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'm exactly the same. The slightest thing sets me off, good or bad. I am a highly empathetic person though and really feel things for other people even if it has nothing to do with me. I think I was just born like this tbh but peri menopause has definitely made it worse. I did a talk at my son's school the other day and everything from the cute kids to the teachers thanking me made me want to bawl. I cannot do a stiff upper lip. At funerals I'm always so upset even if it's someone I'm not that close to. I always really laugh at things too when I find things funny...

I think one day there will be a label for people like us, 'hyper feelers' or something like that?

I've just remembered bawling horribly when at an orchestral recital and they played the theme music to 'Thunderbirds'. I have no emotional connection to Thunderbirds whatsoever. I'm not even particularly keen on orchestral music. It was just something about the very familiar music being played in an unfamiliar format that made me weep.

I did have a few stern words with myself on that day.

Some of what you described is known as as collective euphoria. I’m in a choir and just know I’m going to well up on some occasions. My friends have called me water works for years as I cry at everything even describing the lads on race around the world to my son…
Sometimes I have to pull over if something sets me off in the car like a sad news story. Medals at Olympics and marathon finishers are a nightmare!
You are human and have joy and empathy resulting in a rush of emotion. Embrace it and always keep a hanky handy!

Could be menopause, I was pretty up and down during pre-menopause - now that I'm past it, less so.

I get like this when I'm retelling something that happened on TV to my husband. It can be something I didn't even get upset over at the time! Something usually interesting but not anything emotional. It's truly bizarre.
I also get emotional over ambulances and horses and riders out on the road. And sometimes horses just grazing in fields. I want to know what the hell is wrong with me too, as I've got worse as I've got older!

I’m the same. I really need coping methods because there are times when it just feels really weird and inappropriate. The best I’ve come up with so far is keeping a pack of extra strong mints in my bag. If I start feeling emotional I start on the mints and it distracts me a bit!

I’ve always been like this - I can cry at a commercial.
My family are used to it and call them happy tears.
It’s strange because in my own life I hardly ever cry - I have to be totally and completely miserable to force out a tear, fortunately it doesn’t happen often.
I can control tears at special celebrations/ceremonies if I completely detach, dig my nails into my palms and think of something else - which is sad in itself because I can’t really be fully part of those celebrations. .
I’ve not grown out of it, in fact suspect I’m getting slightly worse.

Been like this since childhood- crying at sad kids tv. Still like it now going into menopause. I hate it sometimes. My family tease me if I’m crying yet at any sad bits in films. I’ve been reading this thread in a car park and now crying!!

Not quite the same reason but i have 'emotional incontinence' aka Pseudo Bulbar affect. Due to a brain injury.
I can just burst out laughing or crying uncontrollably for no reason. Its extremely embarrassing.

I’m the same. I once cried at my exes uncles funeral. I’d never met the guy. The deceaseds mum asked me if I was ok. I was mortified. I cry at songs, adverts, tv shows. I cried at my twins first nativity play last year. I just kept picturing them as tiny babies and the floodgates opened and I couldn’t stop. I cried when my eldest 2 left school. Im currently crying every time I hear particular MJ songs, I guess I’m remourning the guy! I’m just a really sensitive person. And I’m owning it now.

Yep that’s me! I cry when I’m sad, when I’m happy, when I’m angry, when I’m excited 😂Crying seems to be my default reaction to everything 🤦🏻‍♀️ and yes, it’s very annoying! My husband doesn’t get it, he constantly tells me I don’t need to cry and I’m like, I wouldn’t if I could stop it!!! 😂

Oh OP! Me me ME! Then when I couldn't conceive and was having IVF they discovered I had badly polycystic ovaries that were flooding my body with estrogen (and I didn't have enough progesterone to counterbalance it)
Then everything made a bit more sense. The upside: I've always been incredibly happy, never had depression, always energetic and social. The downside, things that would trigger feeling emotional in normal women made me completely unable to cope with the feeling. I couldn't go to a carol concert without sobbing. I was so in tune with other people's emotions I'd feel them on the tube. I thought everyone was like this. Until I realised they weren't. It's got significantly better now I'm in peri though (although I am also significantly less bouncy and energetic too). I actually think it's a gift because you probably feel all the good emotions more strongly too - and that's a wonderful thing.

The I feel like I’ve found my people!

mines mostly when I’m relaying a story it can be something mundane like telling someone where a friends going on holiday and I’ll start getting choked up.

its only got really bad the past year or so, i am wondering if its linked to taking the pill.

currently 4 weeks post break up so more emotional than usual, thinking of coming off it to see if it helps.

Emotional regulation can be harder with neurodivergence ?

I get emotional when I’m in environments where some cares for me, eg in hospital. My childhood was all about showing happiness for what I was given but I was never supported through negative and difficult things emotionally. So I guess I do stiff upper lip all the time and seem really practical and together. When I see nurses and people who really genuinely do caring things, I bawl, because I care too but I’m never In positions to show it.

I also think this can come from staying strong too long xx

I’ve always cried easily and often. It’s never worried me at all - probably because my burly 6’ tall grandad was exactly the same! (Keith from The Great Pottery Throw Down reminds me of him very much 🥹)

You are highly tuned and connected you feel others pain and feelings its a super power don't be embarrassed by it x

I get goosebumps and the stinging eyes for the things you say like nativity’s, school leavers day (not even my child), dance shows. I’m really sentimental and these feel like core memories.

I’m also really weeping for choirs in churches. Not even remotely religious. I desperately want to go to midnight mass but I’m atheist so what’s that about. I even cry at the introduction to Victoria the TV series.

The one that gets me every week though is the ‘Walk on the Wildside’ section of Alan Titchmarchs Love your Weekend. The truly beautiful orchestral music overlaying the viewers wildlife photography. Gets me every time. I’m in my thirties for God’s sake.

I’m the same in quite a few of the situations you have mentioned. I work super hard to hold it in so that no-one would notice. So you wouldn’t think it was the same - but I am really. If one of my children gets a certificate in assembly, I’m forcing the emotion to stay put but I still get tears in my eyes - and that’s with a lot of restraint.

I cry easily and have gotten far more emotional after having children (hormones or constant broken sleep maybe?).

Anyway, my trick for holding it together is to think of a word then try to come up with as many rhyming words as possible. I think I originally read somewhere that this engages a different part of the brain, but it could just be distraction 🤷‍♀️. Cold water on your wrist will help too if the situation allows.

I sometimes cry when I do things with my child that I remember from my own childhood. It's like an extreme nostalgia I guess - life going full circle.

We took him to see Gladiators Live last year and I cried when the theme music came on 🤦

I don’t get the Sistine Chapel references (but then I am Jewish) but the first time I saw the refurbished ceiling of Grand Central Station (in New York) I did choke up. I’ve always been overly emotional (you should have seen me when Bambi’s mother was killed) but slightly less since menopause. Could that or peri- be a contributing factor?

Yes, me too. Not so much the radio, although some songs do set me off, as do brass bands! But I went to a county show and there was a fabulous black horse with a shiny coat- it was so beautiful, I found myself in tears . Also, London parks in the sunshine when the flowers are out. I think that's pride in my favourite city though.

Recently DH did something amazing and got nominated for a reward. He phoned MIL but she wasn't impressed. I was on the phone to her, trying to explain why she should be proud, and she didn't care. So I burst into tears! So I'll cry at beauty, but also in frustration.

I’m almost the same! Ive never thought as weird about myself for this reason though. The musicals or concerts, the music is powerful, I can feel the base it in my chest, the goosebumps, etc it’s supposed to make you emotional. The championships, the crowds uniting together, it’s powerful. Nativity, my little humans are standing there in front of everyone, of course it’s emotional.

I don’t understand why I get emotional with weddings, in fact id be dreading my wedding because I know I’d cry.

funerals that’s embarrassing for me! I even felt teary at the funeral of my DPs uncle who I saw once and no one in the family even liked him, he wasn’t a good person! So weird!
but at the funeral of my DPs friend, a wonderful human being who died way too early, his widow and school age daughters just stood there sad but not crying and there was me in floods of tears looking at them feeling so sorry for them, thinking about their dad/husband how unfair it was, I just couldn’t stop. You’d think I was putting a show, I just couldn’t stop crying,

I'm so glad to read someone else saying they cry at ambulances! I've always done this and find it so odd - I have no control over it but as soon as an ambulance (or fire engine for that matter) goes past I have tears in my eyes!
Also cry in many of the other situations you mention. I cried last nativity play because the headteacher was comforting a reception kid who was crying.