Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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.

https://youtu.be/VsNcjRSBhGA

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.

I just cry. I hate my life. I wish I wasn't born.

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.

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.

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.

ITT: People that need to find a good therapist... :(

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).

Everyday, all day.

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...

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.

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.

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.

I used to have that problem. It was an ongoing problem for pretty much my entire teenage years through the first half of my twenties. Then I started estrogen and suddenly I was crying basically every day, even at dumb stuff. That took a couple of years to even out, and now I cry easily, but not at the drop of a hat.

I don't know if an androgenic endocrine profile standing between me and the ability to cry, or if becoming myself unlocked that ability. Either way, being able to cry when I need to has been incredibly cathartic.

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 would love to be able to cry, but my medicine (ssri) make it impossible. 

Yes I think ocassionally. I used to cry a LOT as a kid so now it just feels like my tear glands are broken or overused

You need an emotional outlet. If crying doesn't work for you, perhaps some sort of art or music will. The simplest thing is to take an old pen and the back of some old printer paper and try to express your feelings in pen strokes. You don't have to draw anything. Just scribble. You could learn or relearn a musical instrument, master the wheel in a pottery class, or just go down in the basement and sing to the furnace while the dryer is running. Creative outlets and expression can be an excellent way to cry without crying. Maybe origami, or wood carving, or paper mache, or baking cupcakes. Embrace the creative and put yourself into it.

Everyday life doesn't really ever make me feel that way, I just don't find the ins and outs triggering that emotional response.

That being said, I am a prolific crier at movies. So I guess I am still regularly washing my insides, just with a different stimulus.

Yes, and I have definitely put on tearjerker movies while in that state for the sake of letting it out.