Anyone else feel oddly emotional at random moments

[Hyobywater]

Every now and then something very small will make me feel unexpectedly emotional a song something the kids say or even a quiet moment alone it is not sadness exactly just a sudden wave and then it passes wondering if others notice this too.

Yes. Couldn’t imagine navigating this life malarkey without feeling it and experiencing it any other way. You explained it really well.

I have great difficulty going in some of the charity shops near where I live because of the nostalgic music they routinely play. It brings on such a feeling of sadness and remembrance of the younger me that I have to leave the shop because I feel like crying.

Yes! Often at the cinema, I think due to the intense sensory nature of it. I think linked to hormones too 😊

Yes and now I am going through menopause, my children are grown up and I have lost my parents it has intensified in frequency.

ALL the time! I tear up if an ambulance goes by with the sirens on. It's not great when I'm driving.

Yes me too! Often get nostalgic/de ja vu feelings that generate waves of emotion. It's worse as my parents, dc and I all get older. It's like grieving for times gone by.

Yes, I’ve always done this. Just now watching BBC Breakfast about a 93 year old still running a fitness class as well as caring for her 95 year old husband. But being older, I’ve also worried about other people thinking I’m a bit daft. However at 67 I just don’t care anymore what their reaction might be.

Yes! I didn't realise other people experienced this. I'll read or hear a story about someone who went through something difficult or even uplifting, and I'll get this wave of intense emotion, tears prickle in my eyes. It particularly seems to happen when kids are involved. It can strike out of nowhere, and I can't always understand why this particular scenario hit me like that.

A weird one for me is triggered by the sound of chinook (sp?) helecopters. I grew up in a training area and whenever one flies over where I live now, I get a heady wave of emotion and distinct memories of sunbathing as a child, lying on the common, eyes closed, drifting off. Totally at peace with the world. Just absorbing the gentle throbbing sound in the hazy heat.

I really get this and you’ve described it so well. Music seems to be a huge trigger for that sudden wave of feeling and it can catch you completely off guard. I have moments like that too where it’s not quite sadness but more a mix of remembering and realising how much time has passed. It makes sense you’d need to step out if it feels overwhelming sometimes those moments just hit a bit too hard.

Absolutely. Sometimes I know why, like above where a pp described an ambulance passing. That evokes the memory of following the one with DF inside from his home to the hospital. He never left. Weirdly, I've been blue lighted in several times with conditions that needed emergency life-saving treatment, but know it's not that I'm reacting to.
Hearing 'Driving home at Christmas,' again only when driving. I've never driven home for Christmas, but the year my teenage DB died we drove 300 miles to SIL's for Christmas and I think that's the first time I cried hearing it. I really didn't want to celebrate that year and hearing that song takes me back to that time, even though it really shouldn't.
Sometimes it comes from nowhere, but is usually when I'm driving alone, especially long distances.

I used to work for the Joint Helicopter Command and as a Civil Servant there weren’t many perks - but the occasional flight in a helicopter was something I took full advantage of. My favourite was in a Chinook with the side doors open and the back ramp down. Heaven…

Crowds for me. I literally can't be anywhere in a sizeable gathering of people, without being set off crying. Something about the mass of humanity?

Just start weeping if a protest (about something irrelevant to me), or a religious march goes past. School events were also horrendous.

I have found my people.
All the time! Someone up thread mentioned crying when an ambulance drives past with sirens. I live near a hospital in a large town so the roads nearby can get pretty congested, if an ambulance comes up the road then the cars part like the Red Sea to let the ambulance through. Always make me cry to think of everyone doing their little bit to aid someone’s journey to receiving help.

Also the crowds that have already been mentioned. I’m totally un-religious, atheist leaning, but I KNOW if I’d been brought up at a different time in history I would’ve been going on about feeling the Holy Spirit every week in church when the congregation was singing.
Any live music event with a crowd has me having to have a stern talking to with myself, like white knuckled to stop the sobbing, it’s embarrassing.
Funnily enough, a small, intimate performance would have me cringing.

I’m not the Sistine Chapel wailer but I’m sure if I went I’d shed a (quiet) tear.

Glad it's not just me.

I get you about chinooks! I have always liked them, from when I first saw one at an air show as an adult and from what I can remember, unlike you, I don’t have any particular childhood memory of them, so I don’t think it’s that for me. But now there’s another nostalgic layer when I see one as I’ve moved away and the air show is no more anyway - but we get alot of military aircraft over where we live now, including chinooks, and I love that.

Yes to the OP, I get this and often think it’s hormonal. And, as I & my family & friends are getting older, I think I get it more often now.

Music does this for me. I'm not an emotional person usually but nostalgia brings out an intense emotional reaction. I welled up once at Cotton eye joe! I desperately miss my younger self and my childhood sometimes, music was the soundtrack to my life and a song that played on the radio at a particular time in my life (even if i didn't like the song) can really evoke strong emotions.

Yes but thankfully it’s never a sad type of emotional. A little bittersweet sometimes but generally it’s these waves of ‘oh my goodness, how lucky am I?’ which is bloody lovely. Had it earlier, I was driving the kids back from the shop and 4yo was singing along with me to one of my favourite songs and the 1yo was ‘talking’ (shrieking) and it just felt so lovely.