I’ve been going through a lot recently. Multiple jobs, bills piling up, and my current relationship is falling apart. I want to cry. To bawl my eyes out and scream at the top of my lungs. But I can’t. It feels like there’s a wall between me and my emotions. Anyone else deal with this?
Absolutely. I was raised as a male in the United States, so crying was strongly discouraged.
I recommend “The Tao of Fully Feeling” by Pete Walker. I read it a few times and can cry my eyes out on a regular basis now.
Yes and I’ve been there. It took me a lot of conscious effort to get past that wall.
It’ll sound weird and it’s possible you might feel a bit inhibited but I strongly recommend trying. It’s just getting your locked up nervous system to cooperate. Kinda like pushing a car to start it up.
Use music with any of these if you want. Find the safest place you can.
You can just go somewhere in nature and sit there until tears come. Sometimes you need to just create space for it.
Another is to actually just make noise. Moan. Shout. Or just hold a note. Whatever. Just keep doing it for a few minutes or so. For whatever reason I like to do this in the car. Not to cry anymore but it’s just become a habit of letting out steam.
Then more involved is to move your body. Shake it. Jostle it. Make more noise and let it sound weird from all the moving. Dance without trying to be good at it. Don’t think about it.
TRE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FeUioDuJjFI
If you feel a lot of inhibition because of the imagined cosmic judge, be gentle with yourself. Some people get this immediately, for me It took a bit of pushing. I had already tried everything else and sure, cried a tiny bit here and there but still felt like I had a fucking ocean on uncried tears in me. I had to learn to go to it via the body, not the mind.
People hate on Yoga and meditation but it does work for this. Problem generally is in finding competent teachers. But I’ve been on retreats where grown, burly men burst into tears because for the first time in their lives, they actually connect with their nervous system, they’re allowed to be vulnerable and actually FEEL their feelings. Instead of “dealing” with them, “letting them go”, intellectualizing them away, suppressing them or drowning them in substances or work/hobby. It’s a hell of an aha moment.
It’s just getting your locked up nervous system to cooperate. Kinda like pushing a car to start it up.
This right here!!! Humanity has this artificial divide between mind and body as if your brain was somehow not connected to every part of you. I’ve spoken with people who couldn’t understand the very question “how does sadness feel in your body”. They would explain they thought person x had been mean and that made think it was wrong and that made them think they should do something yap yap yap but never actually answering the question. It’s especially true for men and that’s incredibly sad.
I think people not being able to answer “how does it feel” questions is partly due to the cultural quirk where “what do you think” is replaced with “how do you feel”. Meaning even the asker is in fact posing the question as “what do you think”, rather than inviting actual reflection on one’s emotional state. Think of TV interviews for example.
I also suspect that there’s a subtle desire to make the answer a bit more inarguable. Because it’s socially acceptable to argue about one’s thinking. Less so about feelings. “All feelings are valid” is taken to mean that anything that follows the phrase “I feel…” is automatically true and you’re not allowed to disagree. Which is precisely what the “all feelings are valid” is not about. “All feelings are valid” points to the subjective experience of an emotional state. A war veteran freaking about fireworks is valid. A war veteran saying fireworks mean they are actually getting bombed is not. Rape victim feeling insecure when walking alone is valid. Rape victim saying everyone’s trying to rape them is not. A highly nuanced and volatile issue which people really want to reduce into very simple dogmas.
This is actually a very common problem in mental health. I would suggest getting yourself into therapy. Simple self-exploration can sometimes be enough to tear down those walls. You want a therapist who isn’t afraid to “poke,” as I call it; one who isn’t afraid of causing you to break down, because if they’re afraid of making you cry, they won’t be able to help you get over your fears of it.
I rarely cry, even though I feel sad quite a bit. Two things that help it along for me are sad music and sad movies. It would be nice to just be able to cry, but at least those medias help.
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.
For me, psilocybin wasn’t even enough. I did one round in a therapy setting with MDMA, 5gs of mushrooms. Then later another round with just 5g of mushrooms. Mostly just laying in bed, listening to specific music with the facilitator making sure I stay hydrated and all that. I cried a bit but it didn’t feel like it got quite there. Mostly it was boring. I was quite frustrated because there was so much hype about psychedelic therapy but of course I was the one super special boy on whom even a high dose of mushrooms didn’t accomplish much. Because of course it can’t be that easy for me.
I’m sure it was minor long lasting effects though but it wasn’t the dramatic shift I was secretly hoping for.
I however did get the opportunity to do 5-meo and that… did things. Just the handshake round made me feel the worst possible emotional pain. Then the second round made me scream, dry-vomit and convulse. I thought I shat and pissed myself (thankfully not, though the facilitator said it wouldn’t have been the first time and it would’ve been fine). I felt like my whole being was put through a blender. Then somehow I still did the final round which was more of the same. I was with a competent facilitator and a few friends and weirdly, it felt good to have people witness it all without judgment. In fact I think that was one of the most important factors because it was other people that had taught me to suppress and push everything down. Having a different set of people hold space while I went through that all (and provide hugs after) was profoundly healing.
Afterwards for the first time in my life I actually felt healthily empty inside. The sense of stuck emotions was gone. It didn’t magically make me happy, I seem to just have a chronic depression, but at least I didn’t (and still don’t) feel dragged down by unprocessed feelings. I don’t have this constant sense of “something is wrong”.
I usually cry a lot and always have been. In my 20s I got diagnosed with Depression etc. Whenever I was in a clinic the other patients were telling me how jealous they are that I can cry so much. I never understood them, because it‘s very exhausting to cry constantly and it changes NOTHING.
After some years, suddenly, I couldn‘t cry anymore. Still depressed, but now I couldn‘t express my pain anymore. It was horrible, I mean crying constantly is horrible too, but in a different way. It felt like I would feel better if I could cry, even though on a rational level I knew I wouldn‘t. It was a weird feeling. I do cry again now and I think both extremes are similar bad.The thought that crying doesn’t do anything is misguided. It actually changes a lot internally. Like, sure, it doesn’t change your material circumstances but it absolutely has a proven effect on our mental well-being and ability to regulate emotions.
It helps us to process emotions of grief and tension. It’s catharsis. It has a physiological effect on our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. That exhaustion is the release of tension that, without it, the body isn’t recovering from.
So, on a rational level, yes, crying does actually make people feel better in the long term, even if it doesn’t immediately show signs of effectiveness.
I cried a lot in school… I got labeled “the crybaby”… and I’m male so its even worse…
I had to deal with xenophobia and bullying, and also emotionally volitile home… partly contributed by society and financial instability in early childhood…
Then I learned I had to stop crying or everyone would just distance themselves away from me, “mature kids”, especially males, are not allowed to express emotions… society view it as a weakness.
So starting like middle school… I had to hold in my emotions while at school… or at least I tried by best to… and especially in highschool, I has to just hold in my emotions…
So I cried in my room a lot when the situation at home explodes and I get yelled at and feel threatened by my older brother… I just cry in my room, wondering if I should call the police… but involving authorities is very frowned upon… cuz back home in China, people do not ever involve the authorities for domestic violence… its “private family matters” and cops would walk away… so this was just normal for family stuff to be dealt with internally…
So cops getting involved is like: parents and brother be like “why are these American authorities so fucking nosy?”…
Like one of the first things my mom warned me about when we arrived in the US is: “don’t trust CPS, you don’t want to get taken away and never see us again do you?”…
so yea… I cant do anything about it…
Imagine being an immigrant Asian kid in a place with a bunch of white and black kids… yea that imagery felt scary… I felt like I was in foreign land…
So I cry a lot then get tired and fall asleep and then wake up next morning and mom tells me to wash my face so I don’t get reported to CPS for going to school with my fave full of tears…
So I get it…
Recently I found this song called “Because of You”
and this line struck me:
“I cannot cry, because I know that is weakness in your eyes.
I’m forced to fake, a smile, a laugh, every day of my life.”So I just start singing that song as coping mechanism every time I feel sad…
And I feel like I created this “bubble” where I feel in control… I’m the most proficient English speaker in my house, this is MY language, my realm, distance my self from my family… just temporarily forget about them… I’m in my mind… feeling as if I’m just on this island by myself… build a wall around my “island”, a fortress where I imagine being safe… but that’s sadly only temporary and only in my mind…
I just cry. I hate my life. I wish I wasn’t born.
I’m sorry to hear that friend 🫂
In the past, I have. You gotta find a way through, though, on your own terms, or that wall is gonna break at a very inconvenient time, and meanwhile the pressure build up isn’t doing you any favors, either. The god news is that if you can do it once, it’s easier the second time.
Try to connect with things that use to make you cry when you were younger. Maybe re-read Bridge to Terebithia or something. Listen to sad love songs, The Magnetic Fields have some great ones. Even happy tears — if the speech at the end of Independence Day does it for you, that’s fine. Once you’re crying about something low-stakes like that then you can start thinking about what’s going on now that you’re blocked up about and hopefully the tears keep coming.
Best wishes, truly.
Whenever I feel it all building up and need a release, I will clear an evening and put on a “cry movie”. I just watch something that I know will make the waterworks flow. It’s easier for me to cry about other situations rather than my own (even fictional).
Yes. I haven’t cried in about 20 years. Tried my best at my dad’s funeral. I don’t have a story that brings sense into it, it’s like I just grew out of emotions.
You didn’t, you just learned to push them down.
i feel like this world is designed to numb our emotions instead. we are just caught up in it.
Oh absolutely it is. And to some degree it’s understandable: it’s vulnerable and icky icky icky so there’s an inclination to find and provide ways to mask and suppress emotions instead of expressing them. It takes a lot of strength to be vulnerable, and you can only build that strength by being vulnerable. It’s far easier to suppress.
ITT: People that need to find a good therapist… :(
Yeah, reading this thread actually made me cry. I’ve clawed myself out of some dark places and really wish I could offer some help but there’s very little I can do.
Doing the little I can, in ways that are available to me but… yeah. Would be awful nice to have a magic wand that just fixes everything.
Or at least watch Guardians of the Galaxy Chapter 3.
No, I tend to reach for anger rather than sadness and I usually find it in the first place I look, since I’ve got so much of it.
I’m like that as well, I want to cry but just like you say there is a wall between me and my emotions. I think it’s because as a man I was shamed a lot for crying so I’ve learned not to cry. I don’t know if that is a good thing or not…
I’ve learned not to cry. I don’t know if that is a good thing or not…
It’s not healthy. Emotional expression is part of being a human but many cultures have normalized emotional suppression. Read what Vodian wrote, I think it might be useful.
Yes i definitely had, and to some degree still have, that. For me the only way I was table to cry again was hopping on HRT (taking estrogen), but this is probably not a solution for you.
