Why Women Don't Like to Cry (And Why You Should Start)
Have you ever been told that you’re too emotional? Or do you avoid crying at all costs because you don’t want to look weak? In this week’s episode, Gervase flips this narrative upside down, offering a powerful reframe that reveals why crying is actually a profound act of healing, as well as an opportunity for connection and growth. Listen in as she breaks down the societal indoctrinations and personal barriers that make us resistant to feeling our emotions, as well as the physiological and intuitive benefits of crying, making a case for why embracing your tears is a radical and necessary practice.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
Why the fear of being "too emotional" is costing us authenticity
How patriarchy, capitalism, and even feminism condition us to suppress emotions.
How allowing emotions to flow can deepen our relationships and create a bridge to our intuition
The physiological benefits of crying, including access to soul-wisdom
Why creating safe, intentional spaces to feel is key to emotional health
How women's circles, somatic healing, and working with a trained facilitator can help you access your intuition, soul wisdom, and deeper clarity
Are you ready to stop suppressing your emotions and start accessing your inner wisdom? Start with a Soul Shift:
The Soul Shift Intensive was created for the woman who is ready to leave behind the stories society has conditioned her to believe, and instead embrace the calm and clarity that comes with being connected to soul wisdom.
Check it out here: https://www.gervasekolmos.com/the-soul-shift-intensive
Follow Gervase
Connect with Gervase on Instagram: www.instagram.com/themodernphoenix
Visit her website: www.gervasekolmos.com
Why Women Don't Like to Cry (And Why You Should Start)
Episode Full Transcript
Today I want to make a case for crying and give you all the reasons why you may or may not be afraid of your emotions, super resistant to crying, and why it’s actually good for you. Let’s start by talking about the systems. If we think about our culture and society at large, what are the messages that are in the systems—in the water we drink, in the air we breathe?
First, patriarchy. Our internalized patriarchy has made it clear that crying is a sign of weakness and that weakness will not be tolerated—also in men. Reminder: patriarchy doesn’t just negatively impact women; it also negatively impacts men. We’re operating within a system that tells us emotions, feelings, tears are weak.
We’re also in a capitalistic society that values, prioritizes, and glorifies time and money. Crying is a waste of time and crying does not make us money. So what’s the point? Now let’s also look at feminism. With all of the positives it has offered, it’s also put an extra rock in our backpack: we have to be super strong no matter what. It gave us resilience and empowerment to fight the good fight. But what we picked up from that was the message that vulnerability in any form isn’t going to get us where a man goes. We’re trying to play a man’s game. Because we’re in patriarchy, men don’t cry. Feminism reinforced that strong, empowered women don’t cry. It’s helpful to see all the ways we’re conditioned to not feel our feelings.
On top of this, in the micro: you might be in a partnership where your partner feels uncomfortable with your tears. You might be consuming motherhood content that tells you “don’t project your feelings onto your kids; your kids aren’t responsible—tuck that away.” You might have been raised by emotionally repressed parents, which is true for many of us, and so you internalized the message “don’t show your kids any emotion.” Also not to give it back to your parents as a child. Your childhood trauma might literally be to not show emotion because it makes everybody uncomfortable. It’s inconvenient. It’s bad or wrong. Everyone would agree crying in the corporate workplace is frowned upon. We have narratives around “hysterical women,” “emotional women,” “don’t be too sensitive.” This makes sense why women avoid their emotions at all costs. We resist the urge to cry no matter what.
This is maybe a gross parallel, but I had the stomach bug last weekend. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but I noticed: you know when you have to throw up and you know it’s coming but you’re like “no, no, no, I don’t want to,” and you hold off as long as possible—and then your body does the work for you? That’s like crying for most women I work with. They feel the emotion inside them and will do anything to prevent it from coming out in almost any scenario—even feeling deep fear and vulnerability with a loved one. Because of all these factors—add a dash of childhood trauma, pick your cocktail—we’ve been conditioned not to inconvenience others with our feelings, not to feel our feelings, to distrust our feelings, to believe our feelings make us weak, and to keep them in no matter what.
We also live in a society that intellectualizes everything. When you feel emotion, or as you’re feeling it, or after, we’re never noticing “how did that feel to my system? What was that like for my body?” We’re just like, “Why did that happen? What was that about?” We’re always creating a story about the tears. We’re always trying to figure out “why am I crying? Why do I feel sad?” instead of just releasing the pressure valve and allowing ourselves to feel sad.
Let’s talk about what this does to us as women. We know all the reasons why we don’t; let’s talk about why it’s damaging. If we go back to the vomit example: one of my children had the stomach virus at the same time I did. Because they’re young and have less experience managing nausea, they didn’t make it to the toilet on time. When you have all that stuff building up, it needs to come out. But you don’t have a hygienic, disciplined practice. You don’t have practice of doing it in a healthy way, in a healthy place. You throw up in your bed. You throw up in the middle of the classroom. You throw up in the sink. Parents, I know you feel me. If we take this parallel and apply it to our emotions: so many women have the experience of “I have these outbursts, but it’s always at the wrong time—when I’m super triggered, or with my children. It can’t come out in a professional setting.” This makes sense. There’s a reason it’s happening: your body isn’t being given a predictable, reliable outlet to release emotion, so you lose control of it entirely.
Nobody wants to be totally out of control with their emotions. It’s possible to feel your feelings fully without judgment while also feeling a sense of integrity. You knew it was coming. You expected the big collapse after a big high or whatever’s going on. You made space for yourself or you’re working with someone like a professional to hold space for you. You have proper outlets to process it.
Aside from exploding at the wrong time—and I say that with love and compassion because who hasn’t exploded at their kid in the grocery store—we’re also holding in our authentic selves. We’re not giving our loved ones and relationships our best selves because we’re contracting and hiding a part of ourselves to stay safe, to keep it together, to not metaphorically throw up no matter what. Doing that costs us authenticity. Then we wonder why so-and-so doesn’t know us. Well, we haven’t allowed ourselves to be known. We haven’t allowed ourselves to be seen. That hinders connection. It hinders relationships. It hinders repair because one never lets oneself get “out of control” and feel feelings fully. We also miss out on amazing creativity and connecting to and hearing our inner voice.
A lot of the bridge I create for women is the bridge between “here are these external symptoms of feeling like a boiling pot of water” to “what is the wisdom on the other side of that?” There’s a reason we want to do this for our bodies: it creates physiological balance. It releases anxiety, depression, stress. We’ll get into that in a second. But it’s also the bridge to hear your intuition. It’s the bridge to soul wisdom. Every single time I have someone on a session releasing a little emotion, when it’s complete, we access a deeper truth—deep soul wisdom you could never have come up with if you were just talking in talk therapy or intellectualizing. If you do this with a trained facilitator, you’re gently and masterfully guided through your emotion so you can release it in a way that allows your body to release stored trauma and process it in a soulful, intuitive way instead of just from the mind.
Wow—all these things we’re blocking ourselves from by not allowing ourselves to cry, not to mention our healing. We cannot heal what we are unwilling to feel. I know why we’re unwilling to feel it. But what would you do differently if you knew that is the path to healing? You want to heal your childhood trauma? You have to feel your childhood trauma. And it gets to feel your childhood trauma. It does not have to be huge, exhausting, devastating. A trained somatic practitioner will gently guide you through emotion and any trauma the body is storing, releasing the pressure valve, accessing soul wisdom, and starting the healing process in a sustainable, resourcing way. If you’re having explosive releases and then you’re exhausted and there’s no transformation, get curious about that. That doesn’t need to be the way.
Now we know how we’ve been conditioned not to feel, why this hurts us and damages our relationships, what’s on the other side, and how this is the bridge to healing and soul wisdom. I also want to give you a couple benefits of crying. I googled this—I kind of knew it but double checked. Crying releases oxytocin and endorphins, which ease physical and emotional pain. Those are the endorphins that make you feel good and balanced. It lowers cortisol levels—cortisol is the stress hormone. Raise your hand if you’re not stressed. Everyone’s stressed. Modern life is stressful, packed, busy, overwhelming. We need easy ways to reduce stress. Releasing this pressure valve is one of the easiest ways your body knows how to self-soothe, self-regulate, and reduce stress.
It also creates connections. I read something recently—didn’t double fact check—but it said when you are crying and being witnessed, your tear will fall very slowly because the longer it’s visible to the other person, the more empathy and compassion it builds, the more connection between two people. We were designed to be a connected, compassionate, feeling society. Humans, pre-patriarchy, understood community was vital to survival. This is why everybody feels the epidemic of loneliness. One way this plays out, for a complex web of reasons, is lack of vulnerability, lack of being witnessed, lack of witnessing others.
This is why I do women’s circles. Because witnessing, being witnessed, and witnessing each other in your humanity, vulnerability, and power is such a powerful way for your system to feel connected to another system. That feeling of belonging, that feeling of connection cannot be overstated. You can’t buy it. There’s no hack. You just have to be willing—and curious—about being in community and allowing your authentic self to be seen, knowing that tears are medicine and connection points. This is how you build authentic relationships.
Does this mean every time you get into a women’s circle or with friends you need to be crying to create connection? Absolutely not. But if you’re bubbling over with emotion and you go to be with women and you don’t feel it’s okay to share that with the circle, it might be a supportive resource to find circles where that is normal. On my group call today, a couple of women said, “I’m not usually that vulnerable, but I love doing it in the circle.” It’s not always appropriate to be vulnerable and crying in a professional networking event. Nobody’s saying go out into the modern world and start crying. However, your body physiologically needs to release your emotions—anger, sadness, fear, grief, whatever—in a sustainable, healthy, healing way. It’s your job to find the places where that is normal and actually pleasurable, resourcing, and delicious, that also create this web of community—which is probably also the thing you’ve convinced yourself you don’t get to have, but somebody else does. Authentic, connected community happens through vulnerability; via vulnerability comes authenticity. In that space, feelings happen. Humans have lots of feelings. If we’re honest and have a place where we share deeply—“How am I really? Who am I really today?”—emotions may arise.
When you’re in a well-tended container or circle where feelings don’t need to mean anything, you don’t need to intellectualize or get to the root, you know how to resource and support each other, witness and be witnessed, and then let it go and rise in your power. To me this is the most ancient and easy intelligence available. I’m always like, “Where’s the low-hanging fruit? Oh, a good cry? Yeah, I could do that.” Do I have an hour for a class? Not all the time. Sometimes crying is going to be it. Sometimes crying in community. Sometimes crying with a facilitator, guide, healer. Sometimes walking, holding yourself through this process. I’ll share my own experience: I hold myself through waves of emotion all the time now. It’s part of my life—like washing my hair, having a cry, brushing my teeth. My clients can do this too now. Eventually you’re not afraid of the emotion. You don’t feel terrified of yourself and what’s inside lurking beneath the cool, controlled surface. You understand this is a resource—physiologically supportive, with health and mental health benefits, creating community and all these things. It becomes not a big deal. It becomes part of your routine as needed. Tending to the body, accessing soul wisdom.
When I have hard questions I’m trying to get answers to, or when I feel very triggered—all my insecurity and childhood trauma stuff coming up—what do I do? I work through the emotion. I allow it to move through me. I have a ritual for it. At the end, that’s how I hear my soul. That’s how I hear the truest thing I need to hear in that moment—which is not all the thoughts swirling in my head, which is not something logical, which is not what somebody else thinks I should do. Unless you’re my coach or a deeply wise friend I connect with this way, I don’t want somebody else’s advice. I need my own inner voice. I need my own advice. That’s confusing sometimes—how do you get your own advice? You allow the emotions and sensations to move through you and you practice doing this in a healthy, resourcing way. Accessing your own somatic and soul wisdom becomes second nature. It becomes the language you speak. It’s gratifying and satisfying. Nothing makes me feel still and clear like having moved myself through a trigger or wave of emotion, gotten to the other side, listened for the deep inner wisdom, written it down, taken deep breaths, done movement, and gone about my day. I’m like, wow, I feel like a magician. I’m not playing this game. And you don’t have to either. The way you do it doesn’t have to be the way I do it. We live different lives, have different personalities, responsibilities, and gifts. We get to do it the way that makes sense for us. The story we tell ourselves is, “She can do it because X, but I can’t.” I’m letting you know: feeling your feelings is your birthright. Your body was programmed with this when you came into this world. It’s a stress release programmed into you. I can teach you to use it masterfully, gently, sustainably, as a bridge between all the thoughts, obligations, and conditioning swirling in your head and what you really want to know—what you need to solve that problem, have that conversation, keep going one more day. That is the deeply wise counsel you’re only going to get from yourself. If you know how to hold yourself through a good cry, you’ve got you. There’s nothing you can’t do. That is the vibe of the Modern Phoenix, and I want that for every single woman I meet.
If that sounds like a journey you’d like to go on, I’d be honored to support you. We don’t have to cry, but we probably will—let’s be honest. It always makes me chuckle when a woman comes in and says, “I’m not going to cry today. I’m not a crier.” I say, “That’s totally fine.” Then 20 minutes in she starts crying. “This has never happened. I don’t know why.” Considering this has happened to me about 20,000 times, I’m going to go ahead and say it’s not an accident and you’re here for a reason. Your mind knew I was the resource your body needed to make it safe and okay for you to experiment—even just 20 seconds of tearing up. Take what feels too much and make it right size for you. That’s how we work. That’s how any trauma-informed practitioner should and will work.
I would be so honored to support you in a Soul Shift Intensive. We’re no longer selling the Somatic Soul Sessions—that was just a special for January—but I do have spots for private coaching I’ll be talking about until they’re full. Your first step to explore that and see packages I haven’t advertised online yet is to book a 90-minute one-on-one with me. I’ll support you through this process and talk about what it could look like. You have a gut, an instinct, an intuition guiding you all the time. I invite you to trust it, honor it, make it normal, get curious about it, lean into it, explore it, and get to know who you truly are. I love you so much. See you in two weeks.