“They say I cry too much”

In this article, I'm going to go into a little more detail about some of the issues that I see repeated in sessions with my clients.

As I have been explaining in the first chronicles, the first session is essential to build the therapeutic relationship, to align expectations with reality, establish the rules of the sessions - schedule, therapeutic space, duration, value, appointments, among others -, explain the my role, establish therapeutic goals, and of course, understand the client's complaint and its contextualization in their personal history.

It is in this part of the explanation of the complaint that I often have clients, especially men, who confess “they told me I should come”: either because they are very angry or because they are very sad, for example. They come to the session believing that something is wrong with them, because they are expressing certain emotions.

Without going into details, a client said that he could only cry, that people said it was strange that he cried so much and that he should see a psychologist. This man had a serious and very traumatic accident at work, underwent medical procedures based on uncertainty, he finds himself in a position of not knowing what the future holds, his expectations and plans thrown to the ground... and all this happened just a 1 week ago!

Tell me, would this man laugh? He has more to cry, especially at this stage. Authentically expressing primary emotions, “adjusted” or not, is part of the grieving process and the entire therapeutic process. Later, the work can be continued with restructuring or setting new goals (if applicable), but at this time, when you are effectively in crisis, the most important thing is to be fully in touch with what we feel – to understand exactly what we have lost – and only later can we then begin to understand what we need to do to reorganize ourselves.

Our emotions signal whether or not our needs are being met. When in full contact with our emotions, we have the opportunity to decide how best to satisfy them.