When Is It Acceptable to Cry? What Emotional Suppression Is Really Costing You

What the Body Holds When the Mind Won't Allow It

What Society Considers Acceptable Grief

At a funeral. Tears of joy at your child's birth. At a wedding. End of a sad movie. Or your underdog team finally winning a championship.

That's the list. That's what our culture gave us.

But here's the real question - what happens to the tears we never shed?

For most of my life - as a man - that list felt even shorter.

The Emotions We Were Never Given Permission to Feel

My mother's passing taught me something about grief. I feel nobody loves me more than my mom. That unconditional love provided me so much comfort throughout my life. I think about her every single day. I miss her every single day. But it doesn't weigh heavy on me the way you might expect - and I think it's because I was allowed to grieve. I cried my eyes out. Society gave me permission. And somehow, that permission made it possible to carry her with me without being crushed by her absence.

Not everything gets that permission.

When my son was diagnosed with autism, I put on a tough face and went to work. I did everything I could to get him help, to understand, to navigate a world that wasn't built for him or for us. There was no time to feel the sadness of knowing your child will not have the same childhood, the same opportunities, the same life that most will have.

You don't cry. You cope. You push. You perform.

And then you wonder why some mornings you wake up and something is just off. Not sad exactly. Not angry exactly. Just - wrong. Grumpy with no logical explanation. The opposite of your usual self. Mean in a way you don't recognize and can't explain. You look at your life and it's objectively good. Beautiful even.

And still. Something underneath.

When Life Looks Beautiful But Something Feels Off

I live on a small beautiful tropical island. I do work I am genuinely passionate about. I have a wonderful wife who shares my values and has a ridiculous sense of humor like me - or at least gets it. I wake up most mornings looking forward to the day ahead.

Freediving gave me so much of this. The joy. The community. The identity. The healing that happened slowly and then all at once.

But there was still something underneath that freediving reached but didn't fully move.

What Conscious Connected Breathwork Unlocked

About two years ago I was introduced to Conscious Connected Breathwork.

One session showed me the potential. Although I did not cry my eyes out like some people did in that room that evening, something shifted in a way that I knew this was the right direction.

Earlier this year I attended a breathwork facilitator training. We had sessions almost every day. At first nothing dramatic happened for me - I watched classmates around me have big cathartic moments while something in me was stirring but hadn't found its way out yet.

My entire body was vibrating.

After four or five sessions it came.

A cry that had been waiting to come out for many decades.

And in other sessions - uncontrollable laughter that lasted fifteen minutes. Joy and grief living in the same body, taking turns.

Not every session had a dramatic moment. But every single one left me with more clarity than I went in with. Because the breathwork was reaching what the mind had carefully, quietly protected for years. The things we suppress don't disappear. They wait. Without language. In the body. And it doesn't just quietly sit there dormant - it wreaks havoc, often in subtle ways. So subtle we just think it's our true self.

That wasn't the end. I kept going. Session after session. Each one peeling back another layer. Some dramatic. Some quiet. All of them necessary.

After those sessions I felt lighter. A heaviness lifted that I had stopped noticing I was carrying.

It may take a lifetime to get it all out. And that's okay - because I know I am on the right path now.

The Breathwork Retreat

Why am I telling you this?

Because I believe one of the most insidious things any of us can carry is the weight of everything we were never given permission to put down.

In September I am holding a Conscious Connected Breathwork retreat. Facilitated alongside someone I deeply trust. For people who are ready to create the conditions for something to move.

No promises about what will happen. These things are different for everyone. But if you have ever sat with a heaviness that has no name, a cry that won't come, or a life that looks right from the outside while something inside feels quietly off -

This might be for you.

Check out the details of the retreat here.