What is wrong with me? Is anybody else like this?

[17caterpillars1mouse]

Ok my AIBU is am i unreasonable to react like this? What is wrong with me?

Is anybody else like this?

In day to day life I wouldnt say i'm anymore emotional than the average person, but in certain situations I get this ridiculous over emotion that floods me and results in me starting to cry and have to bite my lip to try and stop myself making a scene. It feels incontrollable at times and I dont remember always being like this.

The situations -

weddings and funerals starting - maybe not as unusual but it happens even if i barely know the person / people

Any kind of show - theatre, cinema, gig, kids nativity, especially if there is singing and music but there doesnt have to be

Every year when the year 6s leave at my kids school, even if i dont know any of them. Also school sports day even when my kids aren't participating in the race.

I cant sing along to the radio in the car without getting choked up and starting to cry. It doesnt matter what the song is / is about

Watching a parade at the weekend, had to hold back the tears - no idea why

When ambulances drive past, not every time, but around 70% of the time.

I don't know what comes over me and why, just a complete flooding of emotion. Why am i like this? It can be very embarrassing

I read my DC Watership down and could barely get through the end where Hazel dies. I cried the other day when I read that a rescued beaver on SM had died. I am always trying not to cry in the theatre. Day to day not hugely emotional.

It can be past trauma, or hormones. Or a deficiency (my GP just said low iron makes you anxious even if you aren't normally).
Some people find high impact exercise helps them feel less teary and their feel their emotions more balanced.

Oh, just a heads up, the Sheep Detectives set me off twice. Good, but, oof, got me right in the feels. Thank God cinemas are dark.

Yep! I never used to be like it either. I used to actually be a bit jealous at these emotionally deep women who weeped at the sight of a newborn 🤣 I still don’t weep at newborns tbf, but yes to children’s nativity’s, especially at the end when all the parents applaud. Just this room full of big people loving the little people 🥺 & yes to films and music. I quite like it, it’s like joy escaping… who doesn’t like joy?

there is always some woman on here dragging up the past…

I'm exactly the same!!!! It's called collective effervescence. Any experience with a shared human connection or effort makes me cry, I've been like it as long as I can remember but have always hidden it/fought it off in front of others. I remember being as young as 7 or 8 and biting back tears in the theatre when the music swells.

I went through a real phase like this when my kids were small. Can remember really sobbing as we joined a Christmas procession through the street!!

For me I think maybe it was hormonal. It did pass. I remember a lot of lip biting too. It's ok.

My husband is overly empathetic which makes him prone to tears at events with heightened emotions. It does seem to have ramped up since the kids were born.

I’m the exact opposite. I never cry even in situations where I would like to (ie parents dying, friends funerals, etc). Exceptions: the old film version of Greyfriars Bobby when the disabled kids pool their pennies to save the dog and, when pregnant, car / banking adverts in the cinema if they involve kids / families. I feel so much more silly welling up at these things when I don’t cry over losing people I love. All very mysterious.

God, I'm the same. I find it quite mortifying really. I'm happy to be emotional, but I'd like to be able to keep it in when required. It feels like a bit of a mix for me of both feeling very intensely about things and then some things (not necessarily the ones I feel most intensely about) having the ability to set me off weeping.

Crying is difficult because some people assume it's voluntary and you're doing it to be manipulative or get attention (I'm not! It gets in the way of me expressing myself clearly and I hate it). It's also bad when it feels attention-seeking. I have the funeral thing too, and I don't want to detract from the people whose grief is more than mine but it looks like that's what I'm doing. So I didn't mind being a crying wreck at my mum's funeral, but I looked just as bad at my friend's mum's funeral, even though I was just a bit sad on their behalf and not even remembering my own experience that much.

Yes to weddings, nativity and occasionally random acts of kindness (I found myself tearing up on a very busy city bypass when the cars on both lanes nicely made space in the middle for an ambulance to squeeze through). Day to day I'm cool as a cucumber.

Used to be a bit like that. Bawled my eyes out over sad movies ect, moved to tears over certain music. Doesn’t seem to happen so much now.

Kids triathlons - get me every time. Something about the sheer wholesomeness of it.

🙌🏻
😂😂😂

Totally get you! I used to be an emotional wreck at the silliest of things and get myself wound up in to some right states! I actually came off hormonal birth control a number of years ago and have found I can regulate myself much better than I used to! Could it be to do with hormones? I wouldn't say I am 100% better but i think things like weddings/funerals are highly emotional so don't see anything wrong with that - sometimes makes you think about your own life etc. maybe worth getting a wee blood test and see where you're at 😊xx

there is a name for this? Im away to look this up - all those lusty voices singing Sunshine on Leith, let alone the Nativity, the music of Out of Africa, a blind child
with her face tipped to the sunshine, my half way across the world daughter’s
happy voicemail, imagine, if we didn’t feel emotional, we may as well be robots

Glad it wasn't just me, lovely film, but the end really got me. I'm awful, I dread going to the cinema as so many films set me off!
Definitely got more emotional as I've got older.

Yes to school sports day (like the time two of the slightly tricky lads were coming first and second. One fell over. The other ran back to help him up. Tearing up thinking about it). Yes to concerts, prize givings and seeing random year six kids leave primary school! I would like to quietly kill whoever recommended the film Marley and Me when I was eight months pregnant. Funerals of people not especially close to me are horrendous. I genuinely am mourning the individual though and not my relationship with them. And that thread yesterday entitled ‘I really really want to go home’ had me openly weeping. Had to pretend I had an allergy after I went downstairs an hour later and my eyes were bloodshot. Oh and am 50 and have been like this since late 20s.

Aside from things like funerals, I don't cry very often, but when I do notice that I'm more frequently teary-eyed and emotional about things like music, films, speeches, and even adverts, it seems to correspond with a certain phase of my cycle. For me, at least, it seems to be related to hormone fluctuations.

Tiredness.
Hormones.

I am hard as nails at work, but in civvy street I have cried at:
• Fabric softener ad where child overcomes homesickness by pulling on freshly washed shirt.
• Getting off the tube at Euro 2022 and seeing the crowds heading up Wembley Way, many many hours before a ball was kicked
• Even thinking about the last scene of The Railway Children

I agree with this. I am a very emotional person in private. I cry at a lot of movies at the cinema. I feel full of emotions. I don’t think that’s a bad thing and if the world showed more empathy, it might be a much better place.

I first discovered that I have that tendency when I went to my son's school's Christmas performance. His class of 25 six-year-olds sang "have yourself a merry little Christmas" with a local singing group of 6 middle-aged/elderly ladies. I found myself unexpectedly in floods of tears!

Anything with lots of humans, just doing a human thing all at the same time. 😳

Yes, this. Also other people’s sadness (or extreme happiness), hearing about great achievements (even when I don’t know the person), animal’s faces, the news (good and bad), gigs when the musicians are particularly outstanding, all children’s concerts when they’re singing…The list goes on and on. My own sadness? No chance. No tears allowed lol.

Im terrible. Will cry to Disney sound tracks in the car ffs.

I've moved around on the scale of ease-of-crying, from periods of depression, where I cried everyday for no particular reason, to years on antidepressants with totally no crying, even when I wanted to. Now I've been off antidepressants for about a year, I am crying at all weddings, funerals, school concerts, baby photos etc, but I am totally fine with that. It's part of the human experience, and it feels honest to express my emotions that way.
However, if I start crying in Tesco again, I'll know it's gone too far!