Cry Much?
I’ll admit this, I’m a weeper. It’s totally embarrassing and I’ve struggled for most of my life on how to best handle this response in social situations. Although I have managed to keep tears at bay in professional settings, I can’t seem to do the same among my friends and family (or when watching Oprah :) I read something very interesting a couple weeks back and have been meaning to post. This person so perfectly captures how it feels and tips on managing, in case any of you suffer from this affliction. I wish I could credit the source, but I forgot to save that with my draft. Whoops!
I used to cry a lot in all sorts of situations. I considered it a big problem. I tried various techniques to choke it back but very few of them worked. Often I felt embarrassed and disgusted at myself, but that sure didn’t make me stop. The best method I found was giving myself a very easy, gentle task. But even that wasn’t 100% reliable.
Whenever I felt tears approaching I’d start to feel extra stress, because I knew suddenly my crying would in itself draw lots of attention and become a sort of meta-problem running on top of the problem at hand.
Eventually I realized that much of the problem was that many non-criers have no idea what it’s like to cry.
Some people don’t realize, or can’t quite believe, that it’s an involuntary physiological response to an emotional trigger; rather, they think that it’s something you do to communicate a state of all-out emergency. Similarly, they may not realize that secretions and throat constriction don’t mean you’ve “lost it”; you may still be thinking perfectly cogently. And often they think there’s something they’re supposed to do, but they don’t know what it is, and that makes them feel awkward and helpless.
So I decided that I’d take the lead and explain. I resolved that as soon as I started to feel teary, I’d interject. I’d say something like “I have a tendency to sniffle and choke up when topics like this come up. It isn’t an emergency; I’m still listening and there’s nothing you need to do.”
This won’t wash in absolutely every social situation, but in most of mine it worked amazingly well. Not only that, after a whihle I found myself crying much less often, because there wasn’t so much weight attached to those beginning feelings of tears and constriction. I guess I still cry a little more easily than some people, but no longer so much that I worry about it.
