{"id":517,"date":"2009-02-22T18:06:37","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T22:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/?p=517"},"modified":"2009-02-22T18:06:37","modified_gmt":"2009-02-22T22:06:37","slug":"why-cry-part-one-are-women-better-at-crying-than-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/why-cry-part-one-are-women-better-at-crying-than-men\/","title":{"rendered":"“WHY CRY?” PART ONE: ARE WOMEN BETTER AT CRYING THAN MEN?"},"content":{"rendered":"
TAKING TEARS SERIOUSLY: WOMEN CRY FIVE TIMES AS OFTEN AS MEN!
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\nWilliam Frey, in his book Crying<\/em>,\u00a0 states research which found that women cry five times as often as men. Certainly, there is a difference, and perhaps a skill, worth exploring here, if we take the value of tears and crying in a positive way.<\/span>
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\nTEARS OF WONDER\/JOY, BEING TOUCHED AND BEING MOVED, AS POSITIVE, TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES
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\nIn a recent discussion about the many photos of “tears of joy” throughout the world which appeared in conjunction with Obama’s inauguration, I started a discussion about such “tears of joy,” “tears of ‘being touched’ and ‘being moved’ on The Focusing Discussion e-list (join at www.focusing.org<\/a> under Felt Communities and read the archives for November\/December, 2008 —). Fellow list members came back with some wonderful articles and multi-media on the positive place of tears.
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\nI have had an ongoing debate with Eugene Gendlin, creator of Focusing<\/a>, and others about the place and value of tears in change processes using Focusing and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy<\/a>.
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\nGendlin’s position is that some tears are simply repetitive, “sheer” emotion, and change will not happen unless the Focuser pays attention to the wider, deeper, “felt sensing” under the tears: “What are these tears about for me?” and pausing for a “felt sense” of “the whole thing” to form.
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\nI agree with Gendlin about this, tears and crying that seem repetitive, stuck, often cried from a helpless, “victim” stance.
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\nBut there is another kind of tears and crying which I experience as deeply transformative, as part of Gendlin’s “felt shift,” the crux of change within the Focusing model. I call these tears “cathartic unfolding”: tears and crying accompanying a deep shifting and opening and “carrying forward” at the bodily level. I experience these kind of “tearful felt shifts” as among the deepest in terms of true, lasting transformation of the psyche.
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\nGendlin tends to say, “Yes, receive these tears, value them, but they are a ‘side product,’ not an essential aspect of the ‘felt shift’ through Focusing.” I agree that ALL “felt shifts” do not have to include tears, in fact, most do not. But I think I disagree with Gendlin and others on what I see as the ADDITIONAL significance of felt-shifts accompanied by “cathartic unfolding.”
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\nI also see more subtle “tearing up,” the slight sheen of tears in the eye, as an indication of places of deep meaning. So, when being a Listener for a Focuser, or a Focusing-Oriented Therapist, I am likely to ask the Focuser if it would make sense to stop and “sense into” the place of tears, as a pathway to profound personal meanings.
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\nI have approached this difference with Gendlin as a difference between “masculine” and “feminine” in the Jungian sense, as a difference between being a strong Thinker (T) and a strong Feeler (F) on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). On the MBTI, 60-70% of men score as Thinkers, leaving 30-40% male Feelers, and vice versa for women, 60-70% Feelers but also 30-40% Thinkers. So, there are many men for whom tears come easily, and many women who are not so close to their tears. See my articles, “Jung, MBTI, and Experiential Theory,”<\/a>\u00a0“The Body As A Source Of Knowledge,”<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0and “Existential Phenomenology: A Philosophy Articulating Feminine Experience,” <\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
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Crying can be seen as a skill, and one at which women excel! Tears of being touched and moved, of wonder\/joy and other transformational experiences are looked at through gender, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and existential philosophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17,3,4,112],"tags":[608,447,553,482,610,160,744,737,149,757,74,609,607],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cefocusing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}