None of what I’m about to say is advice, just my experience. I’m an oldish person who’s been dealing with this for decades. I lost a parent when I was a preteen and sort of slammed the brakes on my feelings as a way to cope.

I apologize in advance for the indelicate comparison I’m about to make, but I recently had my first experiences with psilocybin, and found that (at least for me) it acted as a sort of “emotional laxative”. It didn’t cause me to immediately break down and sob or anything, but over the following weeks I had brief moments where I actually felt some of these clogged-up emotions and was able to open up the release valve a bit.

Afterward, listening to certain emotionally-charged songs or certain types of cinematic scenes was occasionally enough to tip me over into a short crying jag. This would last a minute or two, then I’d suddenly be back to “normal”, but with a strong sense of relief from getting some of that out of my system.

“Yay, I’ve finally beaten it!”

Music swells, choir begins chanting in Latin, boss’ corpse begins to float and glow