How to Stop Crying When You’re Angry or Upset With Someone
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I am not a big crier. I shed tears, if I had to guess, every few months or so. But my best friend? She cries at everything: Movies, love songs, memories, how adorable our dogs are—and, of course, during arguments. I know this because we lived together for years. We occasionally bickered, as roommates do, about dishes, bills, the volume of the TV at night, and how much we cranked up the AC during the summer. These conversations often resulted in tears (hers, not mine).
I found this reaction…confusing, since our disagreements often felt like no big deal to me. Why did suggesting she pay for our Uber ride (since, ya know, it was her turn) send her tear ducts into a tailspin? I’ve since learned that some people simply cry more easily than others. Confrontation, in general, brings up intense emotions, Molly Burrets, PhD, a clinical psychologist and adjunct professor of marriage and family therapy at USC, tells SELF—and some of us are just more triggered and overwhelmed by, say, a raised voice, direct tone, or slight criticism, Dr. Burrets says.
If you can relate and you’re fed up with not being able to get through a disagreement without breaking down, know this: It’s absolutely possible to cry less when shit hits the fan. Not that you even need to. But hey, if you want to, we’re here to make your dream of bickering with clear eyes and dry cheeks a reality.
Here’s why you start crying as soon as the vibe gets tense.
To be clear: There’s nothing wrong with crying. In fact, it’s a completely natural and normal physiological response to tense situations. “When you perceive a threat or experience high stress, your body reacts with tears as a way to release tension,” Dr. Burrets explains—which is why you feel so much better after a good cry.
Crying is also how your body copes with emotional overload, or that feeling when sensations like sadness, joy, and anger become too much to deal with. At a certain point, you feel the need to let go and release those simmering emotions (cue the waterworks). But that tipping point—that moment when you can’t hold it in anymore—varies significantly from person to person, Dr. Burrets says. Some people, like my friend, are more sensitive to the build-up of emotions and well up with tears as soon as they feel a splash of frustration or sorrow.
If you’re an easy crier, that can also be a sign that you have a hard time processing and communicating your emotions, she adds. This might be because your family avoided conflict when you were growing up or you were reprimanded for talking about your feelings, or, for whatever reason, you just feel ashamed or embarrassed expressing yourself. These deeper-seated issues can make it tough to find words that accurately capture what you’re experiencing, according to Dr. Burrets. “As a result, crying can be a form of nonverbal communication,” she says.
How to prevent yourself from crying a river whenever you’re faced with conflict.
Even though crying is natural and healthy, you might wind up in situations where you want to reel it in. Perhaps you get choked up when you butt heads with your partner or your tears prevent you from having constructive conversations with your roommates. Maybe you’re just fed up with your eyes being red and puffy all the time when you bicker with your mom.
You can actually learn to cry less through a process called emotional regulation, which is essentially the ability to control your emotional states. There are a handful of different ways to go about this, but the key is to experiment until you find a tactic that works for you and then practice as much as you can. Here are four options that might help you gain some control over your tear ducts:
Practice deep breathing.
If you and your sibling get in a brawl about upcoming holiday plans (truly the worst conversation) and it makes you want to bawl, bring your focus to your breath. Deep breathing exercises—like inhaling for four seconds, holding your breath for four, and exhaling for another four—relax your nervous system, thereby reducing stress and suppressing your urge to weep, according to Dr. Burrets. You know how crying is a physiological response that calms you? It’s the same deal with slow, deep inhales and exhales.
Ideally, you can employ your breathing exercise of choice right before having a difficult conversation, so you can go into it feeling prepared and centered (this will cut your chances of sniveling). But that’s not always possible, especially if you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a heated debate. If that’s the case, you want to think about your breath—slow it down, deepen it, and feel it flowing in and out of your chest—while you’re in the middle of the discussion, Dr. Burrets suggests. It might take some practice to master this, but with time and experience, you’ll get there, she adds.
Know how to ground yourself.
Grounding techniques can help you step back from your emotions and reduce their intensity. These exercises work by activating your parasympathetic nervous system, the network of nerves in your body that helps you settle down and relax—this slows down your heart rate and breathing (and all the thoughts racing around your head), Dr. Burrets says. For example, when you start to feel distressed, she recommends saying the alphabet backward in your head (Z, Y, X, W…). “It gives you something else to focus on,” she says—so you’re less overwhelmed by the worry or agitation boiling up during an argument.
Another tactic to try: Bring your attention to your senses. Think about five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste. You can also conduct a body scan—focus on the sensations of each body part, starting from your head and working your way down to your toes. Or keep it simple: Focus on one single thing you can feel, like the fabric on the chair you’re sitting on or your toes wiggling in your shoes. Dr. Burrets says these exercises are helpful because you can lean on them in the middle of a strained conversation. (You’d be surprised, she adds, at just how easy it is to practice grounding techniques when you’re talking to someone.)
Give yourself a pep talk.
Jot down a few affirmations you can say to yourself when you, say, wind up squabbling with your BFF. Maybe it’s “I am calm and in control” or “I am doing my very best, and that is enough.” Without these self-assuring statements, your brain might say, OMG, I’m going to cry again. This is horrible! You know, the kind of negative self-talk that makes you want to bawl your eyes out.
Throw yourself some love and support—research shows positive affirmations can actually regulate some of the physiological responses that ramp up when you’re stressed out. Here’s the thing: You can’t have more than one thought at a time, Dr. Burrets says, so if you focus on how good of a job you’re doing staying calm, not only might you give yourself a confidence boost, but there will be less room in your brain to fixate on what’s going wrong.
Take a break.
No matter how well you practice the tips above, you may still find yourself tearing up during a tense conversation. “Sometimes you are so emotionally overwhelmed that you’re going to cry,” says Dr. Burrets. You’re a human being—it happens. But if it’s important to you to not bawl? Kindly excuse yourself and take a break.
Dr. Burrets recommends assuring the other person that you aren’t just abandoning the argument. That way they aren’t left stranded thinking, Well, WTF? So say something like: “This conversation is important to me, but I need to take a break for a few minutes so I can get to a place where I can really focus on it.” Then, clue them into how long of a pause you need. Ask if you can revisit the conversation in 15 minutes or, if need be, tomorrow, so they have an idea of when you can resolve the issue, Dr. Burrets advises.
To all you (and I mean this in the most affectionate way possible) crybabies out there: Please let it out if you want to. And when you don’t, I hope the above advice helps you feel a little more in control. My takeaway? Even if I don’t totally understand how a silly little disagreement about whether or not to put butter on our tub of movie theater popcorn could possibly make my friend tear up, I now know those tears are just her body’s way of soothing itself. And what’s so bad about that?
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Originally Appeared on SELF
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