With anxiety, depression and a whole host of mental health challenges plaguing so many, any helpful tool is worth sharing. But is crying a helpful tool? Does expressing pent-up emotions have value? In today’s share-it-all culture, one might wonder if we have gone too far …

Don’t Hold Back

Let’s look at one of our greatest heroes, Joseph. Mistreated by his brothers, Joseph endured immense pain and emotional struggle.

This came to the fore when his brothers traveled to Egypt to purchase food from him. For a while he kept his emotions in check. Then, unable to restrain himself, he went to a side room to weep. Only after he had released his overwhelming feelings did he return to them.

Scripture twice uses the word mitapek, “restrain,” regarding Joseph’s attempts to keep his emotion in check.

Interestingly, the same word appears in a fascinating exchange between the Rebbe and a yeshiva student.

This student had lived through his fair share of tragedy. His father had been arrested by the Soviet secret police for the “crime” of teaching Torah and was never seen again. After the family miraculously managed to escape the Soviet Union, he watched in horror as his mother was killed by a panicked Czechoslovakian soldier.

If anyone had reason to cry, it was him.

But he lived at a time when crying was seen as unbecoming and weak, and he tried his hardest to restrain himself.

He once wrote a letter to the Rebbe, confiding how he often felt the urge to cry but held back (umitapek).

The Rebbe’s reply was simple. He crossed out the word umitapek. With a single stroke of his pencil, the Rebbe was telling him that there is no reason not to cry.

Our losses must be acknowledged and mourned before we are able to pick up the pieces and find reason to rejoice.

Find Someone to Cry With

We read in proverbs, “A worry in the heart of man, yaschena.”1

The sages understand this word in two (apparently opposite) ways:

It can either be related to the word sichah, “speech,” meaning that we should give voice to our worries and share our feelings. Alternatively, it can also mean to dismiss from mind, telling us to brush off those feelings and move on.

Interestingly, the Tzemach Tzedek2 adds that we should be sure to express our worries to someone who cares for us and will share our pain.

Meaning, talking it out (which includes crying it out) is incredibly powerful and healing when done with someone who will hold space for you without judgment.

How does the release of a good cry or heart-to-heart help so much?

The Too-Big Couch

In a recent conversation, Zev Lamm, a marriage counselor and LCSW, shared a transformative analogy:

Imagine your problem is like a large couch in an average-sized room. The couch is taking up a large part, perhaps even the majority of the room. Now, imagine you can expand the room. The couch doesn’t get any smaller, but it no longer takes up as much of the space. And the more you keep expanding the room, the less room it will take up.

All of us struggle with specific fears or challenges that are not likely, even with abundant therapy and work, to get better. That said, while our problems cannot always be made smaller, we all have the ability to make our lives bigger.

When we cry it out, mourn our losses, acknowledge their existence and effect on us, we are growing our room and expanding ourselves beyond the pain that we experience.

What else does it look like to make your room bigger? For those who are spiritual, it may look like “let go and let G‑d” — throwing themselves and their souls into G‑d’s loving hands and letting Him in. If our world is limited to the scope of our understanding, then our “room” can only be so big. If we allow G‑d and His infinity into our world, then our world becomes a G‑d-sized world and our problems take up far less space.

In other cases, it may look like expanding your personal and psychological world and stretching those mental nerves with exercises, new projects, new dreams. Consider learning a new instrument or field of Torah study, or doing volunteer work at a hospital or homeless shelter. Reach out to a friend who may need a pick-me-up. It really doesn’t matter what you choose; if it expands your world, it will reduce the impact of the problem.

I propose that crying acknowledges the feelings, allows them to exit, helps you grieve the loss of what could have been, and then allows the room to get bigger and the problem to take up less space.

While sharing her story of “experience, strength and hope,” a woman announced to those at her recovery meeting, “I am a cryer. To all you do-gooders out there who will want to bring me tissues, let me say the following: When I cry, I see it as G‑d trying to get in or G‑d trying to get out. Either way, I don’t want to interfere with the process.”

The instruction of the Rebbe and the message to those who struggle to let that cry out: Allow the grief to happen. When you do so, you will have allowed your room to grow and your problems will start to feel smaller.