Tears are a natural reaction to trouble, grief or stress, but most people prefer not to show them to others. It’s not easy to restrain yourself when resentment or anger comes over you. In this article we have collected psychological techniques that will help you not cry when you really want to. After reading our material you will learn to control yourself!

How not to cry when you really want to - physical exercises

Psychologists advise concentrating on breathing during moments of emotional arousal. You may have noticed that when you want to cry out of resentment, your breathing becomes short and quick, and at moments severe stress or fear, you even stop gasping for air for a while. To calm yourself, you need to calm your breathing. Do you feel like you're about to cry? Lift your chin and take several deep breaths through your nose, exhaling through your mouth. This way you can get rid of the so-called lump in the throat. Try to count your breathing movements, imagine how the air fills your lungs. An unpleasant lump in the throat will help remove a couple of sips of water or cool tea. If there is no liquid nearby: Swallow several times. And don't forget about breathing.

If tears are already blurring your eyes, blink them away. You shouldn’t wipe your eyes in a showy way, what good will you do if you rub off your cosmetics! Look down, then raise your eyes up, look to the right and left. Repeat this exercise several times until the tears go away. Some psychologists advise closing your eyes for a few seconds.

You can also distract yourself from unpleasant thoughts by performing certain physical actions. You can, for example, bite your lip or clench your fist. But remember that you should not feel pain, only slight discomfort that can draw your attention to yourself. If there is a person nearby whom you trust, or someone who is aware of your psychological state, his palm can become your support.

By the way, yawning also helps you calm down! Besides, you definitely won’t be able to cry and yawn at the same time! Exercise very effective and will benefit your nervous system!

How not to cry at the wrong moment - psychological exercises

To avoid crying at the wrong time, think of something that will occupy your full attention. How about a solution mathematical problem in your head or repeating the multiplication tables? Not only will you concentrate on it, but you will also force the left hemisphere of your brain, which is responsible for computational operations, to work. Emotions - controls the right; By stimulating the work of both hemispheres of the brain, you can effectively block the emotional flow. If math isn't your thing, remember the words to your favorite song or even hum it to yourself. The melody should be cheerful and the lyrics should be positive.

Second psychological technique more difficult, but more effective. You need to remember something funny. Of course, concentrating on something positive when tears come to your eyes is not an easy task. In such a case, psychologists advise to come up with and remember in advance a list of jokes from films or funny situations from your life that you will remember in moments of emotional experiences. Try to smile!

Motivate yourself not to cry! For example, “If I cry, the boss will think I’m weak” or “ strangers They will see that I don’t know how to control myself." Tell yourself that you are strong and right now it is important to prove it!

Tears refer to uncontrollable physiological reactions to traumatic stressful situations, be it pain, resentment or sudden joy. It is very difficult to force yourself to stop crying when the stress mechanics are already in motion, but you can learn to control your thoughts by artificially reducing the intensity of your experiences by suppressing their importance. So is it possible to hold back tears when it is completely inappropriate, and what to do with pathological tearfulness?

Why do people cry?

We can talk about pathological tearfulness when a person reacts with tears to most episodes of severe emotional stress. No techniques for suppressing tear production will help here - it is necessary to work with a psychologist who will work with the root cause of stress, hidden in the patient’s childhood or acquired later.

Children cry when they don't understand what is happening or when they don't have enough personal experience assess the situation. Having matured, a person begins to filter emotions by degree of importance, focusing on acquired skills. The most powerful emotions require mandatory release, otherwise the individual risks leading himself to a nervous breakdown.

Some people need to cry immediately upon receiving stressful information, and this reaction is called “immediate” - it is the most difficult to deal with and it is better to allow it to manifest itself and clear the mind of negativity.

Another type of reaction is called “delayed”, and it can be observed in introverts who are accustomed to not showing their feelings. Often these people do not allow themselves to relax and immerse themselves in emotions for a long time, but there comes a time when stress accumulates and the person begins to cry, seemingly for no particular reason.

How to hold back tears of resentment?

People perceive criticism addressed to them differently, and for some, even a sensible remark, said in passing, can unsettle them and make them burst into tears. It’s good when, having felt a lump in the throat, a person can hide from everyone and cry to his heart’s content, but most often this is impossible.

There are several effective ways to hold back tears from resentment during a conversation:

• Switch to your breathing - take several deep breaths in and out, focusing only on these sensations.
• It hurts to pinch yourself, prick yourself with a pin, bite your tongue - that is, to distract yourself from psychological experiences in favor of physiological ones.
• Slowly scroll through a recipe for a dish in your mind, mentally recite a poem, remember three phone numbers of friends.

How to hold back tears in public? If possible, it is advisable to drink a glass of water in small, measured sips. A good option for staying calm is to shift your attention to an object with many small details. While the nervous person examines the object, all his excitement will subside.

How to hold back tears of pain?

Even people with a high pain threshold sometimes have to cry from physical suffering, but not everyone is ready to accept such a reaction from their body. How to hold back your tears when you want to cry?

You can try to quietly do several exercises that block tear production:

• open your eyes as wide as possible and count to 10 without blinking;
• raise your eyebrows to the limit and hold it for 7-10 seconds;
• holding your head straight, look up, as if you need to see something hanging above the top of your head.

When the pain begins to recede, you need to completely relax the upper part of your face and open and close your mouth wide 3-4 times, as if pronouncing the letter “A”.

Wedge with wedge

In moments of deep stress, when tears are constantly welling up in your eyes and nothing is going well, you don’t need to force yourself to positive emotions, but it’s better to do the opposite - accept your sadness and let it dissolve on its own. Funny comedies and joyful music will serve as a reminder that while everything is bad here, someone is doing very well, and such thoughts will only add to the negativity. How to hold back tears?

Philosophical life films and songs about unhappy love, sounding from headphones, are the most optimal way to reboot yourself and overcome grief in short terms. You can even create a separate playlist of “music for depression” and turn it on during particularly joyless moments - then returning to normal life will take less time.

Exit - in motion

How to hold back tears in secret from loved ones? The most smart women In order not to burst into tears and wallow in self-pity, they start cleaning. Active physical actions do not take away the opportunity to reflect on the current situation, but they deprive stress of its main weapon - the lack of dynamics of events.

While on the move, the human body intensely stimulates the production of estrogen hormones (androgens in men) and endorphins, which are responsible for increasing stress resistance and reducing anxiety. It has been proven that after just 10 minutes of active cleaning (or after 5 minutes of working out in the gym), a person not only calms down, but is also ready to make decisions that can make his situation easier.

Questions and answers

According to psychologists, one of the most common reasons uncontrollable tearfulness in an adult lies in his inability to take responsibility for own life. The emotional ray emanating from such a person is constantly directed towards other people, catching any changes in their behavior and mood.

Such dependence on someone else's opinion gives many reasons for crying or depression - someone was rude, left at the wrong time, forgot to call, and now a person who does not have his own emotional settings is completely disoriented and ready to give up.

Correction of a psychological disorder such as tearfulness can take place without the help of a specialist, but it should always begin with the same questions asked to oneself: “What is my significance in my life? What guides my feelings and actions? Who controls me? Having sincerely answered the questions, a person will have to admit that his role in his own destiny is very insignificant, and if this is not corrected, there will only be more reasons for tears.

Spiritual mood

How to be calm and remain a friendly person if there is only negativity and troubles around? Most people with a “home-work” life principle think exactly this way and see the reason for their changed behavior in the pressure of the environment. In essence, this is the same syndrome of irresponsibility, but of a more generalized nature.

“I don’t have time to take care of my appearance, I have small children,” says the woman, justifying her tears about her friend’s luxurious appearance. If you accept the fact that your friend also has children, but at the same time she can afford to attract attention, then another reason for tears will turn into a powerful incentive to fight your own laziness. However, only a few are able to admit this, because working on oneself presupposes leaving a comfortable state, but tears fit well into the usual pattern of everyday life.

The right mental attitude, along with the development of responsibility, can change a person’s self-image and make him believe in his strengths and capabilities. Psychologists advise that when a person feels tears coming, provoked by feelings of hopelessness, envy or fatigue, repeat to himself the affirmation: “I am not a victim!” This short phrase has an amazing effect on the individual’s determination to act and suppresses any need to feel sorry for himself.

Holding back tears often is dangerous

Loss of control over the emotional state can significantly reduce a person’s quality of life and make him an outcast from society. But constant suppression of emotions, a strict self-prohibition on “all sorts of weaknesses” will sooner or later lead to problems of a physiological nature, even asthma or radiculitis.

Healthy, good emotions also need renewal, and this happens when a person allows himself to accept the negativity that, anyway, drop by drop, seeps into the life of every person. Problems at work, illness, separation of loved ones - these are the situations that make you want to part with them as they arise, without holding them in for a minute. Their accumulation, the “exaggeration” of details provokes the development of sustainable stress, complicated by numerous psychosomatic phenomena.

Immediately after the baby is born, the first thing the mother hears is the baby’s cry. A baby can cry for any reason if he does not know how to say - this is his first reaction to difficulties or a traumatic situation.

In adulthood, it is generally accepted that crying is shameful, especially for men, crying is a sign of weakness, and similar statements. But when experiencing difficult losses, the loss of loved ones and something valuable, tears appear on their own. Some people have increased sensitivity to everything that happens, so for them the urgent question is how to stop crying over little things, how to restrain their emotions.

Crying is an automatic emotional process needed to provide relief after prolonged stress. Sometimes, even after physical exertion, as if out of the blue, a person begins to cry.

Crying in small quantities is acceptable and is considered normal. Especially after psychological trauma, psychologists advise not to suppress emotions within yourself, but to bring them out through crying. In such cases they say: “Cry, it will become easier.” But the process of uncontrollable crying, which often occurs, is considered pathological. This indicates a person’s psychological or mental problems.

1. Adults often cry if they did not learn in childhood to experience grief, a feeling of loss or unfulfilled expectations. Parents should teach the child how to cope with emotions, explain to him why this or that happens, and make it clear that it can be survived. In a situation of grief, children have more questions than answers; they learn not to worry about the situation, because they are afraid of not being able to cope with their emotions. In adulthood, in a situation of grief and loss, a person may not express emotions or cry. But then, out of the blue, he may burst into tears.
2. Self-pity. In any difficult situation, a person who was “disliked” or misunderstood in childhood will feel sorry for himself. Especially when they yell at him.
3. Problems with the nervous system. When people burst into tears for no reason, they say: “My nerves are getting crazy.” Indeed, if a person has been nervous a lot in life, held back his emotions, experienced a lot stressful situations, his nervous system no longer so resistant to traumatic situations.
4. Repressed negative emotions can manifest themselves in crying while the person himself is shouting and scolding someone. This state borders on a state of passion, when a person ceases to control his emotions.
5. and other problems of the emotional spectrum. To correct them.

In fact, there are many reasons for constant crying, from physiological to mental. But still, how to stop crying when the tears flow at the wrong time?

Tips for Emotional Control When Crying

It is important for a person to learn to control his emotions, because others will consider him an unbalanced person.

Calming with Breathing

When you feel a lump in your throat, tears coming to your eyes, and you can’t cry at the moment, the method of calming down with deep breathing will come to the rescue.

You need to repeat this 5 times. If there is intense crying, this method is not used, as it can lead to hyperventilation.

Deep breathing allows you to reduce the heart rate, while improving the delivery of oxygen to the cells, and reducing the intense subjective understanding of the traumatic situation.

Thought analysis

During periods of uncontrollable emotions, you need to analyze positive and negative thoughts. When a person realizes what is bothering him in a particular situation, half of the solution to the problem has already been done.

In moments of grief or loss, a person tends to think about his loneliness and hopelessness. These feelings are so strong that they can cause crying for months. When a person feels hopelessness, he loses the meaning of life. Constant crying is replaced by emptiness and the meaninglessness of one’s existence. But in such a state it is usually difficult to analyze anything. Therefore, the following method comes to the rescue.

Recording your feelings

The best psychotherapy for fear is drawing, and the same with crying: the best psychological treatment for crying is writing down your feelings or emotions. Each entry is separate.

Let's get distracted

When experiencing any kind of stress, it is important to learn to abstract from it. What does it mean? Peace of mind is not restored the first time. Pessimistic thoughts often occur, but if you try to distract yourself from them, you can soberly assess the situation. How to get distracted?

And this will pass

When a lump comes to your throat and you want to cry, it is important to set yourself up for the positive: this situation will pass someday, all the bad things will not last forever. To sober up a little, you can wash your face with cold water.

Tears help relieve tension inside, give vent to depressing emotions, and in many situations it is even very useful to cry. However, there are times when shedding tears is a sign of emotion, vulnerability, or weakness, which means losing. But how to hold back your tears and not cry when you want to be alone, but there is no such opportunity. What to do if there is a lump in your throat? How can you still restrain yourself and not give free rein to your emotions? Let's look at a few steps that can solve this problem.

How to hold back your tears

• You need to try to distract yourself a little and calm down. This helps a lot at the very beginning. To do this, you can take 10 to 15 slow, even and deep breaths and exhalations, focusing as much as possible on this process. Such simple actions are sometimes enough to restrain yourself.
• Think about something else. For example, you can remember your last vacation, how fun it was, who did what, what exactly you liked. You can also remember all the pages of your passport (first name, last name, patronymic, registration address). Or try to count the stripes on your own or someone else's clothes. Go through the multiplication table for six or seven in your mind, try to multiply large numbers by each other. Paradoxically, you can hold back the surging tears by using all these well-known techniques that treat insomnia.
• “Switch” attention from mental pain to physical pain. Most often, uncontrollable, strong emotions cause tears, and one of the effective ways to hold on to them is to hurt yourself. Of course, doing like Van Gogh and cutting off an ear is unnecessary. After all, it will be enough to bite your lips or tongue, or pinch yourself hard. For many, such a shock effectively brings them to their senses and the desire to start crying disappears.

Other methods

How to hold back your tears if your boss gave you an undeserved “brain drain.” You shouldn't feel sorry for yourself, it's better to get angry at her. You can redirect the pain from yourself to the offender. If you are offended by one specific person, then you need to mentally transfer your emotions to him. Or she may even find something to feel sorry for her for (the haircut is unsuccessful, menopause is coming, her nerves are frayed). You can also play with your imagination. Mentally turn the offender into a croaking frog, with a trash can on his head, imagine him in a clown costume, or imagine that he is a crow. The main thing with imagination is not to overdo it, otherwise you might not be able to restrain yourself and laugh in your face.

Tears are water, and water is attracted to water. Therefore, after a heated conversation, drink water or tea. In order not to shed tears immediately after a difficult conversation, it is better to drink half a glass of water or other liquid, such as non-hot tea, slowly and in small sips. As if washing away an insult, it is quite easy to hold back tears if you completely wash your face with cool water or wipe your entire face with a damp cloth. To further consolidate the result, and so as not to cry afterwards, we do this. As quickly as possible, we are distracted by any matter not related to the one that almost brought us to tears.

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Although crying is a completely natural way to relieve tension, express emotions and cope with difficult situations, there are times when it is simply necessary to hold back the tears. Unfortunately, this is not always easy to do, but it is still possible. This article will give you tips to help you hold back your tears when necessary.

Steps

Using physical methods

Pinch yourself. Pain in the body signals the brain and causes it to switch to physical sensations, so you can hold back the tears. Pinch yourself in a sensitive area, such as the bridge of your nose or between your fingers. This is very effective method, if you need to hold back your tears.

Focus on your breathing. This may help you hold back your tears. Focus on inhaling and exhaling. You can also practice deep breathing techniques by inhaling through your nose, drawing air into your stomach, and exhaling through your mouth. This will help you calm down and you won't feel like crying.

Use something cold to take your mind off emotional pain. This may help you hold back your tears. Place a cold water bottle or ice cube on your wrist. Wash your face with cold water. Do something that will help you switch from emotional pain to physical sensations. This will help you hold back your tears.

Look up. For many, this advice helps hold back tears. If you look up, you simply won't allow the tears to flow down your cheeks. However, this method is not always effective. Tears will start rolling down your cheeks as soon as you look down.

Assess your emotional needs honestly. Very often we cry because we cannot express our emotional needs. Talk to your loved ones. Tell them that you need emotional support. Don't be afraid to ask your loved one for support. Say that you need someone to listen to you, hold your hand, and care about your emotional well-being.

Emotional approach

Try to distance yourself from the stressful situation. Sometimes this helps control tears that are caused by emotional stress. This will help you deal with your feelings.

Try to distract yourself. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to leave the room when tears roll into your eyes. If you can't leave the room, try to distract yourself.