to stop because it makes me uncomfortable and I need to work on that. If we aren’t comfortable with it in ourselves, we will never be comfortable with it in others. So next time you feel an urge to cry, let it out! You’ll feel better I promise (maybe not at first, but in the long run). To be human is to cry sometimes.”

 

Ok, ok, so you cried at work and want to feel ok about it? There’s one tactic in particular Thea recommends to help you process, and that’s reframing the act and approaching your response with the same level of empathy and compassion for yourself as you would a friend. 

 

“I like to reframe crying as a very human display of feelings that is actually just showing how much you care about something or a sign that you are feeling overwhelmed,” she says. 

 

“It can be seen as a sign of strength and openness with the world around us, which does impact us and that is a beautiful thing. I have definitely cried at work and I will initially feel embarrassed and stupid and like ‘wow this is the wrong context’ and ‘why couldn’t I just keep it together’, and later I'll try to reflect and non-judgmentally observe why I was feeling that way and use it as a time to have self-compassion and explore my feelings and maybe do something different.”

 

In the end, Thea reminds us: “It's all data about ourselves!”

 

Data! That emotionless thing that, when applied to our emotions, allows us to step back from all the complicated ~feelings~ and helps us to gather some cold hard facts about ourselves that we can examine and sit with later. Who knows, the data collection may help you work through some stuff you’ve been avoiding and crying at work may become a thing of the past. 

 

If not, next time you cry just think: It’s all data, baby.