We have all seen tense moments in movies where something upsetting happens and a heroine cries. Usually, the hero says something like "Don't cry, Honey". But I say pay attention from the moment of his utterance through the next five minutes. What you will often see is that the heroine calms down, and apparently no worse for the wear and tear of the difficulty or sad event or whatever it was that she wept about, she goes on to do what heroines do, which these day is just about everything that heroes do.
We used to say that the short period of crying enabled the heroine to experience emotional release. Some research indicates that too much release can increase the impact of severe emotional upset, that too much acting out can increase the pain. One article says that generally tears come whenever we pass quickly from the grip of the sympathetic nervous system (flight or fight) into the influence of the parasympathetic system (deep calm and relaxation).
Reading "The Trauma of Everyday Life" by Dr. Mark Epstein, I found interesting ideas about facing and appreciating the role of strong emotions inside us and in our lives. One such idea is that ordinary lives are likely to have strongly negative events in them, traumas that upset us and maybe give us tastes of life as bitter, yucky, unfair, and miserable. Over the course of a lifetime, through our fault or someone else or chance or whatever, we will get hit by flying rotten vegetables of unpleasant and unwanted and undeserved occurrences. If such an event is sufficiently bad, it reaches the level of trauma. Trauma may come from battle, crime, and natural events like car crashes or tsunami.
For internal and external reasons, a sufficiently negative event often gets locked away in the back of the mind. Back there, it can sit until it can be dealt with. Another interesting view from Epstein is that whether resolution of the trauma comes while being held in the arms and attention of our mother when we are babies, or in the safe confines of a therapist's office, or in our own ability to sit calmly and "metabolize" (burn up the "calories" of) the experience, we restore and "remember" who we were before the trauma and who we can be now aside and beyond it. The work of James Pennebaker (Expressive Writing: Words that Heal) and Timothy Wilson (Redirect) , both professors of psychology and both with good books on Kindle, shows results from waiting until some bad experience shows up as a trauma (give a mind some time, maybe a couple of weeks, to digest the nasty experience, to see if it can). Then, if a good resolution is not achieved, write about the experience for 20 minutes each night for about a week. That procedure has helped more than some of the official programs for police and fire department members who have had traumatic experiences.
Meditation can also lead to mental calm and can be done consistently for about 10 minutes a day. There are many forms of meditation but a good basic one is to sit in a comfortable position with a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and focus on a single point or on your breath. All minds are active little devils and in a short while, maybe 20 seconds, your mind will leave the focus to light on some other thing or idea. As you as you realize you are thinking about something, gently but firmly bring your mind back to the focus. When the timer rings, you are done.
There are several ways to pass through and beyond stages of upset.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
