I mentioned in another thread that one time when I started crying during a therapy session, my husband thought I was in crisis and needed intervention. Maybe even a psych eval for hospitalization. He looked at my therapist like, "Shouldn't you be doing something?" My (male) therapist had to explain to him that ALL I was doing was expressing my feelings, and that's normal. People cry in his office all the time. My husband was genuinely surprised to hear this. He freely admits he can't tell the difference between a strong display of emotion and a mental health episode. Not just with me. With anybody.

The trouble is, it isn't only him.

I've seen it often. Maybe someone is at the bottom of their addiction, is starting recovery, and is sorry for the harm they've caused. Maybe an elderly person just buried a spouse. Or maybe it's not even something that extreme. Maybe someone's dog got run over. They're sad. I sit next to them. They talk. I listen and ask questions. They start to cry. Then an onlooker, possibly someone closer to them than I am, says something akin to, "Nice going, genius. I spent all afternoon yesterday trying to get them to *stop* crying, and now you've got them started again."

Then there are those "funny" tricks people use to get a small child to stop crying. My grandfather used to tell them, "Now it's my turn to cry," and start wailing. Which, of course, would look so ridiculous, the kid would stop crying and stare at him. He'd laugh and say, "It works every time."

I saw some comic strip where a toddler's parents had some kind of device rigged to make a noise every time their child cried. I can't remember what it was. Maybe a siren, like the police were coming. This was effectively making the child afraid to cry. It was supposed to be funny.

Somewhere in my history, my two younger brothers were both in bed with the flu. They were around seven and six years old. My mother's then-boyfriend told them he'd give them a penicillin shot if they kept crying. I was only eight years old myself. I didn't know he couldn't legally give them a penicillin injection without a prescription and a medical license, or that antibiotics don't work on viruses, or anything like that. My only thought was, "Medicine will help them feel better." So I found him and told him the boys were crying again, and maybe they need that shot. He glared at me the way he'd glare at a busybody sister ratting out her brothers to get them in trouble. "I have a shot for tattletales too!" So his "I'll give you a shot if you keep crying" wasn't about offering medicine to help them feel better. It was a scare tactic to stop their crying.

What disturbs me most about all of these is that the ENTIRE goal here seems to be to stop the crying. Never mind thee underlying cause. All that matters is getting the person to put on a happy face and not cry, mission accomplished. As long as there is no crying, there is no problem. Right?

What are your thoughts?