What is underlying your emotion? At the same time, we may not always be able to understand the reasons behind why we are crying, and that is okay. Oftentimes, people report feeling relieved when they are able to cry without judgment in a safe space. It may be more important to release what you are feeling rather than trying to stop yourself or trying to justify a reason for your tears.
However, if you are not in a place where you feel comfortable crying and want to prevent it from happening, certain tactics work better than others. One study found that distraction was be a more effective approach than focusing on not crying. Likewise, "putting on a brave face" is more likely to prevent crying than suppressing the feeling of sadness itself. Reframing one's perspective and reassessing the emotional stimulus were the most effective strategies.
In other words, if you are able to shift your perspective and tell yourself a different story in a more positive light, that can help curb your emotional response to that situation and prevent crying. Unfortunately, it may not always be easy to do the deep cognitive work to reappraise the situation, and depending on what you try to suppress, it may not be effective, so distraction may be best.
Practically speaking, it can help to distract yourself. You could watch or read something that is unlikely to evoke any sadness. You might listen to a really happy song to boost your mood. Another approach can be physical. You may take deep breaths or engage in a grounding technique such as moisturizing your hands with lotion, using a stress ball, or engaging in some kind of physical activity to shift your focus to your sense of touch.
While it may be impossible to develop an exhaustive list, he outlines various examples, including loss, weddings, loneliness, orgasms, failure, victory, pain, and more. Low mood was a common underlying factor. Participants tended to have worse-than-usual moods not only on the day of the crying episode, but also in the two days before and after the episode. Low mood is a symptom of depression, which also includes frequent crying as a symptom.
While you may have heard that crying is beneficial, there is little definitive research on the benefits of crying, as it is impacted by different factors, such as how you view the act, where it happens, and more. For instance, tears may prompt you to reflect more on a situation than you would have had you not engaged in crying. In this way, the benefits of crying may depend on how the individual interprets that experience.
For example, a study of people found that participants who believed that crying was positive were increasingly aware of their feelings, which bodes well for both expression and regulation of emotions, while those who viewed crying negatively were less cognizant of their feelings, which limited their ability to express themselves effectively.
In this way, it may be well worth the work of unpacking negative feelings about crying given the impact of those beliefs on your ability to express your emotions in a functional manner. A study of students suggests that the physical act of emotional crying may provide the benefit of regulation of such factors as breathing and heart rate. While some may feel a sense of release after crying, it is unclear whether this has to do with the act of crying or the realizations and actions that follow the tears.
For instance, if you seek support from a loved one after crying, which helps you feel better, you may link that improvement with the act of crying. While you may want to prevent crying or stop tears once they begin, if you are concerned that you may be crying too often, it is important to unpack why you may be crying as much and understand how tears can provide a healthy emotional outlet.
Unfortunately, the act of holding yourself back from crying can cause you to store a great deal of tension in your body. You may find that you want to stop crying because there is a ton of social stigma surrounding crying. For instance, crying is often perceived in society as weakness and oversensitivity. It's important to remember that if someone shames you for crying, this person is probably uncomfortable with authentic expression of emotions—they likely suppress emotions themselves—so you may want to remember this so as not to be hard on yourself for showing tears.
While it is unfortunate that in the mainstream, crying is often viewed as weakness, the truth is that most people cry whether they admit it or not.
Stigma surrounding crying perpetuates a cycle wherein a person shamed for crying may continue to shame others for crying. So how do I stop crying at inopportune times like, say, when I'm discussing my uterus with my obstetrician?
Some of the experts I interviewed suggested pinching the bridge of my nose, where the tear ducts are, to stop the flow. But I couldn't get my hand to my nose fast enough. And though I received excellent advice about rehearsing nontearful things I might say in a confrontation, such as the one with my son's daycare administrator, that didn't work, either. I may be frustrated or angry in the moment, but I can decide which insults or slights are worthy of such an outpouring of emotion.
Getting to the root of why I well up so easily will probably take a lifetime of therapy, but for now, Bubrick provided me with a practical way to deal with its effects. The trick, he told me, is to remove myself from the drama, even by just a foot, to short-circuit the usual rush of tears. As I listened to Bubrick talk about the possible effect of something so simple on my mental state, I remembered a study I had come across weeks earlier, suggesting that even our facial expressions can influence how our brains process emotions.
Researchers at Columbia University had found that study participants reported having a less intense emotional reaction to a scary video when they didn't frown during the viewing.
Was it possible, since I enter most fraught interactions with eyebrows raised and knitted together, mouth pressed into a frown, that my expression might actually be triggering the feelings that lead to tears?
If so, could I really cure the crying problem with a neutral face and a single step away from whatever was upsetting me? It seemed unlikely, but I decided to give it a try. Two days after speaking with Bubrick, I showed up for a doctor's appointment only to learn that the doctor wasn't in.
His assistant cavalierly mentioned, without a trace of apology, that he had meant to cancel my appointment but got distracted. Meanwhile, I had hired a babysitter, blown a deadline, and driven an hour through maddening traffic to get there. I felt anger welling up. But instead of getting flustered, I relaxed my face and took a step away from the counter, which felt only a little weird.
And then: "That's incredibly rude. For the first time in 25 years, I expressed a strong emotion without dissolving under its weight. Since then I've been practicing the new technique—in talks with my husband about money, in a minor confrontation with a friend, in meetings with editors.
Looking up can also help cut the flow of tears and get you back to the right frame of mind. Pinch your nose Your tear ducts stem from the corners of your eyes down the side of your nose, so pinching the bridge of your nose when you feel the tears start to flow could help stem the tide, or better yet, stop it entirely. Change your thought patterns Changing the way you think in the moment is probably one of the most effective, but also the hardest way to stop yourself from crying.
Instead of focusing on the reason for crying in the first place, try to think of something entirely different. Think of a happy moment from your past, a funny scene from your favorite movie, or a time in your life that you're particularly proud of - anything to take you out of the moment. Distract your body If nothing else works, try distracting your body and confusing it into an entirely different emotional reaction.
Pinch yourself, dig your nails into your skin, or bite your lip - just don't go too hard! At the end of the day, crying is something everyone does, and sometimes, no matter how many ways you try to stop yourself from crying, you just have to let it out.
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