[Albatross2008]

I mentioned in another thread that one time when I started crying during a therapy session, my husband thought I was in crisis and needed intervention. Maybe even a psych eval for hospitalization. He looked at my therapist like, "Shouldn't you be doing something?" My (male) therapist had to explain to him that ALL I was doing was expressing my feelings, and that's normal. People cry in his office all the time. My husband was genuinely surprised to hear this. He freely admits he can't tell the difference between a strong display of emotion and a mental health episode. Not just with me. With anybody.

The trouble is, it isn't only him.

I've seen it often. Maybe someone is at the bottom of their addiction, is starting recovery, and is sorry for the harm they've caused. Maybe an elderly person just buried a spouse. Or maybe it's not even something that extreme. Maybe someone's dog got run over. They're sad. I sit next to them. They talk. I listen and ask questions. They start to cry. Then an onlooker, possibly someone closer to them than I am, says something akin to, "Nice going, genius. I spent all afternoon yesterday trying to get them to *stop* crying, and now you've got them started again."

Then there are those "funny" tricks people use to get a small child to stop crying. My grandfather used to tell them, "Now it's my turn to cry," and start wailing. Which, of course, would look so ridiculous, the kid would stop crying and stare at him. He'd laugh and say, "It works every time."

I saw some comic strip where a toddler's parents had some kind of device rigged to make a noise every time their child cried. I can't remember what it was. Maybe a siren, like the police were coming. This was effectively making the child afraid to cry. It was supposed to be funny.

Somewhere in my history, my two younger brothers were both in bed with the flu. They were around seven and six years old. My mother's then-boyfriend told them he'd give them a penicillin shot if they kept crying. I was only eight years old myself. I didn't know he couldn't legally give them a penicillin injection without a prescription and a medical license, or that antibiotics don't work on viruses, or anything like that. My only thought was, "Medicine will help them feel better." So I found him and told him the boys were crying again, and maybe they need that shot. He glared at me the way he'd glare at a busybody sister ratting out her brothers to get them in trouble. "I have a shot for tattletales too!" So his "I'll give you a shot if you keep crying" wasn't about offering medicine to help them feel better. It was a scare tactic to stop their crying.

What disturbs me most about all of these is that the ENTIRE goal here seems to be to stop the crying. Never mind thee underlying cause. All that matters is getting the person to put on a happy face and not cry, mission accomplished. As long as there is no crying, there is no problem. Right?

What are your thoughts?

[TheGal]

I think crying is an emotional release,


Men, especially, have a hard time crying due to the way they've been socialized. Men should be free to cry, too.

Maybe your husband can look up "benefits of crying".

[Albatross2008]

In almost 16 years of marriage, 17 years together, I've seen my husband lose several beloved relatives. Both grandmothers and an uncle in 2008. A close cousin who had been more like a brother to him, and was best man at our wedding, in 2020.

Sadness, yes. He talks about it, and he isn't trying to be brave. But, never a tear.

Except once in 2011. When the cat died.

From what I've read, that's not uncommon. People have questioned themselves because they were stoic or maybe even *couldn't* cry at the death of a close family member, but then a pet or a celebrity passes, and they fall to pieces. The usual explanation is that this is just the straw that broke the camel's back, and the grieving is also for the lost relative. Hubby's cousin hadn't died yet, but when the cat went, I think he was also mourning his grandmothers and uncle.

[AzulOscuro]

We are taught to avoid showing emotions in public. Especially guys. Our Western society is like that.
Just the opposite to what’s healthy that is, cry when you need it, being sad when you need it, laugh out laugh when you need it.
It’s seen as a weakness sign. I learnt that it was one more thing this stupid society drags us to.
Since I knew mindfulness, I don’t have any problem with accepting emotions and expressing feelings because the moment experiencing at a certain point, requires this human manifestation. I live the moment and if at this moment my tears appears, I’m not holding them back. It’s human nature.
On the contrary, if you fight against it, you have two problems: The feeling you have inside and how to keep it for yourself who is not sane.

Normally, when a person is with me and is passing through a sad moment so they begin to cry, I say: Cry all you need. You deserve it at this moment. Just exactly what a therapist does with the client. and they usually feel relief and less worried about the impression they “should” offer.

[Albatross2008]

Originally Posted by AzulOscuro

We are taught to avoid showing emotions in public. Especially guys. Our Western society is like that.
Just the opposite to what’s healthy that is, cry when you need it, being sad when you need it, laugh out laugh when you need it.
It’s seen as a weakness sign. I learnt that it was one more thing this stupid society drags us to.
Since I knew mindfulness, I don’t have any problem with accepting emotions and expressing feelings because the moment experiencing at a certain point, requires this human manifestation. I live the moment and if at this moment my tears appears, I’m not holding them back. It’s human nature.
On the contrary, if you fight against it, you have two problems: The feeling you have inside and how to keep it for yourself who is not sane.

Normally, when a person is with me and is passing through a sad moment so they begin to cry, I say: Cry all you need. You deserve it at this moment. Just exactly what a therapist does with the client. and they usually feel relief and less worried about the impression they “should” offer.

I agree with what you're saying. For one thing, I find that when I want to cry, if I hold it back until it forces its way out, I end up looking and sounding much more uncontrolled and undignified than I would have if I had just let it happen.

It also works the same way with feeling angry. If I deny feeling angry, if I tell myself I shouldn't, because feeling angry is wrong or bad, it festers and ends up a lot worse. If I tell myself in the first place that I'm angry, and it's OK to feel angry even if I don't have a "good enough" reason for it, then I can deal with it a lot better.

You're right. Fighting and denying your emotions just gives you another problem to deal with, on top of the one you already have.

[Nammu]

I’m a 64 year old female. I rarely cry. Didn’t cry at mum’s funeral though I miss her dearly. But do cry at gut wrenching commercials. Not sobbing just silent tear or two. Crying is highly individualized and it’s not healthy or unhealthy to not cry. It’s just individual based on physical makeup and how you grew up.

[Albatross2008]

I agree, there's no set "healthy" or "unhealthy" for everybody. It is individual. What's problematic is when someone has been brainwashed to never show unpleasant feelings, ever, or else. If you (general you, not aimed at anybody specific) feel like crying, but you choke it off with all your might because you're ashamed of doing so, then I think that's a problem.

How does anybody here feel about that parental saying? "You'd better stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about!" My mother used to say that to me, and then in my adulthood when I talked about having been forbidden to show my emotions, she swore up and down she never once forbade me to show my emotions.

The saying doesn't make sense. If I didn't already have something to cry about, I wouldn't be crying. Duh.

I just a few minutes ago read a poem written about a parent grieving the death of his little daughter. He dreams he goes to Heaven and sees her there. She should be happy, but she's not, because all of the other children have candles to light their way, but hers won't stay lit. Why not? Because every time she lights it, her father starts crying again, and his tears put her candle out. He has to stop crying, so she can light her candle and be happy.

What a horrible message this sends, IMO. Essentially, "don't grieve the loss if your child dies, or else you're hurting your child."

When I was a teenager, and my boyfriend was killed in an accidental shooting, I didn't cry, and my family thought I was being "brave" and "taking it well." I wasn't. I was stuffing my feelings. Why? Because I'd had too much of that "crying is bad" ingrained into me. The previously mentioned, "I'll give you something to cry about." Things like "If you're a big girl, and you don't cry when the nurse gives you your shot, I'll buy you ice cream." The seasonal "you better not cry" because Santa Claus is coming to town. Plus more subtle things such as my mother's seeming inability to even say the word "cry" without adding "like a baby," even in reference to herself.

By the time I was a parent, and my youngest baby died from SIDS at two months old, my family had come to realize that me not crying about it wasn't something to praise me for. It was cause for concern. My inability to cry was, for me, very unhealthy.

Years later, I saw a Touched By an Angel episode featuring the mother of a SIDS baby. After Monica revealed herself to be an angel, the mother angrily demanded to know where the angels were, on the night her daughter died. Monica assured her that there *was* an angel with her that night, the same angel who is with her now. That got me going. And it should have. I'm glad it did. I needed it. Thank you, Roma Downey, for speaking that line, and thank you to whoever wrote it.

[AzulOscuro]

I also agree. It’s individualistic thing. So, noone has the right to set up rules about it nor even parents.
Kids have the right to be themselves and express themselves and all we have to do is to help them to understand and cope with their emotions. (An ideal world, as always)

[AzulOscuro]

Originally Posted by Nammu

I’m a 64 year old female. I rarely cry. Didn’t cry at mum’s funeral though I miss her dearly. But do cry at gut wrenching commercials. Not sobbing just silent tear or two. Crying is highly individualized and it’s not healthy or unhealthy to not cry. It’s just individual based on physical makeup and how you grew up.

You also can unlearnt what you received as growing up. I’m doing it.

[Nammu]

I grew up in a house where my two sisters cried all the time. It’s not about being told not to cry, I just don’t. It’s not in my make up.

[AzulOscuro]

I referred to those cases where we receive society pressure.
I understood crying is not something you exteriorise because each person is different and I also understood that the fact that you don’t cry, it doesn’t mean you are not suffering.

[Albatross2008]

Originally Posted by Nammu

I grew up in a house where my two sisters cried all the time. It’s not about being told not to cry, I just don’t. It’s not in my make up.

I understand that. I'm speaking on my own experience. I can't speak on yours or anybody else's.

My husband is the same way. He verbally expresses sadness and grief, but he hardly ever cries. Not that he's ashamed or embarrassed to. He just doesn't. The average man cries between 6 and 17 times in a year, compared to between 30 and 64 times a year for the average woman. My husband cried once, 12 years ago, and that's it. Unless there are times I don't know about, but again, it's not that he's embarrassed. He just doesn't do it. For him, that's not unhealthy, because he does verbally express his sadness. He tells me when he starts missing his grandmother, for example.

Early in our marriage, I thought Hubby's abusive father had traumatized his ability to cry out of him, as I had been conditioned in my own childhood not to cry. After he sat in on some of my therapy sessions with me, my therapist had learned enough to explain it to me. "His father didn't abuse him for crying. His father abused him for existing." We came to the conclusion that *maybe* my husband *might* be a little repressed, but it's no big deal. Not like my own repression was for me.

By contrast, I've been in relationships before him with men who cried more often than I did, and by then I had regained the ability. It used to really freak me out when we were first together. If my husband doesn't openly show his emotions, how am I supposed to know when he needs my comfort and support? Answer turned out to be: He'll tell me.

[Nammu]

Yes, that’s it exactly.

The complications for me that are when I’m in the depression phase of my bipolar I’ll cry for no reason. For me crying does usually mean something is wrong. Still I don’t sob, it’s just tears. But there’s more symptoms than just tears. Tears alone aren’t enough to indicate I’m in a depression.

I don’t know I think humans are deeply complex and trying to make things back and white doesn’t work. Though in general I do think humans are conditioned to “fix” tears. At least in the USA. Even if a person doesn’t mean to be insensitive they want to stop the tears.

[Albatross2008]

Originally Posted by Nammu

Yes, that’s it exactly.

The complications for me that are when I’m in the depression phase of my bipolar I’ll cry for no reason. For me crying does usually mean something is wrong. Still I don’t sob, it’s just tears. But there’s more symptoms than just tears. Tears alone aren’t enough to indicate I’m in a depression.

I don’t know I think humans are deeply complex and trying to make things back and white doesn’t work. Though in general I do think humans are conditioned to “fix” tears. At least in the USA. Even if a person doesn’t mean to be insensitive they want to stop the tears.

I think that's what annoys me most about it. People want to "fix" and "stop" the tears, but the underlying cause is still there. They can't see it, so they don't care about it and deny it exists. Just because the person shuts up and stops crying, it doesn't mean they no longer have the problem or situation they were crying about. But nobody cares about the problem or situation they were crying about. They only care that the crying stopped.

[AzulOscuro]

I think sometimes people try to stop the other’s crying because they think the person’s crying is even more suffering for the person. It’s kind their way to console them. Luckily now we are more aware of how to face to these manifestations of emotions.

[Discombobulated]

I once got told by a Samaritan (on a training course) that emotional tears can decrease stress hormones- I don’t know if that’s why I’d feel better after a cry sometimes.

Anyhow as I get older I become more accepting of my tears and others, I don’t judge them, if they’re there they just are. Both my parents as they age have had more tearful moments, I just hug them because that feels right to me.

I really appreciate this thread and all the posts on it. Very thought provoking.

[IronChiq]

I don't think you should feel ashamed or uncomfortable if you cry from time to time. It is a great way to release emotions. Maybe your husband doesn't understand this because men are usually taught that crying means showing you are soft, but you should definitely solve this problem with him.

[Travelinglady]

I've read that crying can be good for people. But when we're bipolar and cry, people get worried. I couldn't cry for years, but finally after years of therapy, I can. That said, it's about specific events. I even got tuned up when reading a science-fiction book when a popular planet got destroyed. I thought that was kind of weird. I still have never cried after the death of my parents, but I cried recently when my brother-in-law died.