Former actor and wellness coach Adnan Malik had his fans worried and in shock, as he posted a video of himself in tears, asking for change.
Taking to the Instagram page of his coaching initiative, ‘In Presence With Adnan’, Malik posted a crying video of himself to address the taboo around the vulnerabilities of men, often shunned from expressing their emotions with remarks like ‘Men don’t cry’ or ‘Crying is the sign of weakness’.
In the lengthy caption of the video, Malik emphasized the importance of tears and revealed how being able to cry and let those emotions out, helped him in his healing journey.
“My inner 11-year-old self needed to cry today,” he began. “He found himself in an old, familiar space of unsafety where his feelings and emotions weren’t safe to be expressed. He felt cornered, gaslit, unseen and trapped by a familiar drama triangle that he never consented to be a part of. At the end, he was told ‘you’re too sensitive’.”
Malik continued, “My adult stepped in, set a boundary and asked the other person to leave the room. He then embraced the inner child and took him into a safe space where he invited his grief. All of me broke down in empathy and harmony. ‘Your sensitivity is your superpower’, ‘your sensitivity is a gift to the world’, ‘your sensitivity is what makes you, you’. The adult reassured my inner child. And we all cried together some more. A grief ritual with all my parts. To release decades of indoctrination. Lifetimes of shame.” “I’m sharing this here because I want to help dispel the myth that men can’t cry. That men have to hold back their emotions. That it’s not ‘masculine’ to cry. Crying is my portal to healing. It’s a superpower. To allow my heart to be penetrated. Like a powerful storm that makes the emotional landscape fertile again,” he noted.
“Cry with me my brothers, sisters and fellow beings. Let’s remove the shame around tears and grieve together to rejuvenate ourselves and the planet. To heal the pain and the grief and the injustice,” he urged. In the end, Malik emphasized, “Crying isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a reminder that we are alive.” Thousands of social users, including fellow actor Sarwat Gilani and singer Ali Zafar commended Malik for the initiative and extended their well wishes to him.