Train myself to cry instead of getting angry.

[IrisEnfys]

I personally get angry and scream when upset frequently when I want to cry, but I constantly feel my tear ducts are full of ice blocking my tears when I want to cry so I get angry instead. Does anyone have ideas on how to retrain myself to cry instead of being angry when I get upset?

[Heather]

Can I ask if this was always the case for you? If not, what's your sense of how it started and cemented? Or if it was always the case for you, what's the background with that? What does having a hard time crying when you want to feel like it's based in for you? What do you think your barriers to it are?

[IrisEnfys]

Heather, I don't think this was always the case for me. As far as I can remember I used to cry more easily, and don't know when I started getting angry 99 out of 100 times instead of crying. I don't know if I have any barriers, but did manage to cry today when I was angry, so I may be making progress on my own.

[Alexa]

Hey Brianne,

I'm glad you managed to cry a bit, and I hope it felt good!

While there's no way to replicate the exact release you get from crying, it may be helpful to find other ways that help you channel/release your sad/frustrated/angry energies. By finding healthy ways to work through these feelings, you may naturally build reflexes to help you work through sadness, or even allow yourself to come to a place where you can cry. A few ideas come to mind, but the possibilities are endless:

• Can you go somewhere alone -- the basement when no one is home, a forest/hiking trail, a beach in winter -- and scream it out?
• Can you practice meditation? Learning to look at your feelings and allow them to flow through you without judgment is huge.
• Can you use movement & physical exhaustion to work through your feelings? Working out, running, biking, dancing -- anything that helps you blow off steam.
• Can you journal? It might even help to express something physical through the pages -- maybe you write down things that are upsetting you, and then tear them up & throw them away.

The possibilities are endless, but the basic idea is, if you're not able to cry (right now), then giving yourself another physical outlet for your feelings can help with that sense of release.

Have you tried anything like that before?