Understanding Why An Emotional Block Might Be Preventing You From Crying

Last updated on September 18, 2026.

If you have ever felt like your tears of sadness are "stuck," you know the frustration of experiencing an emotional block. Professionally known as emotional numbing, this psychological phenomenon occurs when your nervous system becomes overwhelmed and enters a self-protective "freeze" response.

A gentle shift in a calm system can create an expanding wave of healing. Just like water, a frozen or blocked nervous system can softly thaw and return to its natural flow.

While you might feel the intense physical pressure of a lump in your throat, your subconscious mind perceives crying as a potential threat to your emotional survival and safety. In trauma-informed care, this defensive freeze state is recognized as a primary trauma response.

Why Can't I Cry? 4 Root Causes of Emotional Numbing

When tears feel physically inaccessible, it is rarely a sign of being "heartless." Instead, it indicates that your mind and body are actively protecting you. Here are the primary reasons your emotional release may be blocked:

1. Nervous System Freeze Response (Dorsal Vagal Shutdown)

When you experience prolonged stress or intense trauma, your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) can become overloaded. Instead of triggering a classic fight-or-flight reaction, your body defaults to an evolutionary survival mechanism called dissociation or a dorsal vagal shutdown. Your brain automatically reduces the intensity of your emotions to protect you from psychological flooding. This response acts like a biological circuit breaker, temporarily cutting off power to your emotional expression.

2. Emotional Exhaustion and Burnout

Crying is an active biological process that requires significant metabolic and emotional energy. If you have been forced to "hold it together" through chronic stress for months or years, your emotional reserves can become utterly depleted. The underlying sadness remains, but your body lacks the physiological stamina required to initiate a physical release.

3. Unconscious Conditioning and Psychological Safety Walls

Childhood environments heavily dictate how we process adult emotions. If you grew up in a household where crying was punished, shamed, or dismissed, your brain learned to suppress tears as a safety measure. Messages dictating that you must be fiercely "independent" force the psyche to power through pain. Over time, this chronic suppression leaves no room for your nervous system to soften, pause, and safely feel.

4. Mental Health Conditions and Clinical Depression

While clinical depression is universally associated with profound sadness, it frequently manifests as emotional blunting or anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure or deep emotion). This state leaves your affect feeling entirely "flat," rendering tears temporarily inaccessible.

Traditional Talk Therapy vs. Experiential Therapy for Trauma

You cannot force an emotional release. Putting immense pressure on yourself to cry causes the nervous system to tighten defensively. To release pent-up emotions, your body must first register absolute safety.

When dealing with deeply held, "stuck" emotions, traditional talk therapy (a "top-down" approach) can become too much of an intellectualized process. While you may gain brilliant cognitive insight into your problems, your body stays stuck in a freeze state, leaving you trapped in your head without an emotional release.

To process somatic trauma and unblock emotions, specialists utilize mind-body oriented modalities known as Experiential Therapies (see my article: Why is Experiential Therapy More Effective Than Traditional Talk Therapy to Work Through Trauma?).

Top Experiential Therapies to Release Blocked Emotions

• Somatic Experiencing (SE): Developed by Dr. Peter Levine, SE views emotional numbness as trapped survival energy from past trauma. Instead of focusing solely on the narrative story, an SE therapist helps you slow down and track subtle physical sensations like warmth, tingling, or tightness. Through a gentle pacing process called "titration," your nervous system thaws out of its freeze response without becoming overwhelmed (see my article: Somatic Experiencing: A Mind-Body Oriented Therapy).
• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): Though widely recognized for Bilateral Stimulation (like side-to-side eye movements or using tappers), EMDR is deeply rooted in how the body stores distressing memories. During processing, you focus on the physical feeling of numbness in the body alongside a rhythmic tactile or visual stimulus. This assists the brain in processing stuck emotional information, eventually leading to a somatic discharge—such as crying or a deep sense of physical relief (see my article: EMDR Therapy and the Brain).
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) Parts Work: In IFS, an inability to cry is viewed as an intelligent protective strategy rather than a broken system. This freeze response is respected as a protective "part" shielding you from overwhelming grief or fear. Rather than trying to eliminate the symptom, an IFS therapist uses a process called "unblending" to help you step back from the numbness, access your compassionate Core Self, and safely heal the underlying emotional wound (see my article: IFS Therapy is a Gentle Evidence-Based Therapy For Trauma)
• Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP): AEDP focuses heavily on "undoing aloneness" through an explicitly safe, warm, and collaborative relationship with the therapist. By tracking moment-to-moment somatic cues (such as a tight jaw or shallow breathing), the therapist helps you stay anchored within your "window of tolerance." Sharing the emotional burden allows the defensive numbing to safely drop away, facilitating a healthy emotional discharge (see my article: What is AEDP - Part 1 and Part 2).

The Power of an Integrative, Bottom-Up Approach to Healing

When a trauma specialist integrates modalities like EMDR, IFS, AEDP, and Somatic Experiencing, they are practicing a comprehensive, bottom up approach to healing.

Traditional psychotherapy relies on a "top-down" framework, targeting the logical, thinking brain first. However, trauma, chronic anxiety, and severe emotional stress are primarily stored in lower brain regions (like the amygdala) and the autonomic nervous system—areas that rational thoughts cannot easily reach.

By targeting how trauma is physically held in the nervous system, an integrative experiential approach builds a complete healing plan that simultaneously addresses the cognitive, emotional, relational, and physical layers of your well-being. If you are struggling with unresolved emotional blocks, seeking an experiential trauma therapist can provide the safe, embodied path needed to thaw your system and safely reclaim your emotions.

Take the Next Step Toward Healing

If you are tired of living with a frozen or numbed nervous system, you do not have to navigate the thawing process alone. Releasing deeply held emotional blocks requires a safe, relational environment tailored to your body's unique pacing.

I offer specialized, integrative "bottom-up" trauma therapy to help you safely access and process stuck emotions. 

My private practice is centrally located in New York City's Greenwich Village/Chelsea neighborhood (10011), providing a confidential and grounding space for somatic healing. In-person and virtual sessions are available. I also offer online therapy.

To learn more about my approach, visit my website at Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

I offer a complimentary 15 minute phone call before setting up an appointment.

Call Me at (917) 742-2624 during standard business hours or email me. 

Let's work together to restore your system’s natural flow.

How Does Somatic Experiencing Heal Trauma?

As a psychotherapist who specializes in helping clients to overcome trauma, I have been using Somatic Experiencing (SE) regularly for 15 years and I have found it to be a highly effective therapy to heal trauma (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

Somatic Experiencing Can Heal Trauma

How Does Somatic Experiencing Heal Trauma?

Somatic Experiencing, which is an experiential therapy, helps to shift the body's autonomic physical responses by allowing clients to process and discharge "stuck" energy associated with trauma's fight, flight and freeze responses (see my article: Somatic Experiencing: A Mind-Body Oriented Therapy For Overcoming Trauma).

Examples of this include changes in heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, breathing, which are all part of the body's autonomic response system.

"Stuck" or "trapped" energy means the body's instinctive survival response (flight, flight, freeze) to a dangerous event doesn't complete, which leaves excess energy and heightened nervous system arousal stuck in the body. 

This unresolved survival energy can take the form of ongoing health and mental health problems including (but not limited to):

• chronic pain

• anxiety

• emotional numbing 

• muscle tension

• fatigue

• hypervigilance 

• problems with self regulation

Changes in SE are often subtle responses like feeling warmth, tingling or vibrations which indicate the release of trapped trauma-related energy.

A Somatic Experiencing therapist helps to guide clients to notice and track these felt sensations (see my article: What is the Felt Sense?).

Somatic Experiencing therapists also use pendulation to help clients shift their awareness from challenging emotions to a sense of calm so they can gradually process and integrate traumatic experiences (see my article: Coping With Emotional Distress By Using Pendulation in SE).

Understanding interoceptive and proprioceptive sensations is also part of the skill building clients learns in SE.

Interoceptive sensations are the sensations within your body, like the sensations mentioned above: heart beating, muscles tensing or feeling hungry or thirsty. As part of a traumatic experience, these sensations can become hyperactivated which leads to constant anxiety or discomfort.

Proprioceptive sensations is your body's sense of where its different parts are in space and how they are moving. Trauma can disrupt proprioceptive sensations which can make you feel disconnected from certain parts of your body.

SE can change these trauma-related disruptions to restore the natural rhythms of your nervous system that became dysregulated by the trauma.  

Along the way, you learn embodied awareness so you feel more connected to your body and bodily sensations instead of feeling overwhelmed by them. This can lead to the transformation of intense and distressing sensations to a greater sense of well-being and safety.

What Are the Benefits of Somatic Experiencing?

As an experiential therapyp, Somatic Experiencing integrates body awareness into the therapeutic process which makes it unique compared to other non-experiential therapies like regular talk therapy (see my article: Why is Experiential Therapy More Effective Than Regular Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma?).

Somatic Experiencing Can Heal Trauma

As mentioned above, Somatic Experiencing can help to release trauma which can bring the body back into a regulated state.

Somatic Experiencing can be used as a primary therapy or it can be integrated with other forms of experiential therapy including:

• EMDR

• AEDP

• Hypnotherapy

• Parts Work Therapy, like IFS and Ego States Therapy 

    See my article: Integrating EMDR and Somatic Experiencing

Getting Help in Therapy to Overcome Trauma

As a trauma therapist, Somatic Experiencing is one modality I use either alone or in combination with other types of experiential therapy (see my article: Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective Than Regular Talk Therapy).

I work in a collaborative way with clients to help them to decide which modality or combination of modalities would be best for their particular needs.

Getting Help in Therapy to Overcome Trauma

If you have been struggling with unresolved trauma, you could benefit from seeking help from a Somatic Experiencing therapist.

Freeing yourself from your traumatic history can help you to lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

The Mind-Body Connection: What is Somatic Awareness?

Somatic awareness is a focused attention and interpretation of the sensations, emotions and physiological states of the body.

Somatic Awareness and the Mind-Body Connection

Somatic awareness is essential to understanding the mind-body connection, especially in Experiential Therapies like: 

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

• Somatic Experiencing

• AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

• Ego States Therapy

as well as other mind-body oriented therapy modalities.

What Are the Benefits of Somatic Awareness?

Being able to identify what is going in terms of the connection between what's happening between the mind and the body can help you to understand what you're experiencing in a more integrated way.

How is Somatic Awareness Used in Trauma Therapy?

Somatic awareness can also help you to recognize how trauma gets stuck in your nervous system when you're doing trauma therapy.

For instance, a trauma therapist will often ask the client to slow down to become aware of their emotions and where they feel these emotions in the body.  

This provides a deeper understanding of the client's experience for the client and the therapist.

What Are Techniques Used in Trauma Therapy to Help Clients Develop Somatic Awareness?

Here are some of the techniques that trauma therapists use during trauma therapy:

• Grounding: This technique helps clients to stay in the present moment, which is helpful when doing trauma therapy. There are many different types of grounding techniques:

• Feeling your feet on the floor

• Bringing awareness to other parts of your body

• Running water over your hand

• Tensing and relaxing your hands

• Visualizations: Visualizations help clients to calm themselves by picturing soothing images.  For instance, clients can focus on a safe or relaxing place to help them to regulate their emotions. The place can be either real or imagined. So, a client can picture a place where they have been in the past, like a beach.  They can also imagine a place they create in their mind.  As they're experiencing the calming effects of the visualization, they notice where they feel this sense of calmness in their body as well as the emotions it brings up for them (see my article: Using Your Imagination as a Powerful Tool For Change).

• Body Scans: The Body Scan Meditation is a technique where clients slowly sense into their body starting from the crown of their head down to the tips of their toes to sense what sensations they're experiencing. This meditation helps clients to regulate their internal state.

• Breath Work: There are many different types of breathing exercises, like Square Breathing, which help increase clients' awareness of their emotions, physiological state and sensations in their body.

Conclusion

Somatic awareness is essential to understanding the mind-body connection.  

It is also an important part of Experiential Therapy for overcome trauma (see my article: Why is Experiential Therapy More Effective Than Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma?).

Before processing trauma, trauma therapists provide clients with psychoeducation on how to do these various techniques as well as why they're important in trauma therapy.

Aside from processing trauma, somatic awareness is also effective in helping clients with anxiety, depression and other psychological challenges.

Aside from how somatic awareness can be learned in Experiential Therapy, it can also be learned in other mind-body modalities like yoga and mindfulness meditation.

Getting Help in Therapy

If you have been struggling on your own to overcome unresolved trauma, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who is a trauma therapist.

Overcome unresolved trauma can help you to live a more meaning life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I have worked with many individual adults and couples to help them overcome unresolved trauma (see my article:  What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Sexual Wellness: Don't Yuck Anybody's Yum

According to Dr. Emily Nagoski, sex educator and author of Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, disgust and shame are learned at an early age (see my article: Shame is at the Root of Most Emotional Problems).

To illustrate her point, Dr. Nagoski writes that an infant is unlikely to touch a toy that her parents have responded to with disgust because the infant already understands on a visceral level what disgust is--even if she doesn't have the words to express it.   

Needless to say, if babies learn about disgust at such a young age, older children and teens respond to a parent's disgust with shame and guilt, which can last a lifetime.

What Does "Don't Yuck Anybody's Yum" Mean?

"Don't yuck anybody's yum" is an urban expression and can be applied to any preference whether it's food, sex or anything else.

Don't Yuck Anybody's Yum

For instance, with regard to food, someone from a particular culture might show open disgust for the food preferences of a person from another culture.  This is disrespectful and shaming.

With regard to sex, the phrase "Don't yuck anybody's yum" is a sex positive concept that means, as long as sex is between consenting adults, you shouldn't shame or judge someone else's sexual activities (see my articles: What is Power Play? and How to Talk to Your Partner About Your Sexual Desires - Part 1 and Part 2).

If you don't like it, don't do it.  But keep your negative views to yourself because a judgmental attitude is psychologically harmful to others (see my article: Potential Pitfalls When You Talk to Your Partner About Your Sexual Desires).

An Early Childhood Experience of Yucking Someone's Yum

It's a common experience for a child to get caught masturbating by a parent.  Although it's normal for children to discover pleasure through masturbation, according to Dr. Nagoski, if a parent expresses disgust when she finds her child masturbating, the shame often has a lasting psychological impact when this child becomes an adult (see my article: Looking at Your Childhood Trauma From an Adult Perspective).

If this same child experiences many instances of her parent's disgust for masturbation, those experiences can get encoded in her brain so that she associates sexual pleasure as disgusting, shameful and guilt ridden.  

This adult might have no explicit childhood memory of her parent's disgust, but she will have an implicit (unconscious) memory that will interfere with her sexual pleasure as an adult, and she probably won't even know why.  

She can grow up feeling conflicted about sexual pleasure.  On the one hand, it feels physically pleasurable.  But, on the other hand, the psychological association of shame and disgust connected to sexual pleasure will also be present at the same time.

Let's say this same woman doesn't even have conscious emotions of shame or guilt.  Her reaction might be somatic (in the body) instead (emotions are held in the body) so that when she is being sexual by herself or with a partner, her somatic reaction is to get nauseated.  

Since there is no conscious memory of her mother reacting with disgust and no conscious guilt or shame, she will probably be confused as to why she feels nauseated when she touches herself or when her partner touches her genitals.

She might go from one medical doctor to the next, taking expensive medical tests and spending a lot of money trying to find out why she gets an upset stomach during sex.  And given the cause, the doctors don't find anything physically wrong with her.  They might tell her that her nausea is "idiopathic," which just means that the cause is unknown.  

If she's fortunate enough to see a medical doctor who suspects a psychological cause for her nauseau during sex, she might be referred to a psychotherapist.  

If she's really lucky, she might find a therapist who works somatically using the mind-body connection so that her early trauma can get worked through by uncoupling the shame from sexual pleasure.  This uncoupling would free her to enjoy sex (see my articles: Using Somatic Psychotherapy When the Client Has No Words to Describe the Problem and Somatic Experiencing: Tuning Into the Mind-Body Connection).

A Common Adult Experience of Yucking Somebody's Yum

It often takes a lot of courage for someone to share their sexual fantasies and desires with a sexual partner--even if the sexual partner is a romantic partner or a spouse.  

A Woman Showing Disgust For Her Partner's Sexual Fantasy

When those fantasies and desires are considered unconventional, like kink or BDSM (bondage, discipline/dominance, sadism/submission and masochism), the partner might express disgust, shock or some other form of disapproval, which would be shaming for the person who made him or herself emotionally vulnerable enough to talk about their desires (see my article: What is Power Play? and Destigmatizing Sexual Fantasies About Power and Submission).

To be sure, no one should ever be forced into doing anything they don't want to do sexually. At the same time, it's much less hurtful for a partner to respond tactfully that they wouldn't find these activities appealing and then come up with their own suggestions to reassure their partner that they still want to have sex and bond with them emotionally.

Conclusion

Parental expressions of disgust for a child who is masturbating can have a lasting detrimental impact on a child throughout their life, especially when it comes from a parent.  

As the child becomes an adult, the impact can ruin adult romantic and sexual relationships.

In adult relationships, romantic and sexual partners can also inadvertently shame their significant other when they express disgust or disapproval for certain sexual acts desired by their partner.

As long as these sexual acts are between consenting adults, it's important to be respectful of other people's choices rather than being judgmental or critical.  

You have the right to dislike a sexual act and the right not to engage in it, but you don't have the right to shame anyone, so be tactful and kind.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist,  hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I am a sex positive therapist who works with individual adults and people in relationships (see my article: What is Sex Therapy?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.