If you’ve been listening to the podcast regularly, you’ll probably know that learning to cry has been one of my goals over the last year. I had some luck crying at the Nonviolent Communication retreat I did last year, but it still seemed like I had more to learn. So when I noticed the hashtag #sobsquad making the rounds on Twitter over the last few months, I started to get curious.
This new sobbing trend was sparked by the work of Dr. Douglas Tataryn, a clinical psychologist from the University of Manitoba. He led a 2-day workshop here in Toronto this past weekend and I was lucky enough to attend (it was sold out when I first heard about it).
Doug has developed what he calls the Bio-Emotive Framework, including a process for emotional release under the acronym NEDERA (Notice, Experience, Differentiate, Express, Resonate, Act). The heart of it is a series of 9 “core feelings” (NVC would argue they are beliefs, but that’s another discussion altogether) which are essentially phrases that help stimulate emotional release, aka sobbing. You’ll notice that many of the phrases relate to shame (which isn’t surprising):
- “I feel lost”
- “I feel alone”
- “I feel bad”
- “I feel inadequate”
- “I feel empty”
- “I feel helpless”
- “I feel hopeless”
- “I feel insignificant”
- “I feel worthless”
Though it sounds simplistic, I was surprised by how rapidly and effectively just auditioning these key phrases was at stimulating emotion, not to mention the power of being in a safe space where uninhibited sobbing was encouraged. It was a revolutionary experience for me and I was amazed and impressed that on the second day of the workshop I actually sobbed in front of a total stranger in a room full of people!
The whole experience upended my notions of how emotions and thoughts work. As I said on Twitter afterwards:
I used to think: changing my thoughts changed my feelings. It worked to a degree. But after (re)learning how to cry at @DougTataryn’s workshop this weekend, I started to see that it might work even better the other way around, processing my feelings changes my thoughts. #sobsquad
— Discomfortable (@discomfrtble) January 21, 2020
I even made my own meme out of it:
Corrections: Doug’s wife and co-facilitator is Darlene Tataryn, not Debra (my apologies Darlene!) and the meditation group that organized the workshop is the Consciousness Explorers Club (not “Conscious Explorers Club”).
