Conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder can sometimes cause you to feel muted emotions that might prevent you from crying.
Antidepressants, depression, trauma, personality factors, social stigma, and certain medical conditions can all inhibit us from tearing up. Fortunately, many of the reasons we can't cry can be successfully treated and reversed.
There are many reasons why you might struggle to shed a tear or two. It might be because of a physical ailment but, more often than not, an inability to cry says a lot about our emotional state, our beliefs and prejudices about crying, or our past experiences and trauma.
Result: The experience of trauma produces very intense emotions such as overwhelming fear, horror, and anxiety, and these reactions can linger for a lifetime. Many trauma survivors also report restrictions in their emotional experience - a phenomenon most commonly referred to as emotional numbing.
Feelings of Detachment After Trauma May Signal Worse Mental Health Outcomes. Many people experience dissociation, or a lack of connection between their thoughts, memory, and sense of identity, during or after a traumatic experience.
Many people with a mental health condition like depression find that they lose interest in activities and sensations that used to bring them joy. This is known as anhedonia. Similar to melancholia, anhedonia can reduce your ability or inclination to express how you feel — including through crying.
Not crying can be healthy, but it also might be a sign of an underlying physical or emotional problem. Read on to learn about different reasons why you're not able to cry, the benefits of crying, and how to access your emotions if that's keeping your floodgates locked shut.
In the short term, it can cause pesky problems such as irritability, anxiety, and poor sleep. But over time, repressing your tears can lead to cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension — or even cancer.
Unfortunately, our emotions can sometimes bottle up and create a barrier that can prevent us from thinking creatively and moving towards our goals. This is known as emotional blockage, a condition that can benefit greatly from relationship intimacy coaching exercises and other forms of psychological help.
Crying faces without tears led to confusion about the emotional state of the individual, whereas visible tears typically engendered feelings of empathy and connectedness and enhanced participants' willingness to provide support.
apathetic. / (ˌæpəˈθɛtɪk) / adjective. having or showing little or no emotion; indifferent.
Other symptoms may include hypervigilance and an exaggerated startle response as well as feelings of guilt or shame. People with unresolved trauma may also feel irritable or easily angered, have difficulty concentrating and making decisions, or be prone to self-destructive behaviors such as substance abuse.
A feeling of shame; an innate feeling that they are bad, worthless, or without importance. Suffering from chronic or ongoing depression. Practicing avoidance of people, places, or things that may be related to the traumatic event; this also can include an avoidance of unpleasant emotions.
Frequency. According to the German Society of Ophthalmology, which has collated different scientific studies on crying, the average woman cries between 30 and 64 times a year, and the average man cries between 6 and 17 times a year. Men tend to cry for between two and four minutes, and women cry for about six minutes.
Crying is normal in healthy amounts—but what is a healthy amount? With no hard numbers as to how often we should cry, the American Psychological Association states that, on average, women cry emotional tears several times a month (30 to 64 times a year), while men may cry once every month or two (5 to 17 times a year).
No guidelines exist that determine how much people should or should not cry. Studies indicate that women tend to shed more emotional tears than men. One study found that women cried an average of 5.3 times per month while men cried 1.4 times during the same period.
Tears help you express feelings and manage pain, but they also protect and lubricate your eyes. Difficulty crying may relate to medication, attachment style, or mental or physical health concerns. To get more comfortable crying, try talking to a therapist to practice expressing your emotions.
"Alexithymia" is an official term for describing difficulty with identifying and expressing emotions to others. This term differs from numbness. Having "no emotions" might also be associated with a traumatic event, dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, or difficulty socializing.
The good news is, emotional numbness is usually temporary and treatable.
“I feel like I don't have feelings anymore” is a common experience for people who are developing psychosis or depression or who are recovering from a traumatic experience. It can be unnerving to lose the ability to feel or show your emotions.
Negative social experiences and overreliance on social media can make it more difficult to feel emotionally linked to other people. Sometimes a lack of connection might be related to the presence of a mental health condition such as anxiety or depression.