The gifts of laughter and tears
When you don’t allow yourself to express yourself with laughter and tears, the result can be physical pain, due to stress and lack of passion for life.
Ron grew up in a home where laughter and tears were never expressed. Anger was the main feeling expressed by his mother, while his father was mostly withdrawn. By the time Ron was eight years old, he had managed to suppress both laughter and tears to avoid feeling rejected by his parents and controlled by his mother. Closing off was his way of protecting himself against the invasion of his controlling mother. He became a serious child, a controlled and controlling child.
Ron grew up, went to college, became a successful lawyer, got married and had three children. However, nothing, not even deep love for his children, managed to break his rigid and controlling way of being.
Ron sought my help because he was not only very unhappy, but often in physical pain. All he could say about the physical pain was that it hurt him. “My body hurts. My chest hurts, my stomach hurts, and my back hurts.” A doctor examined him thoroughly and found that nothing was physically wrong. The doctor told him that he was stressful.
Ron told me that he spent much of his free time daydreaming because when he was present with himself in the moment, all he felt was pain. He had learned to daydream to avoid the pain.
However, Ron was now 48 years old and the daydream was no longer working properly. The pain was creeping in, especially in the form of debilitating back pain, so Ron decided he needed help.
The problem behind Ron’s pain was that his main intention in life was to control. He wanted to control how others felt about him, how well his employees worked, how his wife treated him, and how well his children did in school. He also wanted to control not feeling the pain of rejection and the fear of being swallowed up that he had felt so much in his family. In particular, he wanted control over not feeling the pain of his own abandonment.
Ron’s control had worked for him up to a point. He was financially successful. He had all the material things a person could want: a beautiful house, a vacation home, a boat, and all the electronic devices a person could use. He had a wonderful family and was in good health, apart from his pain. However, he often felt miserable and had no passion for life.
The problem Ron faced was that being in control was much more important to him than being a loving person with himself and with others. As a result, Ron felt empty inside and constantly looked to others to fill him up. He had no interest in taking responsibility for his own feelings, his own pain and joy. He wanted others or things to fill him up and make him happy.
Imagine how a child would feel if you put them in a box and told them that they could never laugh or cry. This is what was happening with Ron. His inner child, his own feeling, was in a box, he was not allowed to laugh or cry. Laughter and tears are our natural ways of expressing and releasing feelings. Without the God-given gifts of laughter and tears, our feelings become blocked inside, ultimately causing our muscles to go into painful spasms. This is what was causing Ron’s pain. He could no longer control his feelings without feeling physical pain.
It was a tough battle for Ron. In those moments when he let go of control and opened his heart to love, the pain was gone. But his terror of being rejected or controlled was usually more powerful than his desire to love himself and others, and he closed off from his fears. He feared that if he opened up to his feelings, he would be weak and seen as such, which he feared would lead to rejection, absorption, and being taken advantage of.
Ron wanted something he couldn’t have: the illusion of security that being so controlling gave him, without suffering the physical pain of being so controlling.
After practicing the inner work, Ron finally saw that loving himself by allowing himself to experience his laughter and tears did not cause him to feel weak, nor did it bring him the rejection and sinking he had feared. In fact, by becoming more aware of his feelings and allowing himself to express them, Ron learned that he actually felt safer, more powerful, and much more alive and passionate about his life than when he was trying to control everything.
Laughter and tears are great gifts that allow us to express and release our feelings in a healthy way.