Trauma Talks : With Russ Tellup

What happens when a child learns that tears invite pain—and how a man unlearns it

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What if your first lesson about emotion was that tears invite pain? That’s the blueprint Russ carried from infancy through a childhood on Ohio streets where “Russ doesn’t cry” became a badge and a prison. We follow that thread from early punishment for need, to a teenage funeral where sixteen years of feeling finally broke loose, to the quiet skills that make emotion safe again without pretending to be stone.

We get honest about the difference between managing feelings and suppressing them. The culture often praises stoicism, but the body keeps the score: fatigue, freeze, inflammation, and panic when the pressure valve never opens. I share how that old rule shaped my marriages and parenting, why “be invisible” felt like survival, and how a coach’s simple question—“Why are you trying to stop?”—reframed crying as courage instead of failure. Along the way, we dig into nervous system basics: how long exhales, grounding, and vocal vibration cue the ventral vagal system, bringing the prefrontal cortex back online so perspective, empathy, and choice can return.

You’ll leave with a clear, repeatable practice: feet on the floor, chair supporting your weight, a 5-2-10 breath pattern, gentle chest tapping, and a low hum that resonates through bone and calms the body. It’s not about being dramatic; it’s about letting the energy complete its cycle so it doesn’t calcify into symptoms. If you’ve ever believed strength means silence, this conversation offers a different path—one where feeling is a skill, presence is power, and tears can be the start of healing rather than the sign of weakness. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review telling us what shifted for you.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey guys, I'm Russ. Thanks for joining us. Um, today I want to tell you a story from my childhood. Um, and relate it back to how that can help you. When I was a little kid, was probably about oh, seven years old or so, maybe younger, maybe five. My little brother was very small, Tom. And we lived in Ohio with my dad off of Jody Lynn was the street that we lived on. Now, actually, we lived on Merritt View, which was off of Jody Lynn. Suburb of uh Cincinnati. Colrain Township is the area that we lived in. And um little neighborhood, we had quite a few kids my age in the neighborhood. Um, for because of my acting out as a small child, because of the abuse that I was going through. I had an interesting relationship with kids in the neighborhood. I had kids that I considered my friends, um, but I was always kind of the brunt of jokes. I was always kind of picked on by some of the older kids or some of the bigger kids because of my acting out as a kid who was going through the trauma that I was going through at home. But anyway, one day we were sitting out in front of my friend Greg's house, and I was sitting on the curb, Indian style, and we were talking about, I don't even know how the topic came up, but we ended up talking about crying and how I net Russ never cries. Russ doesn't cry. Even when he gets spanked, he doesn't cry. Russ doesn't cry. Now we're gonna back up a little bit. When I was three days old, I've told this story many times on my channel and on Facebook and other social media accounts where I'm discussing trauma. But when I was three years old or three days old, I came home from the hospital and I was sitting on the couch next to my father and I started crying. Um, I'm sure I was probably hungry or my diaper needed to be changed or something. I needed care, right? I needed care, I needed love, I needed assurance of safety. But instead of that, he picked me up and swatted me on the butt. I instantly stopped crying. Now, what does that teach a little baby, right? When a baby cries because they need something, and instead of getting what they need, they get met with violence or pain. What does that teach that baby? If you guessed that it teaches that baby that it's not safe to show emotion or safe to ask for help, or that safety just doesn't exist, then you're right. That's exactly what it teaches. And that was reinforced all the way up until this incident. Every time I would get into trouble, my father would spank me and threaten to spank me harder if I cried, things of that nature. Really suppressed emotion within me, like deep, deep down. So at this age of five or six years old, we're talking about this, and it comes up, um, and then it turns into a contest. And I don't remember all of the details, obviously, a lot of it's been blocked out. Um, but essentially what happened is they started backing up about 20 yards from the curb where I was sitting and running and kicking me in the face trying to get me to cry. Um, which I don't think I did. I don't remember if I did or not. I think I just sat there and allowed them to do it. Looking back, I don't understand the reason for sitting there and allowing them to do it. I'm still trying to figure that part out. But my little brother ran and got my dad who came and broke it up. Fast forward about 10 years. I'm about 15 or 16 years old. And this has been an ingrained part of me, right? This part of me that doesn't allow the show of any emotion. That's anything, any sadness, any fear, any anger, any emotion, or any just being visible in my house was met with violence. So I avoided being visible and showing any emotion. And I don't remember crying up until I was 16 years old and my grandfather had passed away. When my grandfather died, we had the funeral for him, and I didn't get to say goodbye to him. He was at the hospital and he passed away in the hospital. Unfortunately, I was working at the time when he died. So I missed the opportunity to say goodbye. But I uh kind of just drove on, you know, just moved on with everything until the funeral. And in the funeral, I remember going to the wake. I remember walking up and seeing his body in the casket and how strange it looked. I remember touching his chest and feeling his chest and how it felt hard, not as soft as I remembered him being. I remember sitting in the wake, and I remember sitting there during the talks or whatever people were doing at the time. And then I remember them closing the casket, and I remember them doing all of that. And it wasn't until we walked up, and I picked up on my part of the casket. I was one of the pall bears. And I was walking, we were walking out the door, and as we were walking, I could feel the weight of the the wooden casket and my grandfather inside. And the gravity, it's an interesting word to use. The gravity of both him and the weight of that box, and the gravity of what had happened and the loss fell on my heart all at once. And I remember just breaking down, crying, walking this casket to to the uh to the hearse. And they opened the hearse and we slid it onto the rollers and it slides very slowly into this hearse. I don't know if you've ever loaded a casket into a hearse, but you got to make sure that it's straight and things of that nature, so nothing gets damaged, and you gotta take your time. So we we walk it in, you know, everybody walks in, two people pull away, walk in, two people pull away, walk in, and the last two people leave. Um and they shut that door. And I remember when they shut the door, I could see my face in the reflection in the privacy glass of the uh back window of that hearse. When they shut the door and I could just see my face, and it was just swollen, and my eyes were swollen, and just tears gushing out of my face and snot and everything else. And God, it was it was 16 years of emotion all being released at once, right? I I'd never allowed myself to feel this. I had never allowed myself to express emotion outwardly. So the fact that I was crying was a huge release for my body. I didn't realize this at the time, um, but it did release. But I remember sitting there, drying my eyes off, composing myself because I didn't want to get into the limo with my father, and I didn't want him to see me showing that emotion. And this continued on for the majority of my life, you know, through my first marriage, through my second marriage, with my raising of my children. I've been very stoic. I see videos on YouTube all the time about stoicism. It's the stoicism thing is beginning to make a comeback, and I I sure hope that it that it doesn't. Stoicism is toxic. Managing emotion doesn't mean suppressing them. You can manage yourself and you can manage your emotions, and you can have control over yourself, over your nervous system, over your mind, and over your emotion without suppressing your emotion. I remember talking to a coach a few years ago when I had my first panic attack. Um, probably about 20, maybe 2020, 2021, something of that nature. But I had I had a panic attack. Um, and I remember talking to her on the phone saying, I just can't stop crying. I just can't stop crying. And she said to me, Why are you trying to stop? If you need to cry, cry. And and how what about that, right? I mean, how many times have you been talking to someone and you're about something emotion and you get choked up and you can't get the words out? So you're trying to suppress the crying so that you can get the words out. Why? Allow all the emotion out first that you have to allow it out. If you don't allow that emotion out, it's gonna stay stuck in your body, and it presents itself as fatigue, and it presents itself as depression or freeze, it presents itself as autoimmune disease, it presents itself as inflammation, it presents itself in all these horrible ways. Allow it out. We don't need to hide our emotions anymore. It takes a hell of a lot more courage to be vulnerable and allow those emotions to flow a lot more than it does to suppress it and ignore it. That's the way of a coward. If you want to be a man and you want to be strong and you want to be the best possible dad, husband, or to yourself, you gotta feel your emotions. You can't suppress them anymore. Don't be that little boy sitting on the curb getting kicked in the face repeatedly because I don't cry. Why don't you cry? Allow yourself to cry, man. It's okay. You've got a lot of shit piled up inside there that needs to get out. And sometimes a good cry is a good way to clean that sympathetic energy out. But I can understand it's tough. It's tough to face that feeling in your chest when it starts to get built up, or that nausea or emptiness in your stomach, or when your shoulders start pulling up tight to your ears and you just feel tensed. I know it feels like shit, sucks. But it's okay to feel it. Your body is doing what it's designed to do and it's releasing that sympathetic energy, and you gotta allow it to happen, or it's gonna turn into something much worse. But I'm gonna give you guys a little tool that you can use. If and when you start feeling that stuff welling up inside. So I want you to just, if possible, if you're driving, obviously you can't do this, but if at all possible, I'd like you to lower your seat or sit in a chair that keeps your legs perpendicular with the floor. Just sit back in your chair. You can place your hands gently on your laps and palms open. Just set your feet flat on the floor. If you're not wearing shoes, that's better. If you are wearing shoes, just feel the connection and the weight of your foot in the shoe and that pressure pushing against the ground, and the ground pushing back against your feet. Feel that connection between you and the space that you're standing or sitting in. Grounding is important. As you do, just feel any of that stress or energy that you're holding on to. Just feel it flow out of you and into the ground. Just feel it leave your body. We're gonna take a five-second breath in, and then we're gonna hold it for two seconds, and then we're gonna take a 10-second breath out. We're gonna hold and extend that exhale for as long as we possibly can. Inhale, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One, two, three, four, five. Hold it, two, exhale, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Just continue that breathing, and then as you do that, take that breath in and just start tapping on your chest with your fist. You can also use your fingers, anything to create some vibration in your chest as you exhale. And then give it a low vibrational hum as you exhale. And then just be still. Allow yourself to feel the vibration in your heart, your chest. And then feel that vibration slowly move down into your stomach. And feel it activate and calm, tone those nerves, those polyvagal nerves in the ventral vagal system. That's what activates our prefrontal cortex. That's what activates our presentness. That's what activates our connected feeling with other people. This is where love lives. This is where present lives. This is where intelligent thought lives. I hope today's episode was good for you guys. I hope that you learned something. If you have questions or comments, please put them below. I try to check them as often as possible. Sometimes I fall behind, but please, please ask any questions you have. Feel free to also check us out on Facebook. If you just look up Russell Telup, R-U-S-S-E-L-L, T-E-L-L-U-P on Facebook, Instagram, uh, I think on TikTok now as well. But there's tons of content on there about trauma, about what trauma is, about where it comes from, um, and some of the ways that we can start to grab on to the idea of getting rid of it, the idea of healing, the idea of taking that those parts of us that have been destructive, or those parts of us that, even though their intentions have been good, they've been destructive. And giving those parts something else to do. You know. All right, guys, thanks so much for joining us, and we'll see you next week. Have a good day.