Sally Scott Creed, a Licensed Professional Counselor who recently released the book, “For Crying Out Loud, The Benefit of Emotional Tears and the Movies That Bring Them On” joins Discover Lafayette to talk about why tears are necessary for emotional health. Her book has been in the making since 1998 when she had an epiphany about the role of tears in human emotional health. Sally Creed discovered that "letting out tears is a great way to release hurt, sadness, or any intense feeling and help us stay balanced."
Sally Creed's book, "For Crying Out Loud," provides a teaching tool as to (1) Why tears are necessary; (2) Why you need to allow your emotional tears to flow; (3) The best way to release your tears; and (4) A listing of 150 movies by ten categories (abandonment, childhood/family issues, grief and loss, tragedy and trauma, etc.) to help bring on the tears. The book is available on Amazon, Kindle, Walmart, and Barnes and Noble.
In practice for over thirty years, Sally specializes in play therapy with children as young as two years of age. She is also experienced in parenting issues, individual therapy for adolescents and adults, and grief and trauma issues.
As a young woman, Sally had always believed that people who cried were weak. But at a retirement party for a beloved professor in her department, she was the only one who wasn't crying at the thought of losing this mentor. A supervisor confronted her and spoke of the importance of tears and dealing with life's issues. Sally began to realize that she had used humor as a defense mechanism. And she was not alone; many people keep their emotions hidden by being the 'jokester' or are quiet and reserved, or rude and hateful toward others.
Sally's practice originally revolved around adult clients. But when she started working with children, her work was revolutionized as she witnessed the raw honesty of children. Infants cry when they experience pain or frustration as it's the only way they can express themselves. At some point, young ones learn to hold in their feelings or risk being labeled a crybaby. Sally says, "We are all grown children. And I learned that most people's problems started when they were little. When you understand how children are taught to stuff their feelings and not talk about them, you realize that most adults you work with have had bad things happen to them when they were children. We all wear masks."
Today, Sally Creed shares that "the saddest thing to me is that most adults have forgotten how to cry, or they do their best to suppress it, and the only emotion they will allow to surface is anger. I believe that expressing emotions through tears is a crucial part of our existence and helps us in not only emotional ways but also physical ways as well."
And science backs up Sally's professional opinion. The ability to cry emotionally is what separates the human race from the animal kingdom. Sally credits author William Frey and his book "Crying: The Mystery of Tears" for her understanding of the benefits of emotional tears. Frey did a study on two types of tears, irritant and emotional, and explained that while both animals and humans constantly produce a fluid called 'basal' or 'continuous' tears to keep the surface of the eye moist and prevent infection, only human emotional tears release a substance called manganese which has been implicated in mood alterations. Manganese is thirty times greater in tears than in blood serum. Sally says that "The reason people feel better after crying is that they may be removing chemicals that build up in their bodies during emotional stress. And sadly, as men do not cry as often as women, they develop many more stress-related diseases, and statistically, die earlier than women.