At times of stress and emotional difficulty (and usually when I'm in my luteal phase - I have PMDD), I will deliberately seek out things that will upset me and make me cry. Stories about people experiencing unbearable grief, documentaries about disasters / tragedies, etc. Or I will imagine something terrible happening to me and/or someone I love and then watch it play out in my mind like a terrible film.
It's a weirdly compulsive behaviour and I've seen it described online as 'emotional self-harm'.
Does anyone else do this? Is there a way of making it stop? I feel like I should just be able to 'not do it' through willpower or something but it's like I don't realise I've fallen into it until it's been over an hour and my face is completely swollen up from crying.