179. Why can't I cry?

great to have you here. Back for another episode. As we of course dive into the psychology of our twenties today, let's cut to the chase we're going to be talking about crying. It might seem a little bit insignificant to be devoting a whole episode to this. It might seem

a bit strange when it comes to our twenties. I think that a lot of us try to avoid crying, but sometimes they're no better feeling than just having a solid moment to let yourself be in pain, to experience a little bit of self pity, and to let it all out through tears. And sometimes nothing feels more frustrating than wanting so badly to cry and have that physical

outlet for your emotions and being unable to. It can feel like something within us is blocked, something about us is defective or faulty because we're not feeling things deeply enough or to the point where we can let it all out and have this like physical expression of what is occurring internally, and I really get that it can leave us with a lot of I think, frustration and almost like anger at ourselves and just this like longing for a good old fashioned sob. The truth of the

matter is our twenties are really freaking hard. Being human is hard. Life is hard. We are all going to go through difficult moments and times in our lives where we lose people, we're frustrated by life, we're having a really rough time at work, our boss is an asshole. And being able to release all that stress, that grief, that anger, that sadness is one of the good parts about being human and having that huge catalog of emotional

expressions and ability to feel emotions. When we feel it detached from that ability, and it happens every now and again, we I think feel almost under control, under the control of our emotions, and we feel like there is this pent up energy inside of us that has nowhere to go but up and into our brain and cause us more stress and more fear and more anxiety and tears serve a purpose. Sometimes they serve as an outlet. There

is nothing better. So for anyone who is feeling a little bit emotionally repressed at the moment, who was finding that they can't even cry in the moments, they want nothing more than That's what we're going to discuss today.

anatomy for a second. Each of us is born with two tear ducts in each of our eyes, and they have two openings, one on the upper eyelid, one on the like in the inner eyelid. We all you know what I'm talking about. Close to the bridge of the notes. Now, crying doesn't just occur for emotional reasons. There are actually three different types of tears. We have basil tears, reflex tears,

and emotional tears. Basil tears they wash away dirt and gems and yucky things, keeping us from getting an infection, going blind, that kind of thing. Reflex tiars are what occur when something harmful gets in our eye, like a bug or when we're cutting onion. It's responsive to something coming from the environment. And then finally we have emotional tears. Emotional tears are a lot more complicated than basil and reflex tiers, which I'm sure we kind of all assumed

at this point. But the thing about emotional tears is that they are not automatic. In order to cry, our limbic system, the part of our brain that regulates our emotions. That part of our brain has to be activated and send signals to our glands to produce tears, and in those tears contains a bunch of other proteins and hormones that we don't find in our everyday basil or reflex tiars, things like potassium prolactin, which also helps us produce milk,

and finally the big one, stress hormones like cortisol. This is probably our first clue that we're dealing with something a little bit bigger when we need to cry. It's a lot more psychological than just physical. That's because most evolutionary researchers will tell you that crying serves a purpose. Actually, it serves a number of important functions that all have something to do with how we feel emotion and how we connect to others through mental, physical, and emotional expressions

of pain. So firstly, when you are an emotional physical pain, crying can actually make you feel really good. It can actually provide real physical relief from that pain. When you cry, your body releases hormones such as endorphins and oxytocin the same chemical structures that we see in pain relievers and opioids. That is why a big sub feels just so good, even though that might seem counterintuitive because we often associate

it with sadness and pain. Really, this act is telling your body that something is wrong, something has triggered this reaction, and it needs to do something about it, so it fires up all these pleasurable neurotransmitters and hormones to counteract whatever painful thing is bothering us. There is a really interesting article by Harvard health that talks about this, and it also speaks on how crying provides an emotional catharsis.

It gives big emotions somewhere to go that isn't just running around in our brain in an endless ruminating loop. So it's really interesting because that is not a new idea, right even back in a lot of the ancient civilizations, the Greeks, the Romans, they almost saw our tears as having a healing capacity. They were they would drain us

of something negative, they would purify us. And not only has that really like continued to stand, but now there have been a lot lot more papers and a lot more research into this that is proving that those initial conceptions and ideas were actually pretty close to the scientific truth. Now, crying isn't the only way to do this, you know,

Exercise is another way. Displacement as Freud would call it, is also another way taking your pain out on others, but it is the one that seems most accepted and socialized. Of course, if your pet died, you know you're going to cry. People accept that as part of the sadness. If some every one yells at you, you have this really big emotional blow up or a conflict. Again, it seems like the most natural reaction to a painful or uncomfortable situation. Crying in this way can also have a

self soothing effect. So this was a finding published by a twenty fourteen study that noticed when people cry, this very act also activated their powasympathetic nervous system, which helps us relax and once again we get that intense distress kind of out of the way through the act of crying. We when we activate our parasympathetic nervous system, a whole

bunch of other things occur in our body. Our heart rate begins to slow down, we begin to feel quite tired, and also all that emotion seems and that fear really seems too clear, so we're able to think more rationally and from a place of I don't want to say peace, but from a place of calm. It's also why after crying you might feel really exhausted or drowsy, maybe even peaceful.

You have involuntarily activated this very important part of your nervous system, but also you've drained a lot of that energy that was keeping you tense and sad and stressed. Now there's been a bit of preliminary research that has suggested that crying the reason why it makes us feel this way is because the very active crying releases stress hormones through the production of tears, meaning that there is less of that stress hormone, particularly cortisol, to go around

in the body. I'm going to like just you know, I wanted to mention that, but I would also say there probably needs to be a bit more research. I don't really see how a few millimeters of tears can have that much impact on those stress response of a sixty kiloor one hundred kilo one hundred and fifty kilo human like. It seems quite negligible. But that is another explanation and the final one as to why we cry

has a lot to do with our social evolution. So one of the first things that babies do when they are born is cry. Obviously that's to get a lot of the fluid out of their lungs, but it's also to get attention, and then they pretty much don't stop crying. Ever. Like, even as humans, we don't stop crying, but especially when we're babies, like, babies cry a whole lot, and the reason why is because crying is what we would call an attachment behavior. It serves as a signal to those

around us to comfort us. It draws people's attention to us because when they hear those cries, that automatically causes this association with distress, and that acknowledgment of distress activates the part of our brain that deals with empathy, and that is what motivates us to help someone to be pro social. So, crying in children and in adults promotes closeness, It promotes empathy in others, it promotes kindness because it

is intended evolutionarily biologically to elicit care and comfort. Actually, attachment theory, very first attachment theory paper talks about the role of crying quite a bit. So Back in the original studies conducted by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, they noticed that children who showed a lack of crying when their parents are left, when they were being comforted by

a stranger or were left in a strange situation. Those children whose immediate reaction was to not cry but to stay silent, they probably had a disorganized attachment style or an insecure, anxious, avoidant attachment style because they were used

to this very innate and instinctual act of crime. Not being met with the typical response you know, support, care and love, and so they almost just stop doing it because they realized that it didn't serve a function the function that it should be serving, which is to you know, receive empathy and receive care and kindness not just from your primary caregiver, but from other people within our species

around you. All Right, So, now that we've spoken about the functions and purposes of crying, what are some of the reasons that we can't do it? Why can't we cry? That's the real title of this episode. So let's start off with the first reason. Maybe you're just really happy. There is no reason at all why you can't cry. It's just that you have no reason to. That is

actually a completely valid explanation for this. We're kind of all on this like very fun roller coaster of life, and sometimes you're just at a high point and you've stayed there for a few months. That is a good thing, I promise, But I get that sensation and anticipation of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think if you're used to feeling like you're just someone who has bad luck or never feeling quite satisfied or happy, and you're in this moment where everything just seems to be

strangely going your way. It's natural to be feeling a little bit anxious about that and wondering what's wrong with you, wondering when this is all going to disappear. I want to give you permission right now. It's okay to just

be happy and content for a while. But if you're not crying when it feels necessary, like after a traumatic event or something really hard happening in your personal life, that is probably a sign that your stoicism is going a bit too far, and you may be partially disconnected from your true emotions and what's going on underneath the

seemingly composed surface. If it feels like an appropriate time to be crying and you can't, the number one explanation is shock after a loss or even something like a breakup. I hear so many people saying it's so strange, like it's been a few days and I'm completely fine, Like I haven't cried once, it's been like three weeks and I'm totally already over it. You know, that is just not probably true. That's not a sign that you just

have super quick emotional healing powers. Or that you've already recovered. What you're actually experiencing is probably shock. So we know that there are a few stages of grief that we go through after something, after a loss, after something happens, shock or denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And the depression stage is what I think most of us think when we think about heartbreak or loss. It's very outward, it's very feeling, it's very visible and emotional, it's probably

even teary. But before we get there, we have three other stages to pass through that don't always involve as many tears. Shock is the most significant one. It is a protective or defensive mechanism our brain and lists in the immediate aftermath of something intense or life changing or painful. That helps us compartmentalize emotions until we are prepared or have the mental resources or the mental space to deal

with them. So there's an evolutionary reason for this. Back in the day, when we roamed the Sahara, we were fleeing wild beasts and lions and warring with our neighbors. We sometimes had to delay an emotional reaction until we were out of danger because heavy emotions during that time could really cost us our lives. It would take our attention off of escaping, off of getting away from a

dangerous situation. And this instinct to avoid initially hard, heavy emotions for survival purposes has carried with us, and so now it's seen in response to different, more modern triggers, like a breakup, your brain is trying to keep you safe for as long as it can by keeping those emotions and feelings, almost like behind a mental wall of glass. We can see what happened, We can see that it's going to hurt, but the full impact hasn't hit us yet.

It may also be that you know how you know, you know how hard it's going to be when you finally let yourself feel what you've been through. So you are trying your hardest, unconsciously even consciously, to delay the inevitable. Even if this isn't entirely conscious, what you're doing is buying into the delusion that putting off hard feelings may

mean that they never actually occur. So when the war comes down, and you may not want to hear this, but it will eventually come down, it could be days, it could be weeks, it could be months, even years. That's when we see this suffering we're most accustomed to seeing again. The interesting thing is that more often than not, the thing that finally triggers our tears is normally completely unrelated to the initial or predicted source of our sadness

and our misery. We can spend like months in a state of just like complete emotional stagnation and numbness, and then one Monday, a random Monday, you miss your bus, your outfit is uncomfortable, it's just a little bit too hot, and then you stab your toe and the tap just gets turned on and all of those months of pent

up emotion flood into your life. All it took was for that metaphorical straw to break the camel's back, that daily stress of that small thing, on top of all of the other major life events, to finally provide a release. It feels a little bit unfair, I know, But sometimes the brain and our mind and our psychology doesn't operate according to our rules and what we want. In the meantime, you may not be able to tap into that side of you that really does just want to have a

big cry in response to whatever it is. Another reason why you might be struggling with this a reaction is because of medication, specifically antidepressants and SSRIs, so selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. They've done studies on this. It's one of the biggest side effects of being on antidepressants. Forty six percent of people who are on these experience blunted emotions.

And although these medications are amazing they help relieve symptoms of depression anxiety that have maybe caused complete dysfunction, they can also affect how we experience everyday feelings. So I've talked about this before on the show. I was on lexipro for three years. I don't think I cried more

than twice over that period of time. During that time, I went through a serious, like long term breakup, my grandfather passed away, a lot of other things were happening in my personal life, and I just couldn't do I Literally, no matter how hard I tried, I could not shed a tear. And it was really strange because I had all the other signs that I wanted to. I had this tightness in my chest, I had this swelling in my throat, I had this tension in my forehead. It

felt like it was going to happen. I was almost there, and then it would stop right short of like a tear, and it was so unfulfilling, and in more serious moments, it actually did feel like the emotions lingered longer in my body because they had nowhere to go, and that at times made them harder to manage. It made that it kind of made it seem like they never truly went away, but they were kind of just always there

at a lower frequency in the background. The way would I was talking to my therapist about it was when you have a fly buzzing around your house and you just can't quite catch it, and it's not that annoying, but it's still pretty annoying, and you just want to get rid of it. You just want to smash that fire.

You just want to have that cathartic action. I know this is a common experience for a lot of other people I've spoken to who are on these medications, and it's kind of like you're forced into this trade off. Do you want to be able to function and not be overwhelmed by anxiety or depressive thoughts, That's going to mean that sometimes you have to give up your ability to feel as deeply and as intensely as you previously have, and it's a decision that we need to make individually.

It doesn't mean that it's not still difficult, and there aren't times when you really wish that you had access to all that emotion, your full range of sensitivity and feeling, and just that energy source that you can tap into. Speaking of medications for depression, we should also probably focus on the impact of those conditions as well on our ability to cry. So I think one of the common misconceptions about being depressed is that you are constantly sobbing,

You're constantly a pool of tears. Actually, sometimes you are so sad and forlorn you just can't cry. This is known as depression. With melancholia, you are completely and entirely numb to all your emotions. And in that flat, emotionless state, it's not that you just can't even feel the good things. You can't feel anything, sadness included, because nothing, not even the bad things, the hard things, the painful things, have

meaning to you anymore. Now I would say this is super rare, but it does still occur, and it's worth going further with your investigation into this if you think it applies. This is obviously a significant change in how we experience emotions, and therefore you will need to talk to it therapist because they're going to be able to really tell you a lot more about what creates this situation and kind of how to get out of this

complete mental numbness and staleness. Now, let's move on and talk about the reason most people think of when it comes to an inability to cry. I saved it for last. Emotional repression, the unconscious act of pushing down feelings that we see as dangerous or too much. People deal with emotions in different ways. We can respect that sadness, grief, anger, whatever it may be, heartbreak. They are not a one size fits all experience. Some people have a very expressive style.

They cry very easily and frequently. Often these people are more sensitive, they have more empathy, or they've been socialized to be more accepting of tears and crying as a way to manage emotions. It may they also come down to factors, like they sleepless, they have underlying depressive symptoms. Like we spoke about, all of these just make us more prone to crying sometimes for no reason. Other people, though, are more repressed, and they find it really hard to cry.

And to express what's going on through this method. And then there's this category of people who may intentionally suppress their emotions to avoid revealing to themselves, not just to others, what they're feeling. Frequently, with repressed emotions, you might not even realize you're unconsciously avoiding your feelings, which is why

you might be confused by your inability to cry. That is because the origins of this inability happened a long time ago, often in the past, in our childhood experiences. It could be the case that big displays of sadness, even happiness, were not accepted in your family or culture. They weren't seen as appropriate, and so when you have the urge, you have been conditioned time and time again

to suppress rather than feel. It may have been that every time you did cry you were expressing sensitivity towards your emotions. You were punished for it, and so you have begun to associate the need to feel with punishment and pain and shame. We see this a lot with men. Society continuously tells them it's not manly or appropriate or how boys should behave, and so they internalize those external attitudes such that their threshold for what's you know, whatever

demand's tears, it's much higher. And even when they really you know, when things that really hard happen, they cannot get themselves into this state because they are so used to suppressing this urge, and it carries a lot of shame. That also creates a disconnect between us and our emotions. I was lucky. I had a father who probably cries more than my mother. But a lot of people do learn how to process their emotions from the parent who is the same gender as them. I was really lucky.

I feel like I grew up in a family who that was always accepted. There was a natural reaction to tears, and I sometimes feel quite sad for people who didn't have this as an example, who weren't socialized and raised in an environment of emotional acceptance. As I said before, we have the ability to cry for a reason to provide release. Catharsis as a social cue to notice when people are upset, when they need our help. When you are forced to deprive yourself of some emotional function like crying,

other things also tend to go off balance. There's suggestions that all that feeling goes elsewhere, and it's expressed in more harmful ways, like through rage and anger because it needs somewhere to go. And I think that's a lesson to all of us. That's suppression and avoidance of emotion. It doesn't mean that they don't exist, that they cease to exist. They will find a way to come to the surface. They will find a way to get your attention,

whether you want them to or not. So we've discussed the main reasons for our inability to cry, but what do we actually do about it? We're not going to leave it there. What is the way forward here? Is it to watch as many sad movies as possible or animal rescue videos and like wait until something clicks. Probably not. When we're getting to the root of this, we actually need to take a step back from the tears and look what's underneath. It all a disconnect with your deeper

emotional state. So we're going to talk about all of that and more after this shortbreak. When it comes to an inability to cry, the solution is not forcing yourself to cry by any means necessary. It's not like you have a blocked a drain or a pipe and once you remove the gun, everything will start flowing freely again. You know you're not a plumbing problem. The solution is getting back in touch with what you're feeling. When you're feeling it. It's about a deeper emotional disconnect that we

need to heal. So let's talk about it. If you've been through a few hard chapters recently, or you have been once, as we said, you know, conditioned or socialized to repress rather than express. Your ability to identify your emotions and what is bothering you has probably become a

little bit disorganized or broken. When we see emotions as our captors or as a source of shame, or we perceive them as being stronger than us, that is when we have an incentive to not feel them at all, and that results in that inability for expression and release. To get past this, we can do a few things, and I'm going to talk about three strategies, in particular, noticing your emotions in your body, talking to your friends

about their feelings, and finding a creative outlet. Paying attention to your body is so important when it comes to noticing and making peace with whatever is going on in your mind. We feel emotions in the body. This has been written about so much in the last few decades. Perhaps most notably in the book The Body Keeps the Score, which mainly talks about how stress and trauma in particular have a somatic form and a somatic impact. It causes

chronic pain, hormone imbalance, so much more. On a smaller scale, though, every emotion we feel, we feel it through our neurons. Now, a lot of us think that neurons are only found in the brain. It's a common misconception, but it's actually not true. Neurons are found throughout the body outside of the brain. They're known as sensory and motor neurons, and our brain is in control of all of these. It

is the main communicator, It is the leader. The other thing our brain is is in control of communicating with is our emotions. And so there is this connection between what we feel emotionally and what we feel physically because it is using a lot of the same pathways. A

lot of those pathways are connected. What that means is that when we begin to use physical cues to notice and identify our feelings, we can really unlock a whole new range of emotions and emotional recognition we didn't previously have. For example, anger is often felt between the chest and the head, Whilst fear is usually felt between the stomach and the chest, sadness is felt in the face, in the throat, even in our limbs it makes them heavy,

and emotional pain can really be felt all over. A lot of us have become very disconnected from these signs and emotional cues that are present in our limbs and in our muscles and in our bones. If you're struggling with emotional expression, tap into what you're feeling through a body scan. And how you do that You focus on each area of your body from your toes to the top of your head, and you pay attention what is

causing you discomfort? Where is their heaviness or tightness, Where is their pent up energy and excitement and like tingling? And what is that trying to tell you? Those sensations are not there by accident. That is your brain trying to communicate something to you that you may have previously stopped yourself from recognizing because you are trying to compartmentalize and protect yourself. As you do that body scan, consciously tense and then relax your muscles, particularly your face and

your shoulders. Now I sometimes do this when I'm trying to fall asleep, and when I consciously turn my attention to these parts of my body, it's really only then that I realized just how much, just like tension and like anxiety and stress, is being stored in those areas. If you can, you should do it right now. Let all of those muscles relate. Let all of that tension in your shoulders go for a second, and then try it again. Let them go even looser, and try your forehead.

Drop it as low as you can. I'm literally doing it as I'm speaking right now. Feel how your eyebrows move closer to your eyes, Feel how everything around your skull just seems to loosen. You might even get like a little tingle. And can you notice just how much better you feel? And can you also pay attention to what's coming up for you? That is really the first step in this process, observing and discerning how emotions are sitting in your body and what different emotions feel like

for you. Secondly, talk to your friends about their feelings. When we are disconnected from our emotions, sometimes we no longer have the words to explain what we're feeling. And that's where talking to people you trust can be so helpful. Not only do I think they give us a lot of language for what we're going through, which I always find super helpful. They also offer support and a place for vulnerability, a space for openness that maybe we just

haven't had before, We've never been permitted access to. I think one of the crazy things that always comes up for me is just this constant epiphany that you are not the only one. Nothing is experienced in isolation. So much of what we experience in our twenties and beyond is universal, and it's made a lot easier with community and support and someone who is going to sit across from you and say, I'm witnessing your life, I see

what you're going through. That is really really hard. Hearing someone else say that validates so much of what we're experiencing. I have had that happen where just someone says like, I'm so sorry, I can see that must be so painful, and just that acknowledgment makes me burst into tears. I think become curious about other people's emotions as well, ask questions, listen other people crave to be heard as much as

you do, and in response, share your own feelings. You know, as humans, we have this beautiful superpower that we can connect through emotions and through vulnerability, And as we get better at being vulnerable with other people, we get better at being vulnerable with ourselves, having a sense of acceptance that this is okay, this is normal, other people are experiencing this. I am not defective, I am not faulty,

there is nothing wrong with me. And the tears might not come instantly, but there is this increased level of acceptance and this increased level of recognition for what you are actually experiencing, and there's just this increased level of just kindness in your life, which I think everyone can really benefit from. Finally, look for an outlet, especially one that is creative. There is no one way to feel. I feel like I have mentioned that a million times

in this episode. There are so many other ways we can channel what's happening in our bodies firstly, but also in our minds into something that is tangible, and it doesn't have to involve tears or crying. When that thing that we choose to us is out as our outlet is creative or physical, it also allows us to use these parts of our brain that we may otherwise be neglecting or just not using as much. It makes us feel less inhibited. It freees parts of us that otherwise

have nowhere else to exist. That is the power of creativity. And I've talked about this on the podcast before, but after my first big breakup, I tried anything creative or with my hands that I could. I did painting, I did pottery. I even did weaving for a while. It's not as fun as you think. It takes ages, but it just felt like my brain was opening up and

noticing a whole new world, both extern and within. There is a reason why art therapy is so popular because we are finally waking up to the fact that doing something purposeful and meaningful and artistic and creating something, rather than always feeling like the world is taking things from us, it helps us regulate what we're feeling. Our emotions are a huge source of inspiration and they want a place to go. They are looking for an outlet. And maybe

right now that's not crying for you. But I think the more you the further you get in this process, the more everything else seems to loosen up. If you want some further evidence of this, as a really well known UCL study that was conducted in part with BBC Arts, and what they found was that when they gave people the space to be creative, especially in response to big, large, scary emotions, it didn't actually matter if they were even objectively good at it. It was just the participation and

the act that counted. Make bad art express everything in anything, and you will slowly see how your access to your emotions becomes expanded because you begin to see them in a positive light as a source of inspiration and motivation and of creativity. Finally, I say this in a lot of these episodes because I just think it's so true. Be gentle with yourself. Imagine that the person sitting in front of you, who is struggling with their emotions, with

their ability to cry, is five year old you. You wouldn't yell at them, you wouldn't shame them, you wouldn't get angry at them. I know it's frustrating. I know sometimes we just long for that catharsis and release of a good old fashioned cry. But you are not defective, You are not faulty. You are not a psychopath, because that isn't available to you at the moment. There are so many reasons and very valid explanations for why this is, but there are also so many ways through. You are

doing the best you can. You're probably managing a lot in your life right now, and your brain is trying to help you in some way. But I often find when we finally get to a place of feeling emotionally safe and secure, the tears will come. So thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I hope you got something out of it. I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you learned something from my experience. You know, that's always the mission with these episodes, is being like,

you know, your twenties feels super isolating. I'm there with you. You're not alone. There are so many people who are going through something similar. As always, if you did enjoy this episode, please feel free to leave a five start review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening. I you know, I don't know if people really know this.

It's kind of just me running this podcast. I don't really have like a huge team, so I'm still the one who reads all of your messages and all of your reviews and all of your comments, and it really makes my day. So also, if you have an episode suggestion, I say this at the end of every episode. Please

feel free to DM me at that Psychology podcast. I would love to hear what you have in mind and if you want to see what I'm doing in my own life as a twenty something year old, feel free to follow me at chemispeg on Instagram and we will be back on Friday with a new episode. Until then, stay safe and we will talk soon.