I’m sorry…

Words you’ll often hear people say. Usually for something they haven’t done wrong like walking around a shop and someone backs into you, your response “I’m sorry!”

Or, you lose your husband/mother/friend/pet/job (insert important person/animal/reason here), you talk to someone, you feel the tears coming. What do you do? Before you start crying you apologise that you’re about to start crying! Why? What are you sorry for? Sorry for showing someone you’re sad about it? Sorry about the way your body is responding to that loss? Sorry that you can’t “keep it together”? That you’re not “being strong”? That you might not be able to hold it in any longer? Sorry that you might create an uncomfortable situation for the person listening to you?

WHY? Why are we constantly saying sorry for things that we shouldn’t be sorry about? It could be due to learned behaviours, cultural beliefs or just habit. There may be a whole host of reasons why we feel the need to warn people that we’re about to cry and apologise for it. Do we tell children to stop crying when they cut their leg open or when their pet dog dies? If you’d just witnessed someone receiving bad news, would you expect them to apologise before they start crying or apologise after for doing so? We don’t tell babies to stop crying when they are hungry, wet, tired or in pain, we feed/change/cuddle/give them medicine. We try and make them feel better.

Can you think of a time that you cried and said sorry for displaying your emotions?

There’s a reason we cry. Shedding tears releases oxytocin and endorphins which help heal physical and emotional pain. Did you know that tears from grief and joy contain vastly different chemicals. Crying can actually help reduce pain and enhance wellbeing. Tears are pain relievers in grief.

We need to normalise people’s emotions in grief. We should not hide away and cry (think about the message that it’s sending younger people in your presence), we should not suppress those emotions – we need to let them escape. A cat won’t keep a fur ball down, as much as it’s uncomfortable for the animal it would get very sick if it kept it in. It’s the same for us, the more we suppress our emotions, the harder it will hit us further down the line.

So, the next time you feel yourself welling up, do not apologise for it. Let those tears flow, they are doing their job!