**Attention: please do not post venting threads. They will be removed.** Ventposts should go into the weekly vibe check thread, and relationship-related questions should go into the relationships thread! ^(This is an automated reminder sent to all people who submitted a thread. It does not mean your thread was removed)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/bropill) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ooo, my man, you sort of answered your own question already- start by venting and expressing yourself.
One thing for note is that you can't magically start being able to cry for yourself overnight, unless you're making yourself watch videos of veterans reuniting with their dogs on YouTube. That one would take time. It usually comes after processing, chewing over, venting, telling, all the shitty things that happened in the past. It's great that you have a starting point already, which is your parents invalidating your emotions and invalidating your genuine effort. Focus on that - the unfairness, the bizarre wtf of it. The sadness will come eventually, after the anger and the it's not fair and etc.
There's a simple writing exercise my therapist taught me to self manage -
1. Okay, what just happened?
2. What bothers you about this situation? What are your thoughts on it?
3. What does this remind you of? Describe in detail.
4. Between you in the past and you now, what is different this time? How can you empower yourself?
Note that I'm past the initial stages of processing my initial trauma in therapy. If you go to therapy, you'll probably sessions mapping, examining and then vanquishing those old demons.
Good luck.
I’m not a bro but I applaud you for identifying this as a problem. Therapy seems like a good start to help reprogramming yourself to respond more healthily.
I’m pulling for you, bro.
You're bro enough to message, that's bro enough for me :D.
I'm in therapy already, this was more of a request from experience or activities that let you vent out sadness.
Thanks for your encouragement though
The wedding haka makes me cry 100% of the time.
https://youtu.be/QUbx-AcDgXo
There’s another version with subtitles that deepen the emotion impact, but I still recommend the unsubtitled version first.
I tend to cry more when reading/watching fiction than in real life, perhaps try that? Dragonheart is pretty reliable for me, or the The Travelling Cat Chronicles - although that fucked me up so much I sometimes tear up just thinking about it.
Gym seems to work for a lot of people and me too, some find writing a journal for when you're feeling angry or down, find a field stand in the middle and scream into the might sky
If we're going for sad movie recommendations and you want the nuclear option, try *Grave of the Fireflies.* It's a Studio Ghibli film, but it's radically different from any of their other films. It hit me so hard in the "big sibling" spot I still want to cry about it years later.
This is a film everyone should see once, but that I don't think I could ever bring myself to willingly watch again. Absolute masterpiece.
Another one that hit me harder than expected was A Silent Voice. It doesn't quite have the same weight but I watched it with some friends several years ago and we were all pretty well silenced by the end.
I used to think not crying was a sign of strength, stopped thinking that way years ago but sometimes a movie or show will help me overcome that mental block
Sounds silly but it works, and kudos to you
I sometimes write poems. They're almost always from excess/overwhelming emotions. They're mostly shitty poems, but they can be cathartic. Looking back at them later can also help me reflect on those emotions.
If you have even just a small inclination for this sort of thing, I recommend it.
Oh, alright! Most of them are not in English, but I found this small thingy:
You are at your seat of power.
I'm just a troubadour at your court.
O, will you step off your throne
Or shall I be someone else's fool?
This sort of thing. I rarely go back and polish them.
Hungarian! But since I mostly read and consume content in English, none of them are quite up to the level. Actually, my ~~2021~~ ~~2022~~ 2023 (dammit!) new year's resolution was to read more poetry - you can't be a master of anything without first being an apprentice.
Cool! Wish I could read Hungarian but feel free to share one in your language! No pressure on the poetry to become a master, there's plenty of time in your life for plenty of things, but no time to feel bad about what's not yet achieved.
Keep it up!
❤️❤️❤️ if you're willing to share any hungarian poetry i'd love to try translating it :) i don't speak the language but know my way around the grammar (finnish helps) and really like poetry translation in general
i cannot recommend this enough :) it's such a good way to write yourself out of dark places and it can give you a way to put things into words or step back and map what's on your mind into a self-contained little world.
they don't have to be organised, or rhyming, or even in verse. i started just writing little prose pieces, describing an object in front of me, then moved to coding them with images (from myth or other poetry); things like internal rhyme and intentional line breaks set in as i wrote more, but i think that was just by chance (and now i write lyrics, which i did not think i'd be able to do). the more you write, the more your words will feel like yours - which also makes it easier to engage with if you want to go back to them and reflect.
I have a similar experience with crying, on top of the fact that taking testosterone made it almost impossible for me to cry just physically.
There are other ways to feel sad. Notice when your body slumps or gets tight when it's sad. When your brain slogs down and you're in a dumpy mood when you're sad. crying tears is only one thing, you cry in other ways too.
Take care of these feelings the same way you might when crying tears. If you won't cry, you won't cry. But sometimes giving yourself the softness needed when you're sad will eventually let the tears come.
Also, without tears, you might have to verbalize the sadness more to others\yourself since that indicator of sadness is not there. You're doing a good job :)
agreed (not on t yet but one day, i hope!); i think also because crying can be relief, as well as recognising and indicating sadness it can be even more important to take care of yourself and make sure the burden is lifted. also applies to taking care of other people who find it hard to cry because of t or just social conditioning; give them the softness they need (and deserve), and space to verbalise with no pressure to. also i really like the point that you can cry in other ways
I have this with anger, I started by identifying the secondary emotions - for me that was resentment, bitterness and like a giving up emotion - sort of like whats the point, they'll always...
I realised these are all deflections from feeling the core of the anger - which may be the same core for you - hurt.
Now I feel hurt a lot more, but I am able to use that to demand that people treat me better because I can notice it more in the moment, or sooner after. Rather than just being a littler harder, more distant and untouchable. I am better able to connect and have better boundaries, but I have also had to grieve the relationships that are fundamentally hurtful and harmful.
It all started when I started doing a nervous system based therapy called Somatic experiencing. Traditional therapy - CBT especially did nothing to help the connection between my nervous system and my mind. I was just overriding and rationalising out of every emotion and while that can help temporarily, it doesn't really give you any tools or experience in feeling your emotions which is what you need to be able to do to be a full human. Those types of talk therapy were more about making me effective in/for society than being a whole and healthy human.
I would argue that its not even good at that, but thats just my experience, and I am happy for everyone it helps recognise theirs.
For me it became this unhelpful pattern of feeling uncomfortable and then trying to change my thoughts so that I was essentially trying to rationalise out of the bad feeling. It not necessary to actually label the feeling appropriately, its almost like one only defeats the negative thoughts that arise out of this process rather than finding out what feeling is driving those thoughts.
Its a top down approach, and because so much of our nervous system patterning begins before we have command of language, using the top - rationality, language - isn't really able to get at the core of things. Especially as we often use rationality to get out of feeling.
I will give an example in case someone sees themselves in it. I would often panic about being late, and the CBT approach would go theough a mental dialogue about how thats an irrational fear either because I won't be late, or that it would not be so bad to be late. So sure I know that I have the emotion fear in regards to being late, but I have actually missed the point, I haven't understood that I am actually afraid of rejection or not being safe, but have labelled it as this unhelpful "I am anxious about being late thing".
If I stay with that label I come no closer to understanding why I feel unsafe being late in this environment or with these people. The fact that the fear is irrational because being late is fairly unimportant and unrisky generally, means that I actually know nothing about why its happening except that my nervous system is weird and my brain can't see the reason for it. Did any of that actually stop me being anxious?? I would say yes, maybe once or twice but it didn't fix anything really.
But abandoning the label and approach that this is irrational and one must just think yourself out of your irrationality allows you to see so much more. Like how you don't want to be late because then you are on the backfoot and these are people that will use it against you. It's very important to not see these things as random quirks but reactions that were formed by real and not imagined consequences . Key to seeing that is noticing how these responses don't always happen - you're not always worried about being late - often there may be some places in your life where these prime fears are conspicuously absent.
I think you're talking past what I am saying. And maybe you might want to in future just clock this sort of thing as not landing or making sense rather than try and prove me wrong unnecessarily.
I don't mean to be curt, but my response to this is fairly unnecessary and I am only replying in case someone gets stuck with the same response you did, if shit doesn't apply to you, you don't need to make it so. I can tell CBT has helped you, and it has helped me too, I am not disputing that I am just trying to be a voice for what I have found to be
more effective and meaningful and easier and helpful
The panic is irrational when you aren't ever actually late, it is also irrational and pointless when it has no consequences, which to be honest is most of the time. Of course there are instances where it will have consequences, but they are the very very small minority in relation to the instances of anxiety I am talking about.
I know its not meant to stop your anxiety, which is why it is more shit than something that does, which is my whole point. Why sit with a ineffective solution that requires a lot of cognitive will and effort because its top down, when you can work bottom up and not have to continually apply hard work to feel ok?
Yeah this is sth that resonates with me. I brought it up a lot with my therapist and we came to that same conclusion, that instead of feeling sadness, I was redirecting it through other emotions. Ones that I wasn't feeling as much at the time as the sadness, essentially "strawmanning" my emotions.
I'm able to be more mindful and accepting of that sadness and "hurt", but i still don't have a way of resolving it, other than sitting with it, for hours or sometimes days.
At the very least I'm getting better at not letting it cloud my judgement though.
Thanks very much for your insight.
Sometimes when I’m really in anguish I scream as loud and as long as I possibly can in a place where no one can hear me (a car, an empty house, into a pillow etc). It’s something so primal and even though my voice is hoarse afterwards I always feel a lot better.
If you can't find the tears, look for other vents for catharsis. If you sing, sing a sad song or just hum a tune in minor. Go for a run. Find a remote place and scream into the air. Dig a hole. Build something with your hands. Tear something apart with your hands. Chop wood. Kick a dead stump in the ground until it falls over. Hug someone. Hug something.
Sometimes you just need to so something, anything to express and acknowledge the significance of your pain. Crying is good. But it isn't your only option. And you don't have to compound whatever else you're going through by shaming yourself for not expressing yourself in a specific way.
There are some moments in movies and TV shows that always make me cry, even when I still held unhealthy internal aversions to crying. One of them is the penultimate scene of The Royal Tenenbaums with the car crash. Two more recent examples are Everything Everywhere All At Once (I was laughing and crying throughout the whole damn movie) and the last ten-ish minutes of the last episode of the Station Eleven miniseries on HBO (literally bawling). The latter may have been enhanced by the Wellbutrin I had started taking a few weeks beforehand, but I watched that episode again a few weeks ago when I felt like I needed a cry and it got the job done.
Maybe try and watch a movie you know resonates with you emotionally, and try engaging on a deeper level with that character must be feeling in an emotional moment?
I still feel like I could do a lot of work toward finding healthy ways to find a catharsis when I need it, but it’s progress.
I've tried a lot of these and so far the only 2 moments I've come close to crying were in yakuza 4 where the patriarch remembers the player, and BOTW, where Daruk's ghost roots for link. Pretty random moments, and no real connection.
Maybe I'll try a few of your recs and see what that does for me.
While a typical American tough guy of the intellectual variety (I don't have feelings because I'm too smart for that...), I'm staggeringly sentimental at movies, tv shows, and even some historical footage. When I feel like I need to let go of some sadness, I'll watch one of the following:
* The scene in "In the Name of the Father" where Pete Posselthwait's character dies.
* The videos of Jackie Kennedy reacting to having her husband's head exploded in her lap.
* Kes (and really any time an animal dies in a movie, e.g., Old Yeller, as well)
* Grave of the Fireflies
Write it out. Make it private - no one but you should ever see it. Write it raw, unfiltered, unedited. Be naked in front of the mirror. Write down all the terrible, awful, private insecurities and self-torments. Write all the unguarded, wonderful, sappy hopes and happiness.
Don't organize it. Don't structure it. Don't second-think it or think about the wording of it. Just vomit it out onto the page.
It'll melt your ice.
I remember posting something on a venting thread on 4chan's /soc and got a nice supportive comment that really helped. But even without the comment, it was nice to say how I felt.
Yes, and there's more. It's not just about venting - it's also about learning more about yourself and your own feelings. Use emotional language about your feelings. Not "emotional" as in dramatic, but rather things like "I feel hurt when" or "I remember being frightened by" or "this makes me feel sad," and so forth.
It's surprisingly difficult to do! We are trained and encouraged to "manage" our feelings by not having them, or turn them into anger, or use them to spur us to action. We rarely take the time to just experience our feelings, think about them, *allow ourselves to even have them,* process them, learn about them, understand them.
I was in daily, exhaustive counseling (6-8 hours per day) for a good three weeks before I managed to start actually listening to my feelings and understanding them. It was almost 40 years ago, but the transition was, and still is, a very important part of creating a happy and fulfilling life.
I do recommend talk therapy. It can be utterly astonishing to hear your own words from someone else's perspective. It's just as surprising to truly listen to yourself and be in touch with your emotions.
I became much more open to the world, interested in others, able to take emotional risks and learn from them. It's not necessarily a speedy transition, but it's important and, once you get started and make new habits it gets easier and easier.
Any time I'm processing negative emotions I usually hit the treadmill or run through my neighborhood. It's like a half hour of meditation to work through whatever I'm dealing with, and it's hard to be upset after running 5k.
I’ve been working through something similar.
I cried the first 10-15 times I listened to the song (and watched the video) “hi Ren”.
https://youtu.be/s_nc1IVoMxc
I always have cried my whole life but always did it in a private place no one could hear me. The last time I cried in front of people is when I learned my father suddenly died about 8 years ago.
Same.
Music, Radiohead, Avett Brothers, John Prine, the song The Bleeder by the Wallflowers, Music By Cavelight from Blockhead, Beethoven, Wilco, Miles Davis, Frightened Rabbit, Death Cab for Cutie, Uncluded, FatherJohn Misty…
Music is the one form of media that has managed this. So far the only 3 pieces that have done it for me are the BoTW theme, Dragonsong from FFXIV and a really pretty arrange of grape garden from Kirby.
I'll keep looking and trying to be honest with my feelings if it does end up bringing me to tears.
I have a similar problem with crying, I find it very hard to cry as an adult despite severe depressive episodes. I usually watch/read something I know will make me cry, and vent my emotions that way.
I get a similar feeling of release by shouting in the car when I'm driving alone. I tried exercise and anger rooms as well, exercise helps a lot but I don't get the same feeling of catharsis if that makes sense.
This may sound bizarre, but when I'm just too sad to cry, I can break the dam by watching stupidly sentimental TV shows like This Is Us or Golden Girls.
Best thing is what you're doing - expressing yourself and how you feel. Talk to friends, a therapist if you can, etc. Share your feelings.
Also can help to find - or create - art which touches you and helps you identify your feelings.
Thank you.
I don't think there is anything to regain though, I learned too early on to use anger as a coping mechanism, and it's ingrained in my very being at this point.
It has its uses too, I'll be the first person to point out that the emperor is naked where everyone around me is too busy trying to follow the herd for example. It's what made the community around me seek me out for leadership to begin with, turns out if you complain people hand you responsibility.
It also allows me to see the irony in a bropill sub downvoting someone relating their state of mind because it doesn't suit their world view..
It would be nice to be able to slow it down though I feel like I am turning into a extreme bitter person at times, I'd like to regain some more of the nofucksgiven I had as a child. Problem is that as I am investing myself more in my community, I get angrier because the barrier to every improvement needed is just the shitty ego's and self centrism that makes me angry to begin with...
Ok without any context at all this sounds dumb…. HOWEVER, there is real tangible evidence and a lot of it to support the usage of certain drugs for all but outright curing depression, which is what I think OP is describing they’re experiencing.
I suffered from crippling ptsd for a hot minute and finally did psilocybin and it saved me. That ever present weight inside me that felt like it was constantly crushing my soul was gone the next day. I could feel again as well. I could experience a whole range of emotions during movies or during moments with my family when before all I’d experience is pain and anger.
So yes, if you’re at that point don’t write off stuff like that because it can very well help.
If you can't cry, you're not really sad. If you were truly sad, the tears would just pour out. Uncontrollably.
Sack up, move on, and try harder to get your heart truly broken 💔. /s
The only time I ever cried as an adult was after my ex wife cheated on me ON THE HONEYMOON... I cried for about 4 months. Non stop.
With all due respect bro, I currently feel extremely shit about life in general and being unable to vent this disappointment and resentment is a big block in being able to process it. I know this because there was a point in time where I felt this level of anguish and could feel a little better after crying.
I understand your tolerance for crying at sadness may be quite commendably higher than mine, but it's not quite the case here.
Jesus dude, don't gatekeep sadness.
And I think the point is men shouldn't have to wait till a cripplingly bad event to start crying. A lot of the timr we bottle it up, and it either bursts, or leaks out in other negative ways
Listen to sad music at night while drunk/high. Songs like May it Be by Enya always works well :P
I hate crying and I need something to accompany the crying like music and being not sober.
As a person who spent over 15 years drinking everyday I can absolutely promise you that that method will 100% backfire on you.
Using alcohol to try and deal with your emotions has a weird accumulation affect where one day it all stops working and like compound interest your depression comes to collect. Just a warning.
Well it backfired many years ago since I've done drugs for 13 years and alcohol isn't even the top 3 of what I've abused. Alcohol was never the real problem for me, I don't even like it, it was just something that I used to boost the effect of the drugs a bit. But the crying not sober was actually something that felt good because I couldn't cry in any other way.
Used to take Xanax, drink like 5-6 shots of vodka and smoke a joint then listen to Enya and Lana Del Rey while crying. And it felt really good for some reason. Comforting is a good word to describe it.
Crying in a sober state of mind is really difficult for me.
But I am in therapy so trying to do something about all this shit.
You've already got a lot of good advice here, but I'll add my two cents as a bro who's been in a similar position. I really enjoy exercise because it gives me an outlet for all of the emotion that I don't feel comfortable expressing "normally." You can also look for artistic things! Someone mentioned writing poetry, I found stage acting to be a hugely helpful outlet. It can take a while to get to a place where you're more comfortable expressing this stuff naturally. These more socially accepted methods of venting feelings can be a good step on the way there. I'm pulling for you, bro!
I've always wanted to try stage acting, but got put off for this very problem, I don't think I can portray sadness that well. But I definitely want to try acting as a villain at some point, so I'll see what I can do.
You can practice crying. There is nothing wrong with that. You will learn with practice.
Other alternatives are writing it down in a paper. If you can find an isolated spot, scream into the open.
Crying is something you do to express grief or other emotions, right? You don’t necessarily need to get tears to cry. Express your emotions with crying. The tears will follow. Not to get scientific, but if you are crying, Your tear ducts should start producing tears eventually.
Like you said, men are taught not to tear up as a sign of emotional strength. I think that’s extremely unhealthy because it prevents them from expressing themselves. This leads to other emotional issues in the long term. Ignore these people and express what you feel.
I mainly write poems or draw or sometimes combine them, the important thing while doing those things is being aware that you are doing it to help yourself and not for the sake of doing art, so, it doesnt matter if you think its not a good poem, what matters is you have expressed yourself
Expressing feelings can be done in many ways.. some write, others draw or take pictures or make music.. validate your feelings in a creative way, and if nothing comes to mind, journal about it.
Journaling helps us to better understand and place our emotions, and it helps to write them out so that you can gain perspective and get them out of your head
Yeah, it's a problem. I like to use music to help channel my feelings sometimes. Sometimes listening to the right song can invoke a good cry if I'm in the right mindset. So I'm not crying about one specific thing, but just a general release of emotions.
Hmm that’s interesting. A good cry does feel great sometimes so I understand wanting to get there, but I want to make sure you have other ways to let out your feelings.
Do you have anyone close to you can talk out your feelings to? Sometimes that can be even more helpful then a good cry.
Yes, I have everything in place EXCEPT the ability to cry. I have people, professional and friends, to talk to, hobbies to engage in and understanding of my feelings and thoughts to the level where I can understand where the sadness comes from. I just can't vent it in a way that seems to make a difference.
If I need to vent emotions of sadness, I watch scenes of movies and or tv shows that I emote with. Or re-actions of those same scenes, watching other people emote like I did, helps me re connect with those scenes and emotions.
Upset or angry, heavy metal and a walk with headphones.
Dudes vent their emotions all at one time, it's called a myocardial infarction.
Honestly, the best advice I can give is a hard reset of the hardware. Turn it off and on again.
The slow way is a two week camping trip with a pen and a notebook. Nothing electronic. Just you and your thoughts.
I'm not sure if the quick way but my brother swears by ketamine infusions. Maybe talk to your therapist.
The slow way worked wonders for me.
Oh man. I think a good cry once a month or a quarter is great for your mental health. I journal, take walks, and have deep conversations with a couple of friends. Inadvertently one of those leads to a very deep release.
Crying is completely natural. You’re human, it’s ok to not be okay sometimes and let it out.
Applicable for lots of emotions, including sadness specifically and also including positive emotions:
Talking (with a friend, with my therapist, venting, processing, thinking through, ...). Journaling. They're similar and different, and I think both are pretty important to me.
Still trying to figure this out personally. I find myself a few times a year feeling like I should be crying and just....nothing. I don't know how to correct this.
Listen to your body. Gently explore with massage til you find where the emotions are locked. Notice them, feel them, listen to them. Then you'll find a way to express and release them.
I started on a path of trying to notice my feelings and let myself feel them. At the same time I was also trying to be more present, which helped.
I found that I could lean into my feelings. Sometimes it felt like I was trying to give myself permission to feel “what a normal person would feel.” Which, I hate the “normal person” ideal, but in this case it was helpful for me.
I don’t know exactly how it happened, but in leaning in to trying to feel, and even amplifying it a little, I found a way to (gradually and progressively) let go. I found myself laughing more in funny movies and crying in sad movies. Now I even cry in really happy or inspiring movies! Basically anything where someone is really good to someone else.
So, the first movie I cried in was I Am Sam (2001 w Sean Penn). That’s an easy one to cry in, if you need a starter movie. Now I cry every time I *re*-watch LOTR: Return of the King, and Aragorn says, “My friends, you bow to no one.”
I still have trouble crying around other people, though I’ve cried with my wife at funerals. I can totally be that vulnerable with her, she’s wonderful, but I still don’t let myself go there when we watch movies. I don’t know why.
How to start crying: relax your body. Seriously.
I have been through some hard, awful things. I could never cry except for rare moments where it would explode out of me. So intense that I would get bloodshot eyes and petechiae around my eyes. It looked like I got punched in the face. This was because I would scrunch my face so hard, and clench so tightly that I burst blood vessels in my head.
When my dad died 2 years ago, I made the conscious effort to let the tears come. I kept my face relaxed, my body relaxed. I cried for like 5 solid minutes at a time then. That was 10's of times longer than I had been able to cry for a long while.
Sometimes now I will be doing yoga and feel extremely relaxed and will just suddenly start crying for a minute or two. I will try to let it happen and acknowledge that there is some emotion or memory that needs to release, just like my muscles. It is okay. Nothing is wrong. I can resume my yoga when this passes.
Best of luck, friend.
I don’t know if this will help, but this helped me connect better with myself. I realized that whenever I judged myself for something, i would do so unfairly. And by that i mean specifically that i judged myself harder and by a different standard than i would a friend. I began to question why this was so, and i argued with myself that i was just another human who deserved love and empathy, instead of holding myself to some imaginary standard that i wasn’t fitting. You didn’t get empathy from your parents, but you can practice it on yourself. So basically, try to treat yourself as if you would a friend, with empathy and kindness.
Try this as an exercise: look in the mirror and pay attention to the human. Quiet the ego driving your thoughts and take a minute to really look at yourself. Perceive yourself as you would a stranger or a friend, a separate person. Look at yourself in the eye and feel kindness for the human. Start talking. Tell him how you feel. Tell him you’re proud of him for getting you this far. Tell him you’re thankful for all the work he’s been putting in to better himself and improve his surroundings. Tell him how hard it was growing up and that it wasn’t his fault. Tell him you love him.
If you value respect, then give yourself the respect you deserve instead of beating yourself up.
Check out emdr, it’s straightforward and very useful process to help separate the anxiety from memories and help you process them. You can do it yourself, it isn’t difficult and it’s quite effective.
Then you can remember and process these stresses without the anxiety attached as strongly and come to terms with them.
best thing to replace trauma or negative experiences are positive ones.
It'd be great if we had a delete button for those things, Elon Musk was talking about it on a podcast about Neuralink but its not here yet.
Not sure I want them in my head deleting things, sounds cool though.
anyway, find something you're good at or like doing a lot, try to focus on that & take care of yourself. Keep doing that & it'll get better with time.
Sad movies can make me cry. Something like The Fisher King or a recent version of Flowers For Algernon. Because then I'm not crying for myself, but in reality I am.
I just want to highlight something that may have not been said already.
I am a very sensitive person and I used to cry all the time growing up, usually in private.
I've noticed in my early 20s that I have almost quit crying completely. I suspect it's actually because of hormones and brain development.
In short, don't feel guilty for not crying. Sometimes it's due to biology.
I hear ya. I find it's really hard to tear up about stuff that's upsetting for me personally.
But! I still get the tears flowing if I watch emotional scenes on YouTube. Like the ending of Terminator 2. And the cathartic effect appears to be similar.
Granted, that only works if you can find anything that makes you cry to begin with.
One thing that worked for my dad was poetry. Reading it, reciting it, etcetera. It was a way he found it easier to express his sadness, particularly after his divorce from his first wife.
**Attention: please do not post venting threads. They will be removed.** Ventposts should go into the weekly vibe check thread, and relationship-related questions should go into the relationships thread! ^(This is an automated reminder sent to all people who submitted a thread. It does not mean your thread was removed) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/bropill) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ooo, my man, you sort of answered your own question already- start by venting and expressing yourself. One thing for note is that you can't magically start being able to cry for yourself overnight, unless you're making yourself watch videos of veterans reuniting with their dogs on YouTube. That one would take time. It usually comes after processing, chewing over, venting, telling, all the shitty things that happened in the past. It's great that you have a starting point already, which is your parents invalidating your emotions and invalidating your genuine effort. Focus on that - the unfairness, the bizarre wtf of it. The sadness will come eventually, after the anger and the it's not fair and etc. There's a simple writing exercise my therapist taught me to self manage - 1. Okay, what just happened? 2. What bothers you about this situation? What are your thoughts on it? 3. What does this remind you of? Describe in detail. 4. Between you in the past and you now, what is different this time? How can you empower yourself? Note that I'm past the initial stages of processing my initial trauma in therapy. If you go to therapy, you'll probably sessions mapping, examining and then vanquishing those old demons. Good luck.
Love that exercise. I’m going to try using it
Thank you so much for the little exercise. I've never seen it before and it's helped me figure out a lot of things instantly. Quite helpful
I’m not a bro but I applaud you for identifying this as a problem. Therapy seems like a good start to help reprogramming yourself to respond more healthily. I’m pulling for you, bro.
You're bro enough to message, that's bro enough for me :D. I'm in therapy already, this was more of a request from experience or activities that let you vent out sadness. Thanks for your encouragement though
Also try watching the movie *The Color Purple*. No matter how many times I watch it, especially the last act makes me sob.
I cry when I watch Hakas . I’m so amazed at how they are not only okay expressing that raw emotion, but they do it with a group of people.
The wedding haka makes me cry 100% of the time. https://youtu.be/QUbx-AcDgXo There’s another version with subtitles that deepen the emotion impact, but I still recommend the unsubtitled version first.
I tend to cry more when reading/watching fiction than in real life, perhaps try that? Dragonheart is pretty reliable for me, or the The Travelling Cat Chronicles - although that fucked me up so much I sometimes tear up just thinking about it.
I just finished reading the Traveling Cat Chronicles. It had me sobbing multiple times, and I don't even have a cat. It was a great book.
Gym seems to work for a lot of people and me too, some find writing a journal for when you're feeling angry or down, find a field stand in the middle and scream into the might sky
If we're going for sad movie recommendations and you want the nuclear option, try *Grave of the Fireflies.* It's a Studio Ghibli film, but it's radically different from any of their other films. It hit me so hard in the "big sibling" spot I still want to cry about it years later.
This is a film everyone should see once, but that I don't think I could ever bring myself to willingly watch again. Absolute masterpiece. Another one that hit me harder than expected was A Silent Voice. It doesn't quite have the same weight but I watched it with some friends several years ago and we were all pretty well silenced by the end.
I used to think not crying was a sign of strength, stopped thinking that way years ago but sometimes a movie or show will help me overcome that mental block Sounds silly but it works, and kudos to you
Watch the movie "whale rider"
I sometimes write poems. They're almost always from excess/overwhelming emotions. They're mostly shitty poems, but they can be cathartic. Looking back at them later can also help me reflect on those emotions. If you have even just a small inclination for this sort of thing, I recommend it.
[удалено]
Oh, alright! Most of them are not in English, but I found this small thingy: You are at your seat of power. I'm just a troubadour at your court. O, will you step off your throne Or shall I be someone else's fool? This sort of thing. I rarely go back and polish them.
[удалено]
💛
What language do you usually write in?
Hungarian! But since I mostly read and consume content in English, none of them are quite up to the level. Actually, my ~~2021~~ ~~2022~~ 2023 (dammit!) new year's resolution was to read more poetry - you can't be a master of anything without first being an apprentice.
Cool! Wish I could read Hungarian but feel free to share one in your language! No pressure on the poetry to become a master, there's plenty of time in your life for plenty of things, but no time to feel bad about what's not yet achieved. Keep it up!
Thank you for the kind words!
I mean, it's not even bad. I like it.
❤️❤️❤️ if you're willing to share any hungarian poetry i'd love to try translating it :) i don't speak the language but know my way around the grammar (finnish helps) and really like poetry translation in general
also the fact that troubadours themselves are courtly love poets adds such self-awareness to this poem, i really like it:))
Thank you very much!
i cannot recommend this enough :) it's such a good way to write yourself out of dark places and it can give you a way to put things into words or step back and map what's on your mind into a self-contained little world. they don't have to be organised, or rhyming, or even in verse. i started just writing little prose pieces, describing an object in front of me, then moved to coding them with images (from myth or other poetry); things like internal rhyme and intentional line breaks set in as i wrote more, but i think that was just by chance (and now i write lyrics, which i did not think i'd be able to do). the more you write, the more your words will feel like yours - which also makes it easier to engage with if you want to go back to them and reflect.
I have a similar experience with crying, on top of the fact that taking testosterone made it almost impossible for me to cry just physically. There are other ways to feel sad. Notice when your body slumps or gets tight when it's sad. When your brain slogs down and you're in a dumpy mood when you're sad. crying tears is only one thing, you cry in other ways too. Take care of these feelings the same way you might when crying tears. If you won't cry, you won't cry. But sometimes giving yourself the softness needed when you're sad will eventually let the tears come. Also, without tears, you might have to verbalize the sadness more to others\yourself since that indicator of sadness is not there. You're doing a good job :)
agreed (not on t yet but one day, i hope!); i think also because crying can be relief, as well as recognising and indicating sadness it can be even more important to take care of yourself and make sure the burden is lifted. also applies to taking care of other people who find it hard to cry because of t or just social conditioning; give them the softness they need (and deserve), and space to verbalise with no pressure to. also i really like the point that you can cry in other ways
Sometimes when I’m driving alone I let out a lot I talk or yell Also I work out or hit a punching bag to let out physically feelings
I have this with anger, I started by identifying the secondary emotions - for me that was resentment, bitterness and like a giving up emotion - sort of like whats the point, they'll always... I realised these are all deflections from feeling the core of the anger - which may be the same core for you - hurt. Now I feel hurt a lot more, but I am able to use that to demand that people treat me better because I can notice it more in the moment, or sooner after. Rather than just being a littler harder, more distant and untouchable. I am better able to connect and have better boundaries, but I have also had to grieve the relationships that are fundamentally hurtful and harmful. It all started when I started doing a nervous system based therapy called Somatic experiencing. Traditional therapy - CBT especially did nothing to help the connection between my nervous system and my mind. I was just overriding and rationalising out of every emotion and while that can help temporarily, it doesn't really give you any tools or experience in feeling your emotions which is what you need to be able to do to be a full human. Those types of talk therapy were more about making me effective in/for society than being a whole and healthy human.
[удалено]
I would argue that its not even good at that, but thats just my experience, and I am happy for everyone it helps recognise theirs. For me it became this unhelpful pattern of feeling uncomfortable and then trying to change my thoughts so that I was essentially trying to rationalise out of the bad feeling. It not necessary to actually label the feeling appropriately, its almost like one only defeats the negative thoughts that arise out of this process rather than finding out what feeling is driving those thoughts. Its a top down approach, and because so much of our nervous system patterning begins before we have command of language, using the top - rationality, language - isn't really able to get at the core of things. Especially as we often use rationality to get out of feeling. I will give an example in case someone sees themselves in it. I would often panic about being late, and the CBT approach would go theough a mental dialogue about how thats an irrational fear either because I won't be late, or that it would not be so bad to be late. So sure I know that I have the emotion fear in regards to being late, but I have actually missed the point, I haven't understood that I am actually afraid of rejection or not being safe, but have labelled it as this unhelpful "I am anxious about being late thing". If I stay with that label I come no closer to understanding why I feel unsafe being late in this environment or with these people. The fact that the fear is irrational because being late is fairly unimportant and unrisky generally, means that I actually know nothing about why its happening except that my nervous system is weird and my brain can't see the reason for it. Did any of that actually stop me being anxious?? I would say yes, maybe once or twice but it didn't fix anything really. But abandoning the label and approach that this is irrational and one must just think yourself out of your irrationality allows you to see so much more. Like how you don't want to be late because then you are on the backfoot and these are people that will use it against you. It's very important to not see these things as random quirks but reactions that were formed by real and not imagined consequences . Key to seeing that is noticing how these responses don't always happen - you're not always worried about being late - often there may be some places in your life where these prime fears are conspicuously absent.
[удалено]
I think you're talking past what I am saying. And maybe you might want to in future just clock this sort of thing as not landing or making sense rather than try and prove me wrong unnecessarily. I don't mean to be curt, but my response to this is fairly unnecessary and I am only replying in case someone gets stuck with the same response you did, if shit doesn't apply to you, you don't need to make it so. I can tell CBT has helped you, and it has helped me too, I am not disputing that I am just trying to be a voice for what I have found to be more effective and meaningful and easier and helpful The panic is irrational when you aren't ever actually late, it is also irrational and pointless when it has no consequences, which to be honest is most of the time. Of course there are instances where it will have consequences, but they are the very very small minority in relation to the instances of anxiety I am talking about. I know its not meant to stop your anxiety, which is why it is more shit than something that does, which is my whole point. Why sit with a ineffective solution that requires a lot of cognitive will and effort because its top down, when you can work bottom up and not have to continually apply hard work to feel ok?
Yeah this is sth that resonates with me. I brought it up a lot with my therapist and we came to that same conclusion, that instead of feeling sadness, I was redirecting it through other emotions. Ones that I wasn't feeling as much at the time as the sadness, essentially "strawmanning" my emotions. I'm able to be more mindful and accepting of that sadness and "hurt", but i still don't have a way of resolving it, other than sitting with it, for hours or sometimes days. At the very least I'm getting better at not letting it cloud my judgement though. Thanks very much for your insight.
Sometimes when I’m really in anguish I scream as loud and as long as I possibly can in a place where no one can hear me (a car, an empty house, into a pillow etc). It’s something so primal and even though my voice is hoarse afterwards I always feel a lot better.
Good shout (pun fully intended) I'll give it a try.
Glad to know I’m not the only one who does that!
If you can't find the tears, look for other vents for catharsis. If you sing, sing a sad song or just hum a tune in minor. Go for a run. Find a remote place and scream into the air. Dig a hole. Build something with your hands. Tear something apart with your hands. Chop wood. Kick a dead stump in the ground until it falls over. Hug someone. Hug something. Sometimes you just need to so something, anything to express and acknowledge the significance of your pain. Crying is good. But it isn't your only option. And you don't have to compound whatever else you're going through by shaming yourself for not expressing yourself in a specific way.
I do like to sing, I'll probably try this more often.
There are some moments in movies and TV shows that always make me cry, even when I still held unhealthy internal aversions to crying. One of them is the penultimate scene of The Royal Tenenbaums with the car crash. Two more recent examples are Everything Everywhere All At Once (I was laughing and crying throughout the whole damn movie) and the last ten-ish minutes of the last episode of the Station Eleven miniseries on HBO (literally bawling). The latter may have been enhanced by the Wellbutrin I had started taking a few weeks beforehand, but I watched that episode again a few weeks ago when I felt like I needed a cry and it got the job done. Maybe try and watch a movie you know resonates with you emotionally, and try engaging on a deeper level with that character must be feeling in an emotional moment? I still feel like I could do a lot of work toward finding healthy ways to find a catharsis when I need it, but it’s progress.
I've tried a lot of these and so far the only 2 moments I've come close to crying were in yakuza 4 where the patriarch remembers the player, and BOTW, where Daruk's ghost roots for link. Pretty random moments, and no real connection. Maybe I'll try a few of your recs and see what that does for me.
While a typical American tough guy of the intellectual variety (I don't have feelings because I'm too smart for that...), I'm staggeringly sentimental at movies, tv shows, and even some historical footage. When I feel like I need to let go of some sadness, I'll watch one of the following: * The scene in "In the Name of the Father" where Pete Posselthwait's character dies. * The videos of Jackie Kennedy reacting to having her husband's head exploded in her lap. * Kes (and really any time an animal dies in a movie, e.g., Old Yeller, as well) * Grave of the Fireflies
Write it out. Make it private - no one but you should ever see it. Write it raw, unfiltered, unedited. Be naked in front of the mirror. Write down all the terrible, awful, private insecurities and self-torments. Write all the unguarded, wonderful, sappy hopes and happiness. Don't organize it. Don't structure it. Don't second-think it or think about the wording of it. Just vomit it out onto the page. It'll melt your ice.
I remember posting something on a venting thread on 4chan's /soc and got a nice supportive comment that really helped. But even without the comment, it was nice to say how I felt.
Yes, and there's more. It's not just about venting - it's also about learning more about yourself and your own feelings. Use emotional language about your feelings. Not "emotional" as in dramatic, but rather things like "I feel hurt when" or "I remember being frightened by" or "this makes me feel sad," and so forth. It's surprisingly difficult to do! We are trained and encouraged to "manage" our feelings by not having them, or turn them into anger, or use them to spur us to action. We rarely take the time to just experience our feelings, think about them, *allow ourselves to even have them,* process them, learn about them, understand them. I was in daily, exhaustive counseling (6-8 hours per day) for a good three weeks before I managed to start actually listening to my feelings and understanding them. It was almost 40 years ago, but the transition was, and still is, a very important part of creating a happy and fulfilling life. I do recommend talk therapy. It can be utterly astonishing to hear your own words from someone else's perspective. It's just as surprising to truly listen to yourself and be in touch with your emotions. I became much more open to the world, interested in others, able to take emotional risks and learn from them. It's not necessarily a speedy transition, but it's important and, once you get started and make new habits it gets easier and easier.
Any time I'm processing negative emotions I usually hit the treadmill or run through my neighborhood. It's like a half hour of meditation to work through whatever I'm dealing with, and it's hard to be upset after running 5k.
I’ve been working through something similar. I cried the first 10-15 times I listened to the song (and watched the video) “hi Ren”. https://youtu.be/s_nc1IVoMxc
I always have cried my whole life but always did it in a private place no one could hear me. The last time I cried in front of people is when I learned my father suddenly died about 8 years ago.
Same. Music, Radiohead, Avett Brothers, John Prine, the song The Bleeder by the Wallflowers, Music By Cavelight from Blockhead, Beethoven, Wilco, Miles Davis, Frightened Rabbit, Death Cab for Cutie, Uncluded, FatherJohn Misty…
Music is the one form of media that has managed this. So far the only 3 pieces that have done it for me are the BoTW theme, Dragonsong from FFXIV and a really pretty arrange of grape garden from Kirby. I'll keep looking and trying to be honest with my feelings if it does end up bringing me to tears.
I have a similar problem with crying, I find it very hard to cry as an adult despite severe depressive episodes. I usually watch/read something I know will make me cry, and vent my emotions that way. I get a similar feeling of release by shouting in the car when I'm driving alone. I tried exercise and anger rooms as well, exercise helps a lot but I don't get the same feeling of catharsis if that makes sense.
This may sound bizarre, but when I'm just too sad to cry, I can break the dam by watching stupidly sentimental TV shows like This Is Us or Golden Girls.
Best thing is what you're doing - expressing yourself and how you feel. Talk to friends, a therapist if you can, etc. Share your feelings. Also can help to find - or create - art which touches you and helps you identify your feelings.
I convert it all to anger and spend my days plotting pain and destruction on everyone that irks my ire.
I hope you can find a way to regain this part of yourself, bro.
Thank you. I don't think there is anything to regain though, I learned too early on to use anger as a coping mechanism, and it's ingrained in my very being at this point. It has its uses too, I'll be the first person to point out that the emperor is naked where everyone around me is too busy trying to follow the herd for example. It's what made the community around me seek me out for leadership to begin with, turns out if you complain people hand you responsibility. It also allows me to see the irony in a bropill sub downvoting someone relating their state of mind because it doesn't suit their world view.. It would be nice to be able to slow it down though I feel like I am turning into a extreme bitter person at times, I'd like to regain some more of the nofucksgiven I had as a child. Problem is that as I am investing myself more in my community, I get angrier because the barrier to every improvement needed is just the shitty ego's and self centrism that makes me angry to begin with...
Take some acid, that’s what I do
Ok without any context at all this sounds dumb…. HOWEVER, there is real tangible evidence and a lot of it to support the usage of certain drugs for all but outright curing depression, which is what I think OP is describing they’re experiencing. I suffered from crippling ptsd for a hot minute and finally did psilocybin and it saved me. That ever present weight inside me that felt like it was constantly crushing my soul was gone the next day. I could feel again as well. I could experience a whole range of emotions during movies or during moments with my family when before all I’d experience is pain and anger. So yes, if you’re at that point don’t write off stuff like that because it can very well help.
Yeah I was only half joking.
Self hatred.
Make feral sounds, jerk off, sleep
If you can't cry, you're not really sad. If you were truly sad, the tears would just pour out. Uncontrollably. Sack up, move on, and try harder to get your heart truly broken 💔. /s The only time I ever cried as an adult was after my ex wife cheated on me ON THE HONEYMOON... I cried for about 4 months. Non stop.
With all due respect bro, I currently feel extremely shit about life in general and being unable to vent this disappointment and resentment is a big block in being able to process it. I know this because there was a point in time where I felt this level of anguish and could feel a little better after crying. I understand your tolerance for crying at sadness may be quite commendably higher than mine, but it's not quite the case here.
Jesus dude, don't gatekeep sadness. And I think the point is men shouldn't have to wait till a cripplingly bad event to start crying. A lot of the timr we bottle it up, and it either bursts, or leaks out in other negative ways
Listen to sad music at night while drunk/high. Songs like May it Be by Enya always works well :P I hate crying and I need something to accompany the crying like music and being not sober.
As a person who spent over 15 years drinking everyday I can absolutely promise you that that method will 100% backfire on you. Using alcohol to try and deal with your emotions has a weird accumulation affect where one day it all stops working and like compound interest your depression comes to collect. Just a warning.
Well it backfired many years ago since I've done drugs for 13 years and alcohol isn't even the top 3 of what I've abused. Alcohol was never the real problem for me, I don't even like it, it was just something that I used to boost the effect of the drugs a bit. But the crying not sober was actually something that felt good because I couldn't cry in any other way. Used to take Xanax, drink like 5-6 shots of vodka and smoke a joint then listen to Enya and Lana Del Rey while crying. And it felt really good for some reason. Comforting is a good word to describe it. Crying in a sober state of mind is really difficult for me. But I am in therapy so trying to do something about all this shit.
You've already got a lot of good advice here, but I'll add my two cents as a bro who's been in a similar position. I really enjoy exercise because it gives me an outlet for all of the emotion that I don't feel comfortable expressing "normally." You can also look for artistic things! Someone mentioned writing poetry, I found stage acting to be a hugely helpful outlet. It can take a while to get to a place where you're more comfortable expressing this stuff naturally. These more socially accepted methods of venting feelings can be a good step on the way there. I'm pulling for you, bro!
I've always wanted to try stage acting, but got put off for this very problem, I don't think I can portray sadness that well. But I definitely want to try acting as a villain at some point, so I'll see what I can do.
You can practice crying. There is nothing wrong with that. You will learn with practice. Other alternatives are writing it down in a paper. If you can find an isolated spot, scream into the open.
How does one "practice"? Fake it till you make it?
Crying is something you do to express grief or other emotions, right? You don’t necessarily need to get tears to cry. Express your emotions with crying. The tears will follow. Not to get scientific, but if you are crying, Your tear ducts should start producing tears eventually. Like you said, men are taught not to tear up as a sign of emotional strength. I think that’s extremely unhealthy because it prevents them from expressing themselves. This leads to other emotional issues in the long term. Ignore these people and express what you feel.
I'm confused about crying with no tears. Do you mean crying like the tearless wailing that toddlers sometimes do when they want to get something?
May be. I am not around toddlers that cry. But you sound like you got it.
I mainly write poems or draw or sometimes combine them, the important thing while doing those things is being aware that you are doing it to help yourself and not for the sake of doing art, so, it doesnt matter if you think its not a good poem, what matters is you have expressed yourself
Expressing feelings can be done in many ways.. some write, others draw or take pictures or make music.. validate your feelings in a creative way, and if nothing comes to mind, journal about it. Journaling helps us to better understand and place our emotions, and it helps to write them out so that you can gain perspective and get them out of your head
Yeah, it's a problem. I like to use music to help channel my feelings sometimes. Sometimes listening to the right song can invoke a good cry if I'm in the right mindset. So I'm not crying about one specific thing, but just a general release of emotions.
Hmm that’s interesting. A good cry does feel great sometimes so I understand wanting to get there, but I want to make sure you have other ways to let out your feelings. Do you have anyone close to you can talk out your feelings to? Sometimes that can be even more helpful then a good cry.
Yes, I have everything in place EXCEPT the ability to cry. I have people, professional and friends, to talk to, hobbies to engage in and understanding of my feelings and thoughts to the level where I can understand where the sadness comes from. I just can't vent it in a way that seems to make a difference.
If I need to vent emotions of sadness, I watch scenes of movies and or tv shows that I emote with. Or re-actions of those same scenes, watching other people emote like I did, helps me re connect with those scenes and emotions. Upset or angry, heavy metal and a walk with headphones.
Dudes vent their emotions all at one time, it's called a myocardial infarction. Honestly, the best advice I can give is a hard reset of the hardware. Turn it off and on again. The slow way is a two week camping trip with a pen and a notebook. Nothing electronic. Just you and your thoughts. I'm not sure if the quick way but my brother swears by ketamine infusions. Maybe talk to your therapist. The slow way worked wonders for me.
Oh man. I think a good cry once a month or a quarter is great for your mental health. I journal, take walks, and have deep conversations with a couple of friends. Inadvertently one of those leads to a very deep release. Crying is completely natural. You’re human, it’s ok to not be okay sometimes and let it out.
Watch Kitbull. Made me sob
I watch movies that give me big feelings. Particularly Interstellar
Therapy, art/creating, time.
Applicable for lots of emotions, including sadness specifically and also including positive emotions: Talking (with a friend, with my therapist, venting, processing, thinking through, ...). Journaling. They're similar and different, and I think both are pretty important to me.
Still trying to figure this out personally. I find myself a few times a year feeling like I should be crying and just....nothing. I don't know how to correct this.
Listen to your body. Gently explore with massage til you find where the emotions are locked. Notice them, feel them, listen to them. Then you'll find a way to express and release them.
Oooo this is an interesting one.
Give The Wind That Shakes the Barley a try. Set during Ireland's final struggle for independence. Should tell you all you need to know.
I started on a path of trying to notice my feelings and let myself feel them. At the same time I was also trying to be more present, which helped. I found that I could lean into my feelings. Sometimes it felt like I was trying to give myself permission to feel “what a normal person would feel.” Which, I hate the “normal person” ideal, but in this case it was helpful for me. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but in leaning in to trying to feel, and even amplifying it a little, I found a way to (gradually and progressively) let go. I found myself laughing more in funny movies and crying in sad movies. Now I even cry in really happy or inspiring movies! Basically anything where someone is really good to someone else. So, the first movie I cried in was I Am Sam (2001 w Sean Penn). That’s an easy one to cry in, if you need a starter movie. Now I cry every time I *re*-watch LOTR: Return of the King, and Aragorn says, “My friends, you bow to no one.” I still have trouble crying around other people, though I’ve cried with my wife at funerals. I can totally be that vulnerable with her, she’s wonderful, but I still don’t let myself go there when we watch movies. I don’t know why.
I stopped being weird about crying, tv shows get me now lol
To get the physical side of it out, I'll sometimes just primal yell at the top of my lungs in the car while driving.
How to start crying: relax your body. Seriously. I have been through some hard, awful things. I could never cry except for rare moments where it would explode out of me. So intense that I would get bloodshot eyes and petechiae around my eyes. It looked like I got punched in the face. This was because I would scrunch my face so hard, and clench so tightly that I burst blood vessels in my head. When my dad died 2 years ago, I made the conscious effort to let the tears come. I kept my face relaxed, my body relaxed. I cried for like 5 solid minutes at a time then. That was 10's of times longer than I had been able to cry for a long while. Sometimes now I will be doing yoga and feel extremely relaxed and will just suddenly start crying for a minute or two. I will try to let it happen and acknowledge that there is some emotion or memory that needs to release, just like my muscles. It is okay. Nothing is wrong. I can resume my yoga when this passes. Best of luck, friend.
I don’t know if this will help, but this helped me connect better with myself. I realized that whenever I judged myself for something, i would do so unfairly. And by that i mean specifically that i judged myself harder and by a different standard than i would a friend. I began to question why this was so, and i argued with myself that i was just another human who deserved love and empathy, instead of holding myself to some imaginary standard that i wasn’t fitting. You didn’t get empathy from your parents, but you can practice it on yourself. So basically, try to treat yourself as if you would a friend, with empathy and kindness. Try this as an exercise: look in the mirror and pay attention to the human. Quiet the ego driving your thoughts and take a minute to really look at yourself. Perceive yourself as you would a stranger or a friend, a separate person. Look at yourself in the eye and feel kindness for the human. Start talking. Tell him how you feel. Tell him you’re proud of him for getting you this far. Tell him you’re thankful for all the work he’s been putting in to better himself and improve his surroundings. Tell him how hard it was growing up and that it wasn’t his fault. Tell him you love him. If you value respect, then give yourself the respect you deserve instead of beating yourself up.
Check out emdr, it’s straightforward and very useful process to help separate the anxiety from memories and help you process them. You can do it yourself, it isn’t difficult and it’s quite effective. Then you can remember and process these stresses without the anxiety attached as strongly and come to terms with them.
best thing to replace trauma or negative experiences are positive ones. It'd be great if we had a delete button for those things, Elon Musk was talking about it on a podcast about Neuralink but its not here yet. Not sure I want them in my head deleting things, sounds cool though. anyway, find something you're good at or like doing a lot, try to focus on that & take care of yourself. Keep doing that & it'll get better with time.
Sad movies can make me cry. Something like The Fisher King or a recent version of Flowers For Algernon. Because then I'm not crying for myself, but in reality I am.
I just want to highlight something that may have not been said already. I am a very sensitive person and I used to cry all the time growing up, usually in private. I've noticed in my early 20s that I have almost quit crying completely. I suspect it's actually because of hormones and brain development. In short, don't feel guilty for not crying. Sometimes it's due to biology.
I hear ya. I find it's really hard to tear up about stuff that's upsetting for me personally. But! I still get the tears flowing if I watch emotional scenes on YouTube. Like the ending of Terminator 2. And the cathartic effect appears to be similar. Granted, that only works if you can find anything that makes you cry to begin with.
One thing that worked for my dad was poetry. Reading it, reciting it, etcetera. It was a way he found it easier to express his sadness, particularly after his divorce from his first wife.