When you grow up, you don’t remember much about your childhood, but by observing our children, grandchildren, and nephews, we get an idea of how we spent our early years. We’ve noticed that when you’re a baby, you cry, tremble, and even throw tantrums.
A mother can distinguish whether her baby is crying out of anger, sadness, joy, or fear.
Normally, a baby cries until they are exhausted or until their basic needs are met. They cry to release their emotions, and this process works well when you’re little.
Have you experienced this firsthand? With your children or your nephews?
A young child, when they fall and get hurt, cries bitterly—this is a survival mechanism. And soon, you’ll see them playing again as if nothing happened. The same thing applies to their tantrums: they flail their arms and legs furiously, sometimes even hitting their mother, but after a while, once they get her attention, they recover, stabilize, and go back to playing as if nothing ever happened.
What happens as they grow up?
Adults are no longer willing to allow these behaviors to continue. They get tired of the child’s emotional release, so the child has to learn to hold back their tears, tantrums, and tremors. They have to be “grown-up,” to start experiencing emotions without frequently releasing them. And so, the disorders of adult life begin.
All our lives, we are taught to repress our emotions… and most, if not all adults, eventually have to relearn how to release them. We become so anxious, angry, frustrated, or depressed that we find ourselves in need of professional help.
And with a psychologist, we are finally given “permission” to feel the anger that has been forbidden for years and to talk about it. We are allowed to feel, to express the fears and sadness that, for so long, have brought us shame and a sense of prohibition. We learn once again how to handle emotional release, something we were born with.
Normally, allowing ourselves to release emotions in a healthy way is a huge relief. Not only can we release the sadness, fears, and anger of our daily lives, but we are also letting go of childhood and adolescent traumas, wounds, and negative messages. In adulthood, we need more patience with our emotions as we release them. It is a long process, not as quick as it was in childhood.
Alexander Lowen, an American psychoanalyst, spoke about this reality:
“Look at a baby. When they are hungry, fall, get hurt, feel frustrated, or lonely, they cry… bitterly, with sobs. As a self-soothing mechanism, when the painful situation is over, they stop crying, return to a state of peace, and begin playing again.”
Over time, babies learn not to cry. They hear phrases like:
“Don’t cry, or I’ll give you a reason to cry.”
“You’re a big kid now, stop crying.”
And sometimes even worse insults.
So, when we reach adulthood, we no longer see any valid reason to cry.
The truth is, crying intensely, with sobs, releases tension from the body, clears the mind of negative thoughts, and relieves the heart of pain. It doesn’t just free us from daily stress but also has the power to release years of sadness and tension. Humans were created this way; we were born with this escape valve.
So, we can allow ourselves to cry—alone or with someone else. We will feel a great sense of relief. Some people fear crying because they think they’ll never stop. But they will! The body relaxes, the mind clears, and the heart heals. Let’s cry with hope and courage!
(Alexander Lowen, Bioenergetic Exercises, location 495)
How can we learn to release emotions again?
The first step is giving ourselves permission. It is okay to cry. This involves rejecting the prohibitions of our parents and grandparents, learning to disobey their unhealthy messages.
A crucial step is surrounding ourselves with people who allow us to cry, tremble, and express anger. But the most important thing is our own permission, which is often the hardest to give.
Some people say they can’t cry. Young children learn to hold back their tears by repressing their breathing.
By starting to breathe deeply in moments of sadness, we can allow tears, sobs, and ultimately, relief.
We must always remember that tears are not sadness but rather the release of sadness. If we don’t release our sadness, we end up with depression. Sometimes, we fear that if we start crying, we will never stop. That’s why we must release our fear of crying. Yes, we will be able to stop.
The same applies to fear. Some people worry about cold sweats in their hands, thinking it signals a disorder. In reality, cold sweat is a natural response of the body to release fear—along with trembling and laughter.
When we start to tremble, we get scared because it feels out of our control, but in reality, we are simply releasing fear. If we don’t release our fear, we end up with anxiety. So, we can give ourselves permission to tremble, sweat, and laugh. This way, we can face life’s challenges with more courage.
What about anger?
In many situations, expressing anger is not socially acceptable, especially for women. Many women cry instead of expressing anger.
But this type of release can also be recovered. Hitting a pillow, the bed, writing or drawing our anger—these are ways to release anger without hurting anyone. Karate exercises are effective as well.
After releasing anger, it becomes easier to decide what actions we can take in response to a particular situation.
There are other ways our body naturally releases anger, such as hot sweat and laughter. Let’s remember that a tantrum is not anger itself—it is the release of anger.
Relearning how to reconcile with our basic emotions
As adults, we must relearn how to reconnect with our emotions. Emotional release is our friend. We can talk to our emotions, draw them, sing them, or dance them, depending on our inspiration at the moment. We can recognize emotional release in sports, games, and exercise. Releasing emotions is healthy. We must reintegrate this into our lives.
Emotions also provide clues about what needs healing in our lives. When we feel a strong emotion in a situation that doesn’t seem to warrant it, it may indicate that a past memory is resurfacing.
We can ask ourselves:
“When did something similar happen in my childhood or adolescence?”
“Does this person remind me of someone or something from my past that hurt me?”
The first step in healing is recognizing the event or words that hurt us. Talking about these experiences with someone we trust, like a therapist, helps us reconcile with the original trauma, acknowledge its impact, release it, and move forward.
We need to learn to change our thinking and develop new ways of expressing ourselves. Often, we struggle so much to express our emotions that we feel the urge to explode. But with enough emotional release, we can communicate our feelings more calmly and with less risk of hurting others.
Being able to release emotions also awakens our compassion for others and invites their compassion toward us. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable is scary, but it can strengthen human relationships.
So, we can take inspiration from babies in our own lives: cry when we’re sad, tremble when we’re afraid, and release our anger in a healthy way when we’re upset.
As adults, we can do this in the ways we choose. Beneath anger, sadness, and fear, we will find sources of peace, joy, and love that give us an immense capacity to enjoy life and handle any situation with grace.