How can I avoid crying when I feel sad or angry?

Question

I am a 35-year-old woman,usually when I have a tiff with someone or I get vey angry I start crying and that makes me look weak.how can I avoid it?

Answer 1

Swami Sukhabodhananda
RSS Feeds| SMS ASTRO to 8888 for latest updates


One youngster comes to me very depressed and asks this question "Why is God creating so many difficulties for us? How to handle stress?" I tell this youngster to reflect on this beautiful story:

A man goes to a shop, picks up a beautiful cup and says "my god this cup is so beautiful" and suddenly the cup starts talking to the man. The cup starts saying "O man, I am beautiful right now, but what was the state of my being before the pot-maker made me a beautiful pot?

Before I was sheer mud and the pot-maker pulled me out of the mud from the mother earth and I felt why that pot-maker is so cruel, he has separated me from mother earth. I felt a tremendous pain. And the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then he put me and churned me, when I was churned I felt so giddy, so painful, so stressful, I asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then he put me into a oven and heated me up, I felt completely burnt. There was tremendous pain and I asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" and the pot-maker said, "Just wait."

Then he poured hot paint on me and I felt the fume and the pain, I again asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" and the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then again he put me into an oven and heated it to make me more strong, I felt life is so painful hence pleaded the pot-maker and the pot-maker said, "Just wait." And after that the pot-maker took me to the mirror and said, "Now look at yourself". And surprisingly I found myself so beautiful.

When god gives us lot of trouble, it appears god is very cruel but we need patience and we have to wait. When bad things happen to good people, they become better and not bitter.

So all difficulties are part of a cosmic design to make us really beautiful. We need patience, we need understanding, we need the commitment to go through in a very calm and wise way. So all difficulties are not to tumble us but to humble us.

With this understanding, let us not be against difficulty. Understand difficulty is a part of a purifying process. A purifying process at present which we cannot understand and hence we need faith and we need trust.

Let us understand how to handle stress with this background. You can be affected by stress from two angles. There is an internal stress and there is an external stress. Nobody can avoid stress; one has to only manage stress. Managing stress can be internal and also external.

The internal stress is; your thoughts can create stress, your values can create stress, and your beliefs can create stress, meaning thereby your stress is coming from your mind more from the outer world. Many people suffer not from heart attack - they suffer from thought-attack.

For example, when somebody says you are an idiot, we get so hurt, we get so victimised. My boss has called me an idiot and I am feeling tremendous pain. Now where does this stress come from? If my boss has called me an idiot, I have to ask myself "am I an idiot"?

If I am an idiot nothing to be upset about; and if I am not an idiot, then also nothing to be upset about! It is the perception of the boss. But why do we suffer from that stress? I suffer not because my boss has called me an idiot but because of the thought-attack.

I may say the boss has called me an idiot; therefore I am suffering? It is true that the words are unpleasant. But what hurts is the interpretation of the unpleasant word. The thought in me interprets. That is pain and therefore it becomes pain. Much of our stress is our mind interpreting it as pain. So we suffer from thought-attack more than heart attack.

Answer 2

If you express what you're feeling and why in the moment, you'll engage your mind and likely cry less. Just speak right through the tears, if you can. Over time, you'll eventually be able to speak more articulately about what is upsetting or angering you and you will be less likely to break down into tears. I agree that tears are important information as well as a release of tension. Just asking this question is a step in the direction you want to go.

Answer 3

I am not sure how you can avoid it, but i would suggest that by bottling up your emotions will only let them build up to such a degree that you won't be able to hold them in anymore and there will be a release in some other form, be it illness or depression.

I would suggest you try meditating, so you are able to focus your mind, use a picture of some place you feel happy and strong. Then, when you are in these situations again, you can use this image to help you through the moment until you are able to be in private.

Remember: you will still need to release these emotions.

Answer 4

I cry too when I am upset ... I watch and wait to be alone or go to my car or get to my room and have a sensitive cry festival and then perk up on food...or be slightly overweight to let this balance out. This is taking out a weakness on yourself but normal. If you let your feelings out and yell and rage trouble might start but you are a victim of the situation and a past child hood experience.
I am not a doctor but I play on on the internet so to speak Please see a real doctor first of all to work through this or see your friends if it is a work related problem...avoid that person that upset you or let your upset out to someone who can solve it for you....

Answer 5

You are 35 year old woman . You are an adult by the way. You know to think . Just calm yourself and when yourself get angry.
Remind yourself
* I am mature lady.
* I should handle the situation in a gentle way.
* I am a strong .

By the way you need to analyse yourself , when you are getting angry?
Why? what for?

Also , It is not good to control your emotion toomuch.
It will spoil you . So handle the situation in a deligently.

* Keep yourself strong.
* Feel strong.
* Don't be timid.
* Be brave.

At the same time don't fight unnecessarily for unwanted reason.

All the best.

Answer 6

I don't know. I know that those tears at that moment are about the best friends you have in the whole wide world because they help release tension and frustration. Strong folks cry too.

Answer 7

For me ...
I've tried that part where you go ahead and cry but it seems for me later I regret ever doing that
SOLUTION: take a big breath look up and try to dry the tears that are flooding your eyes and don't try to go too deep into what you are thinking of .

Answer 8

it sounds like you need a vacation,or maybe you're just too sensitive. It might have to do with the way you were raised.Or past experiences. just don't take things so seriously. see someone about it if it's bothering you too much. it's okay to cry. it takes strength to cry

Answer 9

Go ahead and cry.. its better than high blood pressure.
Your only weak when you people walk over you but you can't help having a soft heart.

Answer 10

Oh, I know how you feel. I cry when I get angry. It is normal. It is a sign of strength actually when we cry. When we hold it in is when it is worse for us. I even cry at commercials on TV or on the radio. I never understood why my mother cried at movies, but I sure do now.
People feel better after they cry. I found this on a website and although it is lengthy, it is quite interesting.
http://www.glendale.cc.ca.us/title5/120_cpe/tears3.htm
Removal of stress-related chemicals by tears would explain why people say they feel better after crying, according to Frey. In studies done through extensive questionnaires, 85 percent of women and 73 percent of men reported that they felt better -- less sad or less angry -- after crying. "When people talk about crying it out, that might literally be true," he says.

Chances are, especially if you are a woman, that the overflowing emotions will trigger a switch. You will weep.

Why the heck do people cry?" asks James Gross, a clinical psychologist at Stanford University. "It is such a weird thing to do. You get upset and water comes out of your eyes."

The answer lies in a complex web of psychology, biochemistry and evolutionary biology. Although many books have been written on the topic, scientists can only speculate on the purpose of emotional tears. These speculations range from no reason at all to removal of stress hormones to a form of communication.

He wonders whether crying stimulates release of endorphins, substances in the brain that have mood-elevating and pain-relieving effects. "Then it really makes sense to cry when you are hurt," he says, "because it stimulates pharmacological substances that are in the body."

HORMONAL EFFECTS

Women cry five times more than men and do so with tears running down their cheeks. By contrast, 70 percent of male crying episodes are the type in which their eyes fill with tears.

This gender difference appears around age 12 or 13. Frey believes that this is due partly to anatomical differences at the cellular level between the tear glands of women and men. He attributes these differences to hormones, in particular prolactin, which is involved in the menstrual cycle, breast development and lactation.

Alternatively, Vingerhoets says, male hormones such as androgens and testosterone may inhibit crying. Such hormonal effects also could explain individual differences in crying frequency or why women become more prone to crying during menstruation, pregnancy and soon after giving birth.

Marc Hauser, an evolutionary psychologist at Harvard University and author of The Evolution of Communication, also speculates that emotional tears serve a purpose. He believes that tears accompanying human crying signal the honesty of the emotion.

This depth of feeling can elicit social support from other people, Cornelius says. Even when we cry alone, he says, we have ourselves as an audience, as well as the internalized views of other people. "It's social support that makes us feel better after we cry," he says, "If we don't get that support, it's unlikely that we're going to feel better."

Also, a negative response may have the opposite effect. For example, crying in the workplace can be disastrous when others perceive you as weak and not up to the job, he says. Hence, people often cry after work, between 7 to 10 p.m., when they are with their significant other. They are more fatigued in the evening, Frey says, and have a lower threshold for releasing their emotions.

Children certainly seem to know how to make use of the crying signal. As infants, they cry to communicate hunger, pain or other distress. "That's a very effective means to mobilize people to comfort the baby and to offer help," Vingerhoets says.

The signal seems tricky with older children. Most people are familiar with the scenario of the child who stumbles and falls and then cries only if someone is nearby.

Hauser says that's not because children can automatically turn their tears on and off. They are often right at the edge of crying, he says. "If they see someone is around, they just let their emotions go."

Hauser agrees that this type of crying may seem manipulative but says all communicative signals are manipulative. You are asking for a response to your needs.

On the other hand, not all adults cry as a signal for help. Vingerhoets says the presence of others may in fact inhibit crying in some cases.

"There is a lot of stigma attached to portraying yourself as being weak," especially for men, Gross says. "They feel very uncomfortable expressing that kind of vulnerability and need."

Suppressing emotions, however, may have physiological consequences. Whether you cry or don't cry with sadness, your sympathetic nervous system shows increased activity, Gross says.

If you cry, people nearby will help you, and the parasympathetic nervous system can take over and calm things down, he says. If you suppress crying, however, the sympathetic nervous system will continue stirring things up for a longer period of time.

"You may need to do that in a business interview or some other context," Gross says, "but if you inflexibly and chronically suppressthese emotions such as anger or sadness, I think that can get you in trouble."

The Bottom Line

Vingerhoets and Cornelius have devised a model to explain weeping: It is a way to cope or bring difficult emotions under control. "It facilitates recovery after you have been in distress," Vingerhoets says.

This recovery can be through psychobiological pathways such as release of endorphins, he says, or through a social or psychological channel because it induces emotional support.

"There is an evolution of society's attitudes," Frey says, "moving towards acceptance of crying and a view that it is not a bad thing, not a sign of weakness and loss of control and self-indulgence."