For Some, a Question of When the Tears Will End

Leah Sydney’s tears started about 5:55 Tuesday morning just after she was awakened by a phone call from her friend Robin Rose in New York. On opposite coasts, the friends, still on the phone, watched television together and saw the second plane strike the World Trade Center. Born and raised in Manhattan, Sydney was familiar with the building, where her late father had worked. “I said, ‘That’s it. It’s over for all those people.’ I went into the bathroom and cried. I was hysterical,” she said.

Sydney, a writer who has lived in Los Angeles for a year and a half, wept again the next day at the sight of flickering candles at an impromptu Sunset Boulevard ceremony; at the sound of a lone trumpet playing “America the Beautiful”; and again with her congregation at temple services. A week later, she continues to cry at recurring thoughts of her father, and of the ordinary people she knew who rode the trains every workday to those towers, just to pay the rent, feed their families.

So far, she said, the crying hasn’t produced a catharsis. “It feels like it’s never going to end.”

For some, what Shakespeare called “drops of sorrow” have turned into flash floods of overwhelming grief. A woman wakes up crying at her dream. Another sobs in the office after opening an e-mail with an image of an eagle, a tear falling from its eye. Children cry in their classrooms.

Assistance workers cry with exhaustion; those who previously helped at the Oklahoma City bombing shed tears of empathy.

Though there appear to be several schools of thought about our need to cry, mental health counselors agree that crying is a primitive method of expression, a natural response to tragedy and can be a path to mental and physical healing. “Sometimes it’s the only thing to do,” said New Haven, Conn., psychologist Barry Schlosser. At the same time, he said, “Sometimes we are too stunned to cry.”

One theory is that unconsciously, crying serves adults in the same way it did when they were infants--as a means of summoning caretakers to comfort them in times of uncertainty and bring relief and security. More than simply expressing grief, crying is a coping mechanism that combines the wish to be taken care of and the need for physiological relief, said Dr. William Sykes, a psychiatrist in New Rochelle, N.Y.

One of his patients this week was unable to cry, although he kept envisioning himself trapped in a room on a big floor in a tall building. The man had a cell phone and thought he should call someone. “His problem was there was nobody he wanted to call,” Sykes said. “I believe the reason he didn’t cry is that he doesn’t believe there is a caretaker who can make it right.”

Whether and how much one cries depends on several factors, including a person’s mental and physical state, past experiences, family and cultural training, and personality, the counselors said.

“The training most of us had is that strong people don’t cry, that we should hold back those feelings, not upset the children,” said Dr. Bill Callahan, president of the Orange County Psychiatric Society.

Those who don’t cry often need to maintain a sense of control--a widespread concern for many in the face of the massive and unprecedented terrorist attack.

Donna Hayden, a property management assistant in Costa Mesa, said she was walking her dog when she stopped to talk with the owners of a spaniel, decorated with a red, white and blue kerchief. “I said, ‘He’s an All-American. My dog’s British, so he’s not wearing anything.’ They said, ‘Did you know this morning England used American flags in its ceremonies? They’ve never done that before.’

“I was wiping my nose at that time, a proud kind of crying. But it felt really edgy. Like I could keep on crying if I wanted to,” she said.

Some researchers say crying can have some health benefits, such as easing muscle tension, and may eliminate toxins created by stress. “The task is to mobilize and let out as much grief as we can,” Callahan said. “if you don’t want to be sobbing in the workplace, fine. I would caution people against doing it alone by themselves,” he said. “The whole institution of the funeral is to get together and grieve together and to honor the deceased in a social ritual.”

Those who deny their tears can wind up with somatic symptoms, like headaches, dry mouth, fatigue or nausea. “It’s likely that your immune system is also compromised, so you’re open to all kinds of physical problems,” said Eric Dlugokinski, a retired professor of psychology at the University of Oklahoma who worked with survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing of the federal building. “On a psychological level, you’re also open to depression, outbursts, irritability and a variety of other kinds of difficulties.”

However, crying alone is not enough, however, he said. People need to put their grief into words, through conversations, journal entries or letters. While weeping can bring short-term relief, it might not provide a long-term, cognitive framework for grieving, he said.

Our most primitive and automatic emotional responses are located in our brain’s limbic system, he said. Words activate more sophisticated thoughts in the frontal lobe. “What you do is develop a connection between the frontal lobe and the limbic system over a course of time so that the primitive arousal state is modulated by the frontal lobe,” he said.

Though some counselors caution against applying any formulas to such an idiosyncratic phenomenon, Dlugokinski said a four-step process is helpful in coping with any emotional state:

* Identify and recognize the feeling.

* Pause, relax and gain composure.

* Think about ways to express the feeling that doesn’t hurt you or others.

* Express it.

By definition, terrorism is a psychological event, said the counselors, who acknowledge the road to healing will be long and arduous for many. Even those like Sydney who are able to cry sometimes feel they can’t ever cry enough.

She hasn’t lost her first feeling of being “sucker-punched in the heart.” She said, “I don’t know when it will go away.”