please someone help me understand what's going on

My past has a lot of drama, including failed relationships, religious experiences, addiction and shame. I'm in somewhat of a recovery, but something happened emotionally tonight that has me puzzled, I am not sure what is happening. Maybe someone could help me.

I was watching a movie tonight with my girlfriend, I think it's called "Fly Away Home" - I don't think the movie in specific has anything to do with what happened later, because other movies do the same thing to me... Any movie that stirs my heart and emotions makes me eventually need to cry. I told my girlfriend I wanted to go home and pray and cry. I felt a light but present burning in my chest whenever I feel the overwhelming need to cry like this. It feels like my emotions are stunted.

Why am I crying? Or why do I feel like I need to cry? It was a happy movie anyway. Can anyone help or relate to this?

I definitely relate to this. Even when a happy moment happens I tear up a bit and if a sad one comes on I have to really fight to not do more than slightly tear up.

I wasn't always that way though. I used to show emotion a lot more, and then I didn't react much to little things like a happy moment and rarely a sad moment in a movie/show. Now I struggle to show any emotion at all, I just feel sadness and anger like you described, that "burning" sensation. The last time I outright cried was when I was very sick with a respiratory infection and was in a lot of pain. It eventually forced me to cry because I couldn't handle the physical pain. It hurt so much to cry then, but a couple hours after I felt better.

I know I purposely learned to stifle my emotions because I was showing them all the time and it was very overwhelming not just for me but for anyone close to me. I have very vague memories of situations where I could feel emotions starting to get strong to where I'd show them and purposefully telling myself "no, you will not show it". Now it's just natural for me to bottle them up. My theory now is that I've filled the bottle and emotions leek out when they're being invoked through something I'm watching.

I can't really offer any advice unfortunately as I've not found a way to process the emotions properly, just here to tell you that you're not alone in the way you feel.

Something about the movie, perhaps even subconsciously, triggered some stored/unresolved emotional energy within you.... This is not some random or happenchance reaction - but an indication of something important going on inside, which needs to play out... I strongly feel you should allow yourself to feel vulnerable and uncomfortable - and just let the emotional activity play out... Try to put down your guard and your defenses for the time being, and just explore what's surfacing inside you... It's not likely to make much sense while you're going through it - but it will become clear (and make sense) once you work your way through it and come out on the other side...

I think having stunted emotions just means avoiding painful emotional reactions. Reaction to what, I don't know, I read that you can have this when you had a trauma in the past that's unprocessed. I don't know anymore if processing closely in detail is all that important though. Beyond a point it's just kind of dwelling in the emotion. It kind of loses the point to me then. I guess if an emotion wants to come out, ok cool don't supress it, let it out then after the relief just go on with trying to make life better and focusing on good things in life and inspiring goals. If you have not been able to make the inspiring goals yet or something is standing in the way you do want to figure that out of course. But just exploring every little emotion, that doesn't seem very useful to me beyond a point... It's fine if you don't always know why you felt some weird emotion, just focus on what truly matters in life. My current opinion anyway...

I don't know if this was helpful at all, sorry.