The person in this session fears that crying will be overwhelming—“a very long period of crying, like so many things.” Joe normalizes this (“when I first cried after 14 years, I cried for four days straight”) and then offers the crucial reframe:
“When your tears come—which is inevitable—just notice that that blank space is still there. The comfort of that blank space is not disturbed. The tears don’t disturb it. The tears just help the body.”
This dissolves the false choice between numbness and overwhelm. The quiet place the person has retreated to for decades doesn’t have to be abandoned for emotions to flow. Tears are not the opposite of stillness—they’re a bodily release that can happen within stillness. The fear is that feeling will destroy the only safe place they know. The truth is that feeling enriches it.
Related Concepts
- Emotional numbness can be a survival gift, not a deficit
- Joy won’t come into a house where her children aren’t welcome
- Rage as gateway to healing
- Joy won’t come into a house where her children aren’t welcome