Having a GOOD Cry

Yesterday I had a good cry. How can I tell it was a 'good' cry as opposed to a 'bad' cry or even a mediocre one? I have a failsafe way of telling the difference: my energy goes up afterwards and I feel a lot better about feeling bad.

I have been feeling very low on energy for about three weeks now. As always when I feel this low, I am also in pain form head to foot. I wake up feeling like death warmed up. I cannot face having a shower until the afternoon. I feel stuck at home, unable to do very much except lie in bed reading or sit on the settee watching TV (or one of the many DVDs I have forgotten I have already watched!)

I am pretty good at keeping my spirits up through it all but there always comes a point when I have had enough. Yesterday, I reached that point. I made a huge effort to run the vacuum cleaner on the ground floor of my house and I struggled while doing it. As is usual when I am in this low energy state, I was very clumsy and got continuously tangled up in the lead and repeatedly tripped up on the hose. After a while, my frustration got the better of me and I screamed it out again and again. After that, I started crying and continued to sob my heart out for a good long while.

In order to use my emotional outburst as a healing opportunity, I then followed Deepak Chopra's Seven Stages of Emotional Healing. I highly recommend this method: it works for me every time.

Here are those Seven Steps:

1. Taking Responsibility - I have no problem with that because I do recognise that I and I alone am responsible for the way I feel. My emotions are mine.
2. Witnessing - this stage enables me to step back and observe my emotions as they joust for attention in my own mind.
3. Labelling - rather than just say 'I feel bad' or I feel 'upset', I do my best to identify my emotions and give them a specific name. Yesterday, I wrote down: Frustration, Anger, Pain and Sadness. These were my four emotional labels.
4. Expressing - I then wrote down everything I was feeling under my four labels, from my point of view AND from the point of view of someone else watching me. I am always amazed at the further insights that come up from writing as another person.
5. Sharing - I first thought I would do the sharing on this blog but something told me I needed the physical presence of another human being there and then, so I went and cried all over my lovely neighbour J. This stage is very important to me and I am glad I have learnt to overcome my reticence to burden someone else. J is wonderful at just BEING with me when I feel distressed.
6. Releasing - my favourite way to release my emotions is to burn the paper on which I have written my labelling and my expressing. I love to watch my emotions being purified by fire. Many of my unwanted emotional baggage has thus been dispatched in ashes down the kitchen sink.
7. Celebrating - I tend to forget this last stage and yet I recognise its importance. Yesterday, I celebrated my emotional cleansing with a glass of diet Pepsi. Not exactly Champagne but close enough for someone who cannot tolerate alcohol!

As a result of going through the above seven steps, yesterday I had a GOOD cry and today I have felt much better - less overwhelmed, less frustrated and less burdened. Where clinical depression is concerned, I have observed again and again that being able to deal with my emotions successfully has enabled me not to feel depressed about being depressed.

One layer of clinical (i.e. physical/chemical) depression is enough for anyone to cope with: who in their right mind would want to add another layer of emotional depression on top of it?! Not me, that's for sure...