Is crying wrong?

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I don't think crying is wrong, but it can make people uncomfortable if you cry in public more than a couple of quiet tears.

I cry a lot, mostly at home in private. However, even in my adult life I have times when my eyes have gotten very watery and I have to fight giving in to tears. I have failed in holding them back numerous times.

For me, crying is a release valve. It could be any kind of emotion that causes tears to spill over: sadness, frustration, stress, disappointment, anger, even happiness. I have very intense emotions, so I think that makes me have to work harder at controlling them. Maybe someone else who is not so intense doesn't have the same difficulty I have.

But, I don't think I would want to change my emotional intensity. It helps me do what I do as a musician. Knowing that my emotions could erupt at any time in the form of tears which might make me look bad in public is just something I have to live with. I do try to avoid crying in public. However, my crying in public is not accompanied by yelling or large body movement. Instead, it is quiet and I am "closed in" so I think that I am communicating that I am not expecting other people to respond to me, which would show I am not doing this to be manipulative. People notice that I am upset, but usually I do not get bad looks or comments. Instead, people just ignore me.

The one time I felt that someone thought I was being manipulative was when I was at the doctor's office due to my severe back pain a few years ago. I was trying to tell the doctor how much pain I was in, and I just felt like she was not believing me and she would not do the surgery at that time, thinking that PT would help. I fell apart and cried a heap. She treated me like I was just looking for drugs, but my tears were truly from extreme pain and frustration and a little bit of despair.

People who know me know that I am not manipulative, so my tears are not interpreted that way. Most people just know that I am emotional.

How could it be wrong to cry?

I've never understood why people think crying could be manipulative...I can't even fathom being able to cry on purpose. Growing up I couldn't help it if I started crying, I had no control over it whatsoever. I just couldn't hold it back or stop. It took me a long time to learn how to hold back tears, and even now it can be very difficult to do so. It's a very helpless feeling, almost like losing control of your bladder or bowels. Someone said crying should be done in private, just like peeing?? Well imagine how it would feel if you are incontinent, or you have IBS, and you just can't control it. Then to add insult to injury, someone said you did it on purpose to manipulate them. And with crying, it's not like you can do anything to hide it. Yeah it's a bodily function like peeing, but if you can't control it, it's not like you can wear a diaper on your face to spare people from knowing about it.

This really isn't something people can just turn on and off. Actors can make themselves cry, but even they have to really work themselves up for it and they usually have some training to learn how to do that. Child actors are told horrible things to make them cry on camera, like to imagine their parents dying...sometimes they are even put through physical discomfort to make them cry. Some of the things I have heard being done to children to make them cry in movies, really sounds like it borders on child abuse. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that children can just make themselves cry at will, to get their way, and then they project that same garbage assumption on adults too.

Oh, my sister was good at "crocodile tears." My mom knew it, though, and always called her out. However, when I cried, she tried to cheer me up by "catching" my tears in a cup and saying she had to save them up to refill the ocean or something like that.

I don't think I expressed in a clear way in my previous post that emotional crying raises the oxytocin level in the brain, and that this is a good thing because as it changes the neurobiochemistry, this has positive effects - it lessens anxiety for example (research finding) as well as making the crier more empathetic to others..

Crying is okay as long as you're in somewhere private like your bedroom for example or around people that'll help you. It's too embarrassing to cry in public and it makes me uncomfortable to see someone having a meltdown in public.

I tend to cry almost every day, I don't know why. It's usually late at night when I do when I'm feeling really down, and I just can't stop sometimes (longest I cried was for over 2 hours in recent memory).

From what you wrote there, it seems that the most likely reason is an accumulation of sadness/hurt/despair. If you have no friend who is there for you as a safe confidante and sounding board - I'm going to guess that you haven't got a friend like that - it can be very hard to deal with the slings and arrows of life without a source of emotional support that is trustworthy and reliable for getting through the tough stuff. I am also guessing that for you there may have been a lengthy period during which these painful feelings and experiences have snowballed over time, so that now any new sadness or loss just makes the combined weight of the emotional pressure overwhelming, because your inner resources are overloaded.

My intuition about you is that possibly, if you could find a therapist or psychologist who specialises in Narrative Therapy, some of that accumulated weight of the past could be lifted off you, and a good therapist could work with you to set up a system where you notice the drift to despair at a very early stage, and have new ways of dealing with it. If there is no meaningful social connection in your life, then establishing some is something that a good therapist could support you to do. You have some meaningful connection with WP, though maybe it is time for you to spread your wings a bit, scary though the idea may be. Sometimes "the only way out is through" - you have to move through your fears in order to be free of them; meanwhile crying is serving a valuable function in your life by releasing some pressure and boosting your oxytocin.

I thought I might have been all cried out but not. Therapist who told me that I shouldn't cry around other people ......I said I like depending on him because having someone to depend on..... it lets me do more in the world because a lot of times, things get confusing. He told me I can't depend on people unless I want to continue being autistic the rest of my life. I don't know why and I guess he got his goal that I know I can't depend on him or anyone. Already knew but I like being able to try a little bit To lean on people.....made things better to try.

Just needed to tell someone how very disappointed I am that even the people that are supposed to understand and help I guess they think that autism is curable and more than that I'm supposed to want to be cared but I don't want to be. I just want to be me. And not really like I can find another therapist there were very few willing to see me because of finding me too weird and so I am pretty sure that there's no one better it's just I didn't know that this one who's good with people on the spectrum, can have a conversation with, would want to cure me and I guess maybe I could've misunderstood but it seemed apparently being cured is supposed to be the goal. And that's not real......

Anyway if anyone reads this, gets it what it's like to be really disappointed that someone that I thought understood me rejects autism in me......I hope someone out there can tell me that they understand if there's any sense in what I wrote. Very sad, very disappointed

I share your disappointment. I have had many therapists who didn't have a clue. It's so frustrating to put your trust in someone who turns out to be an idiot. Autism is not curable, but some have this idea that if you can pass for neurotypical, you are neurotypical. They have no understanding of or respect for the autistic experience.

Thank you I'm glad someone can get it....feel utterly alone

*hugs*
You're not alone in this. Mental health care workers often do not have the tools to offer any meaningful assistance. The study of autism has seen a lot of new information and controversy in a short time. I think most of them mean well, they just don't have a clue what they are doing.

Yes he means well and I felt hope, was doing better ..... thought was understood and started feeling....acceptable. Just so sad

This is how I felt earlier this week when my program was postponed. Utterly let down. You put your faith in something only to have the wizard of oz revealed again.
Hang in there. You will feel better.

My family yells at me for crying too.

I just can't believe he'd tell me I'm choosing to continue to be autistic/Aspie, I can't believe it's real

Thank you for relating.

Mistaken good intentions are worse in many ways than bad intentions for me because it is hard to find a place to direct the anger (unless the person is just obstinate about their mistake).