When you want to cry but no tears come out, it often signals emotional numbness, stress overload, trauma, depression, or anxiety, where your mind blocks tears as a defense mechanism, but it can also be physical due to dry eyes or certain medications. It's your body's way of saying emotions are too overwhelming, potentially shutting down to cope, or it could be a physiological issue with tear production, requiring attention to both mental and physical health.
It's not uncommon to feel the urge to cry without being able to release those tears. This sensation often arises when you're overwhelmed with emotions, but for some reason, you're unable to fully express them. It could be due to stress, sadness, frustration, or a combination of feelings that you're holding back.
This experience can stem from various factors, such as your mind shielding you from overwhelming emotions or mental health conditions like depression and anxiety that disconnect you from your feelings. Certain medications, particularly antidepressants, may also blunt emotions, making it harder to cry.
Barriers to Crying
Physical conditions like dry eye, Sjogren's syndrome, and other conditions can affect tear ducts and impact tear production, making it hard to cry, while mental health medications like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can affect emotional processing and inhibit crying.
Don't worry if you can't cry! it's not something that comes naturally to everyone. Instead, find a place where you can be alone for awhile, and scream your lungs out! Or, try vigorous exercise or JUST DANCE! -- another key for releasing endorphins out from your system. Endorphins are the body's natural pain relievers.
The first stage of a mental breakdown, often starting subtly, involves feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and increasingly anxious or irritable, coupled with difficulty concentrating, changes in sleep/appetite, and withdrawing from activities or people that once brought joy, all stemming from intense stress that becomes too much to handle.
Lena Suarez-Angelino, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and founder of LIGHT Collective and Co.
How Much Crying Is Too Much Crying? On average, most families with which we work who do Cry It Out have babies who cry 30-45 minutes in one stretch. However, it's not uncommon for some babies to cry 1-2 hours during the height of sleep training. In some cases, babies become hoarse from crying.
Conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder can sometimes cause you to feel muted emotions that might prevent you from crying. While it might seem like depression would lead to more crying since it can cause feelings of sadness, many people experience feelings of emptiness or apathy.
Psychological symptoms
Stress, anxiety, grief, hormonal changes, and fatigue are among the most common causes of unexpected crying. When tears come without an obvious trigger, ask yourself: What just happened? Did you talk about something, see someone, or experience something that might have set this off?
If you feel you are having a nervous breakdown you may:
The “90-second rule,” introduced by Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, reveals that an emotional surge in the body lasts only about 90 seconds—unless we mentally keep it alive.
Anxious crying is when intense emotions from stress or anxiety lead to sudden tears, even without a clear reason. Crying can be a healthy form of emotional release, but if you feel like you can't stop even when you want to, or that it's happening constantly, it may be time to seek support.
Extend yourself the same understanding and compassion that you would give to a struggling friend. If you've made changes to your routine or lifestyle and still feel emotionally numb, disconnected, or unmotivated, it may be time to consider reaching out to a mental health professional for help.
The 5-3-3 rule is a baby sleep training method for night weaning and fostering independent sleep, involving a baby sleeping 5 hours, staying awake for 3 (for a feed if needed), then sleeping another 3 hours, and continuing in 3-hour increments, teaching them to self-soothe after the initial long stretch, though it's a flexible guideline, not strict; it aims to create longer stretches for parents while meeting the baby's needs, often used around 4-6 months.
According to the German Society of Ophthalmology, which has collated different scientific studies on crying, the average woman cries between 30 and 64 times a year, and the average man cries between 6 and 17 times a year. Men tend to cry for between two and four minutes, and women cry for about six minutes.
The recommended age for letting a baby cry it out is 5 - 6 months or older.
Common signs and symptoms include:
Many people go through this situation where they can't cry no matter how much distressed they feel inside. This struggle comes from a complex emotional blockage that is linked with trauma, anxiety, stress, and sometimes physical reasons or medication side effects.
Five key warning signs of mental illness include significant mood changes (extreme highs/lows, persistent sadness), withdrawal from friends/activities, major changes in sleep or eating habits, difficulty coping with daily problems or stress, and thoughts of self-harm or suicide, alongside other indicators like substance abuse, confusion, or changes in hygiene. These signs often represent a noticeable shift in behavior, functioning, and emotional state that impacts daily life.
You can only be given medication after an initial 3-month period in either of the following situations: You consent to taking the medication. A SOAD confirms that you lack capacity. You haven't given consent, but a SOAD confirms that this treatment is appropriate to be given.
A mental breakdown is a term used to describe an event in which someone undergoes a sudden and severe bout of depression, anxiety, or stress. It can be triggered by any number of things: death of a loved one, harassment at work, unemployment, or something else.