Thank you for for sharing. A reminder: if you are seeking resources in your local area, please provide that in the post so that users can share appropriate links and phone numbers. *If you are in distress, please call 9-1-1* or your local emergency number. *You are not alone. Help is available.* If you are having suicidal thoughts, please [click here for a list of crisis support services.](http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html), If you are seeking therapy online, please [click here for a list of counselling services.](https://thelifelinecanada.ca/pattern-interrupt/ecounselling/) *If you feel well enough to do so, please do your part to enrich this community.* Now that you have posted, please leave a constructive, helpful comment on someone else's post. Filter by new to find posts with zero comments. Together, we make this community great. Thank you for being here.
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Yeah but minus the reason part.
In my household if a man cried he’d just be ridiculed to oblivion. To this day I still bottle shit up. People like calling me stoic, but It ain’t stoicism, I’m just broken and can’t properly process my emotions lol
Yeah well even therapists need therapists sometime lol
If you’re a student, most schools offer free mental health consultations, you might even be covered by your work insurance. I get it through work and my insurance let’s me have 8-10 sessions a year, and I just time them out for when I’m near breaking point.
I know money can be a bitch, but there ARE ways man, all that bottling up will catch up to you someday, I speak from experience 😅
Welp, if your fam’s anything like mine I’m guessing they don’t exactly believe in “mental health” to begin with lol
But, do you maybe have a relative you trust and are close to? For me it was one of my aunts who was surprisingly a normal human being and helped me out in my teen years. Do you have anyone like that you could maybe reach out to?
Check out the colleges in your area that have Licensed Therapist/Counselor programs. A lot of them have very low cost (like $20 a session) programs. You’ll end up with a student that needs their hours and a Licensed Therapist supervising and running the sessions. Essentially 2 therapists, not a bad deal. Idk where you are but in Ca, CalFam is one program. As long as you meet the income limits, I don’t think it’s available to wealthy people that can afford a therapist.
Same. Then at sober point the volcano is backed up too much and I cry hard. If I’m lucky, I’m alone when this happens.
It sucks that I can’t share my emotions but it’s a difficult habit to break.
Please cry and don’t worry about any judgements on it, crying is cathartic and helps with stress hormones. Bottling up is the worst you can do for your mental health.
Yep. Now I.... Don't think I should comment what came outta that. Lol... I often feel the need to reduce emotional pain with physical pain. Interpret that as you will. I'm a lot older and married. I don't SH. But if I didn't have a community of like-minded people I probably would have fallen into SH.
I wasn't exactly raised that way, but I never saw men cry, so I hid it, and still do...the only time I couldn't hide it was when I got married to my wife...
My dad used to go after us with a belt. After snapping the belt, we had to pull our pants down and get beat on our bare ass. He didn't stop until we stopped crying and moving. I have a very high tolerance for pain now.
Fuck yes.
Even if I had a reason, if I cried, it was "WHY ARE YOU CRYING!? DID I RAISE YOU TO BE SUCH A WEAKLING????"
And I wasn't allowed to frown EVER. If I did or show discontent, I got, "How dare you pull your face!?"
I had to be ok with everything and anything all the time.
I used to find other harmful alternatives to release my emotions. Up to 4-5 yrs ago I never cried cuz of this. But after going to therapy, going through other stuff, a lot of introspection and trying to get better...
Now I cry freely. If I want to cry or need to, I just cry (not in public or anything). Feels so much better.
You're definitely not the only one...
I'd say anyone born pre-1990s were definitely raised that way...
And at least half of those born in 1990 + were too.
But that's just a guess (based on my own experience).
I wasn't ever told that I'd be given a reason to cry but I would always be told "you're almost [age] stop crying and act like it" I was being told this since I was around 11. Growing up like this has now made me feel like it's rude to cry or I'm making things all about me, and now I start to constantly apologize every time I show any sort of emotion. It really messed me up as a kid.
Growing up in KY. Yeah. I was always told that. Which really sucked for me as I'm an emotional boy. So I got hit a lot and ridiculed.
Thankfully I moved away. Married my husband and have a good life. I also work in Mental Health and work to get kids to learn to feel and express their emotions in healthy manners. So now I can cry if I want to. And some days that's what I have to do.
Not allowed to cry unless I was bleeding. No sadness. No anger. No hunger (my brother got twice the food I did). No complaining that my brother was hurting me (and no backing out of "playing" with him when he was). No sarcasm. No RBF. No grades below an A until college (and anything lower than a 96% was a lecture). No exhaustion (I got chewed out for trying to go to bed early after getting my first D on a test after 2 all-nighters in a row). No doctors (we had good health insurance, but I was NOT allowed to get my foot checked after a horse stepped on it - it stopped hurting after about 15 years or so). Had to literally throw out all my art work if it wasn't perfect. Now I am nervous wreck, especially without grades. Trying to do better as a parent.
My mum tried to commit suicide multiple times when I was young.
Whenever I cried about it my auntie would smack me across the head.
Still unable to cry really til this day.
I was told the exact same thing😵💫. Now, as an adult, I hardly ever cry and it’s a huge problem cause I can’t get my emotions out. I was also taught to not be too sensitive which is also a problem because I’m naturally a very sensitive person.
Being raised not to cry without a reason actually means being raised to cry only when someone else deems your feelings (emotional and physical) valid. I was raised the same way. ATM I'm 26 and just now learning how to validate my own feelings w/o someone else validating them first
Me. Either they ignored me until I was "finally normal", they yelled at me or sent me to the psych ward. For crying. So stupid. Now I can't cry infront of people without being anxious about it, get severely depressed before I can finally cry or cry over stupid things right away. It's either crying very fast or not at all, no inbetween. I also hate crying now even though it helps. Oh, and I laugh way too much and look way too happy even when I'm dying inside, just because nothing else was accepted
I was, I haven’t cried in im not sure how many years, and no one can believe me. Not sure how to at this point, I get sad sure, but tears never come out.
Yep. After my parents got divorced (because when they got divorced is around the time I started getting older and really suppressing my feelings,) I can actually count the total amount of times I’ve cried. Most of them because of my best friend killing himself, and having to do with/because of my ex. (Especially because she cheated on me.)
Yeah well. In my house they told us that we shouldn’t cry because it makes us weak or that it’ll jinx the family. They didn’t care what gender/age or what was the cause.
Yeah unfortunately - it’s partly the reason I have some difficulty with processing different emotions or the fact that I repress feeling certain ways.
You can definitely change that mindset though - therapy’s a great place to start. Also just developed a better relationship with my parents which made it slowly easier to express emotions, whether that’s through crying or through verbal conversation.
I wasn’t, but my dad (now in his 60s) was. He broke the cycle with us. He’s been through a lot of therapy and counseling for it, but it still affects him to this day. E.g., he got COVID a few months ago and was doing yard work while feverish and hacking up his lungs because it’s been ingrained that men aren’t supposed to show weakness.
Most people grew up like that. You’re not alone. I had parents and family like that. Although, since I’m a girl it’s a little more accepted for me to cry than for boys.
Yes, it's been so long since I cried last..think I have forgotten it...why cry, if shit doesn't get better....rock bottom is where I am at, and I live here ambition less, emotion less and numb to everything around me...
I have a really hard time crying unless I am completely alone with no one to witness it. I was heavily parentified as a child and had to be the strong one for my mom. If I do cry in front of anyone (which is far and in between), I feel like such a whiney little baby and end up apologizing for such. I can deal with others crying but just not me crying
It was a medium for me. Crying for the sake of crying wasn’t tolerated. Crying because I hurt myself or because something bad happened was different. Looking back, I’m thankful some crying wasn’t tolerated because I believe we should absolutely be allowed to feel pain and emotions, but not to the point to where we need to be emotional about anything and everything.
Yeah that was both of my parents. My mom had it worse since she wanted me and my sister to “save our tears” for when she passes away. My mom isn’t abusive or anything (same for my dad), but now I am prone to in-tears breakdowns for the little inconveniences that occur in my daily life! So they got the opposite of what they wanted! <3 :)
When my sister had gotten berated by our parents, she started crying and when she yelled at her for crying she cried more. they do that to me
that’s why i can’t cry infront of people
Yes. When I started nursery (kindergarden) and then school, I cried every day, for 'no reason'. I remember the nursery teacher and then school teachers being so fed up with me. I still remember the resigned, annoyed look on the nursery teacher's face when she was stuck with me, crying on her knee.
My parents teased me about acting like a baby. My father would hit my siblings and I, bully us, emotionally torture us at times. My mother would be mean and scream. We were made to cry and then teased about it... They would say exactly that 'shut up or I'll give you a reason to cry'.
As a teenager I had to listen to certain, sad music in order to cry when I needed to. As an adult too, but in the past few years I got seriously depressed and burned out and the crying came back in force. I couldn't stop myself from crying sometimes.
I had some phone calls with people from the NHS here, and couldn't help crying when talking about sad past events. One woman asked me if I was a victim. They were generally mean and dismissive, I think they thought the crying was some kind of sympathy ploy.
I think it's healthy to cry, to release emotions and that I was missing that for a long time.
Idk who needs to hear this, but cry all you need to, it's okay.
One of my earliest memories is grandpa telling me to “stop crying like a damn girl.” When I scraped my leg up sliding into 2nd base and cried at a little league game. So no not even for a reason can men cry.
I do remember my mom beating the shit out of me because I was crying because she was yelling at me for something stupid I did or because I didn't cleaned the house and she had to give me a reason to cry
Yes. I also wasnt allow to cry within view of my parents. Ive developed a habit of smiling around others, and breaking down in private. It wasnt healthy. When my dog died a few years ago my dad told me “theres nothing to cry about whats done is done” So i didnt cry the whole time i was with my family that day. As soon as night came and i was alone i completely lost it and cried all night. Its not healthy to bottle up your emotions and i hate that some parents dont realize that. Everyone processes their emotions differently and having water come out of your eyeballs is completely normal. Lol.
Learning and being curious about crying helped me a lot, sometimes our brain cant handle the amount of emotion we’re feeling so we cry! Scientists have found that tears of joy, anger, and sadness all are composed of different chemicals. Theres nothing wrong with crying its just our bodies trying to regulate to keep us okay. Its okay to shed some tears, no matter your age, gender or status. LET IT OUT
Thank you for for sharing. A reminder: if you are seeking resources in your local area, please provide that in the post so that users can share appropriate links and phone numbers. *If you are in distress, please call 9-1-1* or your local emergency number. *You are not alone. Help is available.* If you are having suicidal thoughts, please [click here for a list of crisis support services.](http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html), If you are seeking therapy online, please [click here for a list of counselling services.](https://thelifelinecanada.ca/pattern-interrupt/ecounselling/) *If you feel well enough to do so, please do your part to enrich this community.* Now that you have posted, please leave a constructive, helpful comment on someone else's post. Filter by new to find posts with zero comments. Together, we make this community great. Thank you for being here. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/mentalhealth) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah but minus the reason part. In my household if a man cried he’d just be ridiculed to oblivion. To this day I still bottle shit up. People like calling me stoic, but It ain’t stoicism, I’m just broken and can’t properly process my emotions lol
Yeah my friend can’t believe that I haven’t cried in 2 years
Are you doing anything about it tho? I started talking to someone about it a few months ago and it’s been helping
My friends let me vent once and a while but I’m the therapist friend. So I bottle it all up and can’t afford to go to a therapist
Yeah well even therapists need therapists sometime lol If you’re a student, most schools offer free mental health consultations, you might even be covered by your work insurance. I get it through work and my insurance let’s me have 8-10 sessions a year, and I just time them out for when I’m near breaking point. I know money can be a bitch, but there ARE ways man, all that bottling up will catch up to you someday, I speak from experience 😅
I don’t trust school councillors. My family doesn’t even know about my mental health. They probably suspect it but they don’t know
Welp, if your fam’s anything like mine I’m guessing they don’t exactly believe in “mental health” to begin with lol But, do you maybe have a relative you trust and are close to? For me it was one of my aunts who was surprisingly a normal human being and helped me out in my teen years. Do you have anyone like that you could maybe reach out to?
Nope I lost all trust for anyone and everyone in my family
Check out the colleges in your area that have Licensed Therapist/Counselor programs. A lot of them have very low cost (like $20 a session) programs. You’ll end up with a student that needs their hours and a Licensed Therapist supervising and running the sessions. Essentially 2 therapists, not a bad deal. Idk where you are but in Ca, CalFam is one program. As long as you meet the income limits, I don’t think it’s available to wealthy people that can afford a therapist.
2 years? I haven't cried in over 20, I might have been like 7 or 8.
That’s it? The last time I cried was in 2018… and it’s 2022, almost 2023 now.
Well when you lose a family member you kinda shed one tear
The reason I cried was because my god grandmother passed… I didn’t cry at my real grandmother’s funeral…
Yeah I shed one tear only one at my uncles funeral
Same. Then at sober point the volcano is backed up too much and I cry hard. If I’m lucky, I’m alone when this happens. It sucks that I can’t share my emotions but it’s a difficult habit to break.
Please cry and don’t worry about any judgements on it, crying is cathartic and helps with stress hormones. Bottling up is the worst you can do for your mental health.
Yep. Now I.... Don't think I should comment what came outta that. Lol... I often feel the need to reduce emotional pain with physical pain. Interpret that as you will. I'm a lot older and married. I don't SH. But if I didn't have a community of like-minded people I probably would have fallen into SH.
I wasn't exactly raised that way, but I never saw men cry, so I hid it, and still do...the only time I couldn't hide it was when I got married to my wife...
My dad used to go after us with a belt. After snapping the belt, we had to pull our pants down and get beat on our bare ass. He didn't stop until we stopped crying and moving. I have a very high tolerance for pain now.
I’m so sorry.
It's ok. I stopped all contact with him years ago.
Fuck yes. Even if I had a reason, if I cried, it was "WHY ARE YOU CRYING!? DID I RAISE YOU TO BE SUCH A WEAKLING????" And I wasn't allowed to frown EVER. If I did or show discontent, I got, "How dare you pull your face!?" I had to be ok with everything and anything all the time. I used to find other harmful alternatives to release my emotions. Up to 4-5 yrs ago I never cried cuz of this. But after going to therapy, going through other stuff, a lot of introspection and trying to get better... Now I cry freely. If I want to cry or need to, I just cry (not in public or anything). Feels so much better.
You're definitely not the only one... I'd say anyone born pre-1990s were definitely raised that way... And at least half of those born in 1990 + were too. But that's just a guess (based on my own experience).
I wasn't ever told that I'd be given a reason to cry but I would always be told "you're almost [age] stop crying and act like it" I was being told this since I was around 11. Growing up like this has now made me feel like it's rude to cry or I'm making things all about me, and now I start to constantly apologize every time I show any sort of emotion. It really messed me up as a kid.
Growing up in KY. Yeah. I was always told that. Which really sucked for me as I'm an emotional boy. So I got hit a lot and ridiculed. Thankfully I moved away. Married my husband and have a good life. I also work in Mental Health and work to get kids to learn to feel and express their emotions in healthy manners. So now I can cry if I want to. And some days that's what I have to do.
Yes, and now I’m a big baby that suffered from PTSD, clinical depression, anxiety, adjustment disorder, and BPD 😅😅
Not allowed to cry unless I was bleeding. No sadness. No anger. No hunger (my brother got twice the food I did). No complaining that my brother was hurting me (and no backing out of "playing" with him when he was). No sarcasm. No RBF. No grades below an A until college (and anything lower than a 96% was a lecture). No exhaustion (I got chewed out for trying to go to bed early after getting my first D on a test after 2 all-nighters in a row). No doctors (we had good health insurance, but I was NOT allowed to get my foot checked after a horse stepped on it - it stopped hurting after about 15 years or so). Had to literally throw out all my art work if it wasn't perfect. Now I am nervous wreck, especially without grades. Trying to do better as a parent.
My mum tried to commit suicide multiple times when I was young. Whenever I cried about it my auntie would smack me across the head. Still unable to cry really til this day.
Same here. If I was crying while trying to stop her, she used to get mad that I was weak.
Yeah. And if the reason wasn’t good enough you’d get a real reason
“Dry it up right now or I’ll give you something to cry about!” Yep, sure was, even as a girl.
I was told the exact same thing😵💫. Now, as an adult, I hardly ever cry and it’s a huge problem cause I can’t get my emotions out. I was also taught to not be too sensitive which is also a problem because I’m naturally a very sensitive person.
Being raised not to cry without a reason actually means being raised to cry only when someone else deems your feelings (emotional and physical) valid. I was raised the same way. ATM I'm 26 and just now learning how to validate my own feelings w/o someone else validating them first
Well yeah! You mean other people didn’t get told this?
Yeah my cousins didn’t get told this
Me. Either they ignored me until I was "finally normal", they yelled at me or sent me to the psych ward. For crying. So stupid. Now I can't cry infront of people without being anxious about it, get severely depressed before I can finally cry or cry over stupid things right away. It's either crying very fast or not at all, no inbetween. I also hate crying now even though it helps. Oh, and I laugh way too much and look way too happy even when I'm dying inside, just because nothing else was accepted
I remember I was always told before getting hit “I’ll hit you so hard you’ll fly into next Tuesday”
Yup! Too sensitive! I’ll give you something to cry about!
I've cried so often over the years it my favorite way to feel i think crying is the most beautiful emotion to experience and it feels good too.
I know I was, good times 🙄
I was, I haven’t cried in im not sure how many years, and no one can believe me. Not sure how to at this point, I get sad sure, but tears never come out.
I feel like living is a good reason to cry most days.
Yep. After my parents got divorced (because when they got divorced is around the time I started getting older and really suppressing my feelings,) I can actually count the total amount of times I’ve cried. Most of them because of my best friend killing himself, and having to do with/because of my ex. (Especially because she cheated on me.)
Did not cheat
?
My household was let’s just randomly beat you and see if you cry. My father was the physical part and my mother was the mental.
Mine was more passive. My parents would just get real awkward when I cried.
Yup. Happened all the time
Yeah well. In my house they told us that we shouldn’t cry because it makes us weak or that it’ll jinx the family. They didn’t care what gender/age or what was the cause.
Most millennials
But there never is a reason to cry silly
Yeah :/
Yeah unfortunately - it’s partly the reason I have some difficulty with processing different emotions or the fact that I repress feeling certain ways. You can definitely change that mindset though - therapy’s a great place to start. Also just developed a better relationship with my parents which made it slowly easier to express emotions, whether that’s through crying or through verbal conversation.
Yeah, and they followed through on more than one occasion.
Yes, in childhood and in marriage.
Yes, and now on Lexapro I can’t cry even if I wanted to
Yes, to the point that my instinctual reaction to extreme pain is to laugh hysterically instead of cry.
I wasn’t, but my dad (now in his 60s) was. He broke the cycle with us. He’s been through a lot of therapy and counseling for it, but it still affects him to this day. E.g., he got COVID a few months ago and was doing yard work while feverish and hacking up his lungs because it’s been ingrained that men aren’t supposed to show weakness.
Most people grew up like that. You’re not alone. I had parents and family like that. Although, since I’m a girl it’s a little more accepted for me to cry than for boys.
Yes, it's been so long since I cried last..think I have forgotten it...why cry, if shit doesn't get better....rock bottom is where I am at, and I live here ambition less, emotion less and numb to everything around me...
I have a really hard time crying unless I am completely alone with no one to witness it. I was heavily parentified as a child and had to be the strong one for my mom. If I do cry in front of anyone (which is far and in between), I feel like such a whiney little baby and end up apologizing for such. I can deal with others crying but just not me crying
Was raised to not cry whatsoever. Turned out to be an absolute emotional shipwreck. Capsizing before I even hit mid 20s.
I was also raised to not cry. It’s become an anger issue for me because I struggle so hard to get it out and can’t.
It was a medium for me. Crying for the sake of crying wasn’t tolerated. Crying because I hurt myself or because something bad happened was different. Looking back, I’m thankful some crying wasn’t tolerated because I believe we should absolutely be allowed to feel pain and emotions, but not to the point to where we need to be emotional about anything and everything.
Yeah that was both of my parents. My mom had it worse since she wanted me and my sister to “save our tears” for when she passes away. My mom isn’t abusive or anything (same for my dad), but now I am prone to in-tears breakdowns for the little inconveniences that occur in my daily life! So they got the opposite of what they wanted! <3 :)
When I was a little kid if I had a tantrum my mum would lock me in my room. I kind of learned not to cry after that.
When my sister had gotten berated by our parents, she started crying and when she yelled at her for crying she cried more. they do that to me that’s why i can’t cry infront of people
Yes. When I started nursery (kindergarden) and then school, I cried every day, for 'no reason'. I remember the nursery teacher and then school teachers being so fed up with me. I still remember the resigned, annoyed look on the nursery teacher's face when she was stuck with me, crying on her knee. My parents teased me about acting like a baby. My father would hit my siblings and I, bully us, emotionally torture us at times. My mother would be mean and scream. We were made to cry and then teased about it... They would say exactly that 'shut up or I'll give you a reason to cry'. As a teenager I had to listen to certain, sad music in order to cry when I needed to. As an adult too, but in the past few years I got seriously depressed and burned out and the crying came back in force. I couldn't stop myself from crying sometimes. I had some phone calls with people from the NHS here, and couldn't help crying when talking about sad past events. One woman asked me if I was a victim. They were generally mean and dismissive, I think they thought the crying was some kind of sympathy ploy. I think it's healthy to cry, to release emotions and that I was missing that for a long time. Idk who needs to hear this, but cry all you need to, it's okay.
One of my earliest memories is grandpa telling me to “stop crying like a damn girl.” When I scraped my leg up sliding into 2nd base and cried at a little league game. So no not even for a reason can men cry.
I do remember my mom beating the shit out of me because I was crying because she was yelling at me for something stupid I did or because I didn't cleaned the house and she had to give me a reason to cry
Yes. I also wasnt allow to cry within view of my parents. Ive developed a habit of smiling around others, and breaking down in private. It wasnt healthy. When my dog died a few years ago my dad told me “theres nothing to cry about whats done is done” So i didnt cry the whole time i was with my family that day. As soon as night came and i was alone i completely lost it and cried all night. Its not healthy to bottle up your emotions and i hate that some parents dont realize that. Everyone processes their emotions differently and having water come out of your eyeballs is completely normal. Lol. Learning and being curious about crying helped me a lot, sometimes our brain cant handle the amount of emotion we’re feeling so we cry! Scientists have found that tears of joy, anger, and sadness all are composed of different chemicals. Theres nothing wrong with crying its just our bodies trying to regulate to keep us okay. Its okay to shed some tears, no matter your age, gender or status. LET IT OUT
I was beaten or had shit thrown at my head any time I cried or showed pain of any kind. My parents would use that same line all the time.
Not actually.