I hated crying since I was little, especially in front of people. I’ve created a mental block that mostly prevents me from crying in front of people, but it never applies to my Dad. When I was little, my Dad told me he believed that everyone had a tear pocket that is unique to their own with the purpose to carry your tears. When the pocket gets too heavy, its okay and necessary to empty it out. When its overfilled, it can become a ponderous burden or burst. A burst could be related to a time when you’ve been holding back your tears and then the tiniest thing caused you to have a full uncontrollable break down.
Remember that crying is totally normal, and everyone does it. It is physically and mentally important/necessary to not hold back your tears. Do you know why crying makes you feel better?
When you cry, your body releases some of the tightened muscles and heightened tension. Crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system and restores the body to a state of balance. In your brain, it releases endorphins, feel-good chemicals that helps ease both physical and emotional pain.
Be gentle on yourself when you cry.
Unruly Bodies 
I love this way to look at it. When I grew up, my parents would yell at me more if I started crying, would punish me if I wouldn’t stop immediately. Now they wonder why I struggle to share my emotions. I’ve spent my adult life relearning how to navigate emotions so I really cherish this post and way of looking at crying. Thank you for sharing
This is a beautiful way to think about it. I’m the kind of person that also holds in my tears until the point where I explode from any small trigger. I think it’ll take a lot of time for me to be able to let the tears out initially, it’s definitely harder for some but I’ll keep this blog post in my head. There’s nothing wrong with crying and I’m glad you addressed this seemingly simple yet complex thought.
I loved reading this post. Like you, I hate crying and honestly, I do it only a few times a year when I reach my breaking point (probably not the healthiest technique, I know). I loved the way your dad described tears, that is so beautiful and unique. Crying is so natural and I think the negative feelings towards crying makes people think that crying and showing other forms of sad emotions is “weak” but that is completely false. I like how you mentioned that crying brings your state back to a balance because it helps to describe how showing your emotions is completely normal.
Your Dad seems like a wonderful person! I’ve never thought of it that way, but physically visualizing seems to help- even with stuff other than crying such as anxiety. I don’t usually cry as much as I used too but if you surround yourself with comfortable people you often get emotional and more prone not to suppress that emotion. For me crying was always embarrassing and still is but I don’t really care what people think- if I’m gonna cry I will cry. It is completely normal and afterwards I feel the biggest relief.
I love the way you wrote this and loved even more the way you described it. Crying has always been something that I do not like to show to other people, even though I am a big believer that everyone always needs a good cry. My mom always told me to go cry things out. While she knew that I was I would refuse to admit it to her and cry in peace instead. I think that crying is not something anyone should be ashamed of, but I can understand why people are.
Felt very close to home especially when you mentioned that it applied to everyone but your dad because I’m the exact same way. Thank you for adding the little science facts into it as well that helped because now I want to further the research and learn more about what crying does. I kind of wished we were all taught in school as part of the health curriculum or something to teach us stuff like this.
I’ve been dealing with some tough and stressful stuff the past few weeks and this post was a good reminder for me that it’s okay to not bottle it up :,). I grew up in the environment of “boys don’t cry” and so even though I’ve moved past that mentality in most ways, it still creeps up on me sometimes, especially when it comes to my own tears. Thanks for the reminder, I think once I’m done writing my comments I’m going to have a good cry and a nice cup of tea and I will feel much better.
I never really thought of crying in this way. When I think of crying, I think of times when I wanted to repress the feeling and not do it. Crying is necessary, and I usually always feel better after doing it. I guess embarrassing the crying can only make it a better experience. Thanks for this post.
I’m one of those people that cry when angry, and it’s caused me to basically hate crying because when my tears start to fall, I feel like my anger is immediately disregarded by whoever it is I m angry at. Reading your post made me realize that I haven’t cried in over six months, and even no longer cry for movies that used to make me tear up immediately (except for the first ten minutes of the movie Up, I will always cry when watching that). However, your post has me reconsidering what it means to cry; what I thought as a shameful sign of vulnerability is really just a release of emotion that can bring relief with it, and I’ll make sure to keep that in mind in the future.
Hi! I love the idea of a tear pocket, your dad’s so amazing for that. I cried more times in college (a grand total of twice) than I have outside of school in a while and it really was refreshing. Thank you for the reminder that it’s okay to cry.