I am a big burly guy with a beard - and I get overwhelmed and cry regularly. Not even from sadness, just from general emotion.
For example last night I watched the trailer for Overwatch[1] and got so excited I started tearing up. I don't know why, anything that triggers ANY sort of strong emotion in me brings it on. Always has.
My wife makes fun of me for it. I don't see anything wrong with it.
Also a guy -- no beard -- but (and I'm not joking here)... I watched that exact trailer just now and teared up a little.
As for movies, I have two examples: Up (pure emotion) and The Fountain -- the scene towards the end where he talks to the high priest and Clint Mansell's music takes over.
For me, I think it's generally sort of really EPIC things that do it. Really huge scales also tend to do it, for example some of the star size comparisons, or David Deutsch's talk about relativistic jets[1], or just contemplating the fact that some black holes swallow a solar mass per day.
Sometimes it's just "beauty", e.g. I couldn't help tearing up when Carolyn Porco showed the "Saturn Eclipse"[2] picture in her Ted Talk[3]. Some of that, I think, was because of the realization that we humans had actually sent a thing out there to take that picture.
(Btw, I think I'm generally considered a bit of a cold fish among my friends/acquaintances, FWIW. Humans are weird.)
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usqdjsr6Vw (I won't link you to the exact time because the video deserves to be seen its entirety. If you really want to skip, skip to 15m15s.)
I've found that as I age, I've become more emotional (and simultaneously better at dealing with it). I never cried in movies as a child/teenager, but nowadays I find myself choking up during particularly emotional moments in movies, shows, and life. Sometimes I just look at my son for a minute and the same thing happens. I try not to cry around people, even my family, but more because I'm conscious of the effect it has on them (upsetting or, in the case of other people, just awkward).
My theory is that, as I've developed a stronger sense of empathy and experienced more things in my life, I have a more direct emotional connection to events I witness. From what I've read based, this seems to be fairly common.
Having a kid did that to me, too. I've always been a bit of a crybaby, but now I kinda lose it when children-related kidnappings or deaths happen in movies or TV shows or the news.
Tycho, from Penny Arcade, said it best: "When I was younger, I would have resented some of this stuff - it would have seemed ham-handed. Manipulative. I could have discern what they wanted me to feel and valiantly refused, or (if it were executed especially well) felt a version of it which might have been similar in color or shape. I would feel it in deference to their craft.
That’s not really how it works now. Children carve something out of you, a place for themselves; people can twist the knife in that spot, and it just bleeds and bleeds."
For me it seemed to correlate directly with the birth of my son. My theory is that his birth, the emotions of it, the sleep deprivation, and the neuro-chemical onslaught that most likely happened during that same time (it was easily the most emotional period of my life), have fundamentally rewired my brain to be more emotionally reactive (my wife would balk if I used the term "sensitive").
There is apparently hormonal changes in fathers-to-be including lowering of testosterone levels that could account for these anecdotal changes in mood response to stimuli.
So probably you're experiencing being a bit more female in your hormone levels.
(Best source I've seen on this is probably an endocrinologist doing a BBC program, which sorry I can't cite for you).
That's a nice theory, but it seems to be common to get emotional with age - senile lability if you want to google it.
My first introduction to the term as a teenager was in Earthly Powers[1]. Didn't get it then, but as I get older (and like you after kids), I find I tear up at stories of sacrifice and generosity.
I think there is a difference between senile decay, and the fact that when you are getting older, you have witnessed the fragility of life in ways that most teenagers luckily have not.
I think my empathy is growing as I'm getting older.
I am aware that some people just hardens up or getting more or less traumatized if they experience really traumatic events or periods and I don't think it is that useful to look at war-like events as it kind of go outside a useful scale, but in personal tragedies a lot of people people seems to go softer.
Maybe you have to learn empathy. There are many signs that says it's at least partially so.
Empathy definitely has to be exercised and trained regularly to work well. As I understand it (not an expert but I've read up on it on the Internet), children are pretty much incapable of it until ~4 as there's some mental development necessary. If you spend lots of time in an environment where you're not conscious of building your empathy and remembering to use it, your ability and tendency to do so will wither.
I've noticed this in myself, and had put it down to getting lonelier as i get older. When i was talking to school or university friends every day, i was grounded in reality, somehow; now i only see real close friends every week or few weeks, i'm off in a little emotional world of my own where any little thing can take on subjectively huge proportions.
Interesting. I too have noticed a similar thing as I have aged. I developed the theory though that when it started happening things that did not impact me directly (such as movies) that it was more a case that I was feeling emotional about something else in life and that this was emotions seeping out where they could. I especially thought this because it didn't seem to always happen.
Your view bears merit though and I will have to consider it. Thank you for sharing it.
And my kids still make fun of me for crying at the end of "Winnie the Pooh", but I've always done that. And I maintain that Christopher Robin leaving Pooh and his childhood behind is cry worthy... even more for Pooh than Christopher Robin.
I've always been an empathic person, but some chemicals changed when I had a child, and now a crappy movie trailer with the right cuts and a soaring soundtrack can get me teary.
Replying to myself since I can't edit: looks from HN like maybe my son's birth did it :) A lot of things changed then, that could well have been one of them.
I saw The Fountain in theaters with a younger friend, and while I was moved, he "didn't really get it". Not that he didn't understand the events of the movie, but he'd never experienced the frailty and desperation the kind of personal, intense bond with another that the film evoked. He'd never loved and lost.
I'm also moved by wonderment and perspectives of scope and scale, which is probably why I reread the same handful of novels every few years, including Larry Niven's Known Space series. If anyone has other suggestions producing a similar effect, I'd be interested.
By reflex of my upbringing, I choke down any strong feelings by default and chalk it up to self-control. It doesn't make me hurt or feel any less, but some people recoil from emotional expression in men or can't help themselves when they sense vulnerability, and you don't find out which it is until the dam breaks. It's made me weaker as a person, a worse partner, and not as good of a friend as I'd like to be, but it's what everyone is used to. I'm expected to keep it together when others are angry, panic, or get flustered so I can guide everyone back on track. It's a big source of stress for me, but I have to find other outlets than letting flow my tears.
> he'd never experienced the frailty and desperation the kind of personal, intense bond with another that the film evoked. He'd never loved and lost.
That's an incredibly apt and succinct summary of what the film was (to me, at least!). For me, it's really all about that very fragile bond with another human being -- whether that's a girlfriend, parent, wife, lover or just a friend. When you see that "I understand what you mean" look in their eyes... that's when you melt[1]. That's what that penultimate scene meant (to me): The high priest understood and saw that he was becoming "obsolete" in the face of the conquest... and the Conquistador saw himself reflected. (I'm not saying conquest was a good thing. Still, it happened so we need to deal with the aftermath.)
EDIT: [1] I really wish I was better at explicitly saying "that moment really mattered to me" to my friends. I'll try doing that more -- maybe with a little gamification thrown in.
Sharing my cryiest ever video clip, when Stanford Professor Andrei Linde celebrates physics breakthrough: [1]. I've seen it thirty times and I cry (oh, the tears) every time. I also cried at the end of Real Steal.
I watched Toy Story 3 alone in my apartment and cried like a baby at the scene with Andy and the girl at the end (manly man n+1 in this thread checking in). I'm not a very emotional guy, but some emotion now and then is nice.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas[1] I should have seen it coming but it was a freight train, never did a movie hit so hard like that. War though a child's eye is worse than the adult perspective of war.
I could not smile for days after watching that one. One of the greatest movies ever made, but when I recommend it to anyone, I always warn them that if they are depression prone, they should not watch it at all.
So _intense_. Even years later, just reference to it gives me goosebumps.
Yes. That's one of the best movies that I've only seen once. It occupies a rare intersection between shows that I consider excellent and shows that I'd rather not watch again.
Charlie Chaplin's movies. Modern Times is very funny, but the end scene. I cry every time. City lights, ditto, the end scene is so strong. And Limelight. And the Gold rush...
So strange -- I don't cry really at all, but I find I have the same emotional reaction to such large scale or "epic" visually arresting things. Amazing how often you find out something you thought only you went through was shared by others.
I hardly cry (and make no attemps not to cry) but I have to concede that "Up" is very well written and its very hard to avoid getting emotional in certain parts.
So, I guess the guy in this post has many triggers and I only have some, say - thinking of Up - old age and loneliness, lifelong fidelity...
Yeah, "Up" is really in a league of its own on the "tearjerker" scale -- not that it ever does it gratuitously, mind. It's just that it imitates life very well in that it can sometimes be very sad and also uplifting(!) at the same time.
"Up" definitely triggered the strongest emotions in me of any movie to date. Perhaps it reminded me of the loss of my grandma a few years earlier.
The first ten minutes made me so upset that I spent the rest of the movie fighting my body so that I wouldn't start bawling. It would have been such an intense and loud cry that I absolutely would have had to run out of the movie theater.
After the movie I drove my friend home (~30 min), but I couldn't say one word to her because I was still so deeply upset that my lips were trembling.
I don't cry much, in fact, I really can't cry when most people ordinarily would. But in the rare circumstances where something can make me cry (whether it's very sad, or just incredibly beautiful) it is always with maximum intensity.
Not at all. Just because you don't cry, doesn't mean you don't feel. Does it? I think what they are talking about is a certain bodily way of expressing a strong emotion. I too am "built too close to the water" as the Germans say, but often, my tears are an expression of my lack of ability to otherwise express.
Maybe you express differently than I do? I'd be glad about that. If everyone was like me we'd have no love balads - only long play records with lots of sniffling. ;-)
Not really, neither Up nor Toy Story 3 did it for me as movies (a very unpopular opinion I know). I choke up watching a movie or TV show from time to time, maybe more than I'd like to admit, but I don't share the popular opinion about those two movies.
40 yard old with basically the same story as the guy from `Up`. Can't have children, long term very solid relationship. As much as I cried at the opening to `Up` - and it was a whole lot, `Marley and Me` is just absolutely devastating. Can't even look at the cover to that movie.
Dude +1 for The Fountain. Cried through that entire movie and probably for 10 minutes straight when Izzy talks to Tommy after she collapses in the museum.
Thank you for The Fountain recommendation. It got me too, and it's one of the few Aronofsky films I hadn't yet seen. It was due to expire on Netflix in just a couple of hours & racing to finish it before it timed out added to the experience.
Ah, I was thinking of pixel size, because actually displaying it requires that it be decompressed. If your machine is memory-constrained just having an image that size (decompressed) can be crippling. I remember it bringing a machine I had several years ago to a crawl for that very reason. Maybe I'm just showing my age here :).
My eyes tear up really easily, and it's just strong emotion, even just nostalgia. It's very difficult to control, and the sensation is often rather nice. But my girlfriend is from Asia, where there's a serious taboo against a man crying, so it's a problem. She can't understand that I'm not sad or fearful, I'm just feeling strong emotions, often pleasant emotions.
It's a strange thing. I'm so embarrassed about it I had to use a throwaway account.
I'm also a big, macho looking guy. I think just about anyone who knows me thinks that I'm dead as a rock inside. But I cry quite often. Never in public and always in complete solitude. I never really cried until about 25 when I had to split up with my fiance. I don't know what happened, but it flipped a switch and I've been incredibly emotional ever since. It was strange at first, but I learned to appreciate it. I feel like I can connect with people a little better when they're sharing their pains with me.
It also has a tremendous healing effect. While I do have plenty of friends I am naturally a loaner and deal with things privately in my own ways. I found that when I've had enough, simply taking a drive in the car and just letting it rip makes me feel infinitely better. So, cry it out. Seriously :)
I cry so little my wife had me tested for Aspergers...and she was right. I tear up about once a year at most. Most of the time when I do start to get overwhelmed my first reaction is "WTF IS THIS?" and beat it down like a $2 mule. It isn't that I'm completely without emotions, but I really do have less than "normal" people.
Anyway, nice to hear about the experiences of others.
I don't think I've got Asperger's, but I also have a sort of instinctual reaction to clamp down on any emotion that deviates too far from a standard flavor of okay-ness. Not sure where that comes from. Sometimes jealous of people who seem capable of those big emotional responses.
> I cry so little my wife had me tested for
> Aspergers...and she was right. I tear up about once a
> year at most
It's important to not conflate crying with feeling strong emotion. I was clinically depressed for a year and cried a sum total of once during that time.
Speaking of Pixar cartoons, I thought the way that Inside Out presented depression as the absence of both joy and sadness was really telling. I don't know if it's always true, but it seems like often depression doesn't even allow you to feel cathartic sadness, only a miserable numbness.
Speaking as someone with Asperger; I think Asperger is not about having less emotions than neurotypical persons but more about the trouble expressing those emotions to others or even oneself.
I never really cried much in my teens or 20s until last year when my partner passed away (I was 29). That seems to have really shaken up how I express emotion and I suspect it's a lasting change that I now cry significantly more, both in frequency and scope of what I react to.
I do miss the no-tears-ever part of me sometimes, but I suspect that the deeper emotional growth I've gone through over the past 9 months since she died will ultimately be for the best for me.
I get a little choked up when I see paintings of horses. I have no other connection to horses. It's very quick and generally jumbled with thoughts of "Uhhhhh, what in the world is happening right now?"
Horses are absolutely beautiful, loving, intelligent, fragile, kind and elegant creatures, so I won't hold that against you. That said, my soft spot from horses (which I otherwise have little mental connection to) probably comes from growing up around them.
Serious question: what else happens around that time? How long does it take you to "recover" from a crying episode? Are you unable to perform other tasks during an episode? Etc.
I'm genuinely curious because I've had some frustrating experiences with crying in the workplace / around work that seemed a bit unfair to me (at the time I was a young'n who still assumed "fairness" was a thing). Someone would cry at work and they'd be coddled, yet if someone else raised their voice and showed "anger" they'd be in trouble. Seemed a little silly to me.
Who said anything about raising voices at coworkers. From my perspective (which is one with zero psychology or medical training), these are two expressions of emotions. You just proved my point here. If the same situation makes one person cry and another person stone / red faced with "anger" why is one treated so tremendously different from the other? From my POV, you have two people unable to control their emotions in a work environment.
Anger is more likely to trigger fear in other people. Anger is also more likely to lead to action, and therefore possibly mistakes. Being sad is just safer for the business.
But I agree there should just be a protocol for handling both and neither should be a big deal. Management should want to take time to sort either out.
This started happening to me the moment my wife got pregnant with our first kid. Before that, even tear-jerker news stories didn't affect me; now, I get choked up over anything (but especially over hopeful science news stories - the Philae lander, possible breakthroughs in solar power, that kind of thing).
My wife makes fun of me for it too, but then I make fun of her for lots of stuff, so that's fair.
The type of emotional stoicism and detachment you're advocating for fit under the simple description of either a doormat or a sociopath.
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with feeling emotion. Emotion and logic are NOT, as people in our field so love to proclaim, mutually exclusive.
Your emotions frequently cue you in to valuable information in a situation. Emotional people are actually very predictable -- they are showing you their feelings and in a way communicating their needs.
How can you seriously think that repressing your emotions make you a stable person? This literally goes against all of the literature on the subject.
I never said not to feel emotion. Stoicism simply doesn't act on it without first checking other valid logical responses. Understand what you're dealing with here.
Extremely emotional people are only predictable in that they are going to behave unpredictably and irrationally.
What I find hilarious is that I explain what's gotten me superior results in life and everyone argues with it rather than try to understand why.
I guess the people who do agree with you don't feel the need to argue. And those are probably the more stoic types. :-) But for what it's worth, I agree with you, bub. Being able to respond with some emotional distance does not mean emotions aren't experienced, nor does it imply that you suppress them. And people who are more reserved and/or feel less comfortable with other people's "emotional livelyhood" do tend to respond not more attracted to that, but just less turned away.
In my opinion guys in general are way too emotional in how they behave, saying stuff like 'super awesome', 'this times 1000' and so on. It makes me feel really uncomfortable. But that does not imply that i'm stone cold. I'm far from it. When I was recovering from a surgical procedure, boy was i emotional. For months. But that was privately. I just avoided public spaces, I'm much too reserved and in that sense you are right MbcroBerto: I felt really unpredictable, even to myself, let alone to others.
I actually believe you that your life is better than average, but you must have noticed that such statements are more often wishful thinking than a careful measurement. I suspect that's why people don't hang on your every word when you speak about it. We have no way to know if your life actually is great by my metrics.
I disagree. I have a friend who is occasionally weepy, but often they cry with joy rather than sadness. They can see something beautiful and appreciate its beauty so deeply that it causes them to shed a tear of happiness. It's a wonderful thing to see. It's like they're more attuned to beauty that I can't perceive. Like how a high-sensitivity radio receiver can detect very faint signals that others can't.
People are different. Some people like to follow the same routine and be very stoic and are content with that. Others would rather explore and experience variety and new things and ride the peaks & troughs. Both have advantages & disadvantages.
Steve Jobs was known for crying often, so being emotional and successful can certainly go together.
And I'll easily argue that Steve Jobs' emotional states made him miserable, well-hated, and ultimately it ended up killing him because he stubbornly took an extremely emotional physical situation and didn't approach it with a rock-like proper state of mind.
(Being stubborn and illogical = emotional in this sense)
As I said elsewhere, I'm not dead inside, I still see just as much beauty out in the woods as you do. I just don't lose my mind anymore in most situations.
I find it the opposite. Now I do get fired up about certain things (I'm not dead inside), but I've found that ever since I stopped getting emotional during things like arguments, they've become far easier and even more enjoyable.
Try getting into a "defcon-4" style argument yet don't raise your voice, don't change your tone or tempo, and don't worry about the outcome as much -- just maintain control of your emotions. It's amazing what happens and how the other party responds.
The exhausting part is being the rock when there's a crisis. When your spouse is freaking out about running out of money for rent. When rent is being raised and you have to figure out how to raise it less. When kids get injured and need the hospital.
Or when your team is freaking out because everything's going to shit and production is down and you're running out of time on features you promised to Big Users/Clients TM.
When everyone around you is panicking and freaking the fuck out, but somebody has to fix the situation. That's when being the rock matters.
Who even gives a shit about arguments? Arguing is for fun.
You're missing my point, but simultaneously agreeing with me. Stoicism during an argument is the self-induced test to determine results. It's easily created and pretty repeatable in a scenario that doesn't matter so much. That was just a simple example that you can control.
And then, yes -- when it does matter, you know what already gets you best results.
Emotional stoicism gets real world tangible results. But it doesn't let us explore our emotions in depth.
As a kid, excessive emotions made me feel toxic because there is no solution to emotional issues. I learned how to block those emotions and voila, I'm now a great cog in the economy. I can get stuff done without emotions affecting me. I am pretty good at conflict resolution (not domination).
I have a very nice rational life but a few relationships did make me realize that my go to solution for any problem is blocking emotions. Not really healthy IMO.
The people I know who cry the most happen to be the most self absorbed people that I know. They do not have more empathy. The most caring and emotionally generous people I know do not cry very much.
> Crying is correlated with empathy, which is among the most important traits a human can have.
I don't know why people place so much emphasis on empathy, as if it's some magical ingredient that other animals lack, or that it's some integral component to society.
Other animals have empathy too, and empathy has little to do with moral reasoning. Empathy doesn't make humans special, intelligence and the physical composition/dexterity to make full use of our intelligence is what makes us special.
Yes, absolutely. And the glorification of empathy leads to immoral behavior. Empathy without skepticism, intelligence, or reason leads to being manipulated by immoral people into immoral acts.
The "depending on your goals in life" part is important I'd say! I, personally, find "the rock" types pretty creepy, because life is about emotional connection to me, and that's the one think I'll never get from them. :(
If, by "social results", you mean "well-connected" or "successful", then I agree.
Cool to read someone else is the same way! My eyes have always watered when I laugh, when I'm really happy, or just excited about something.
What gets annoying is when I'm even slightly upset or having a disagreement with someone, my eyes want to water. I'm not even that upset, my eyes are just freaking out. I always have to be like, "I'm not that upset or trying to make you feel bad, my eyes are dumb, sorry, let's keep talking."
This happens to me all the time. Mostly with emotional moments in movies or animated films. However, more interestingly with things like Google's commercials. They do very well with blending their technology and emotional connections.
Military jet aircraft with afterburners lit, flying at low altitude do it for me. No idea why. Perhaps something to do with attending air shows at a young age.
I think that's a great trait. Bearded guy here, I get the same thing from certain songs. I can't hear them or sing them without choking up. I attribute it to the musician's bardic gift.
Another bearded guy here: Some Elliott Smith songs make me tear up a bit, but at the same time the sadness also me makes me happy -- I don't quite understand why, perhaps I have a bittersweet tooth. I also cried at the end of Field of Dreams.
A further bearded guy here, and you know what, the main thing i'm learning from this thread is that we bearded guys cry a lot at some really unexpected stuff. It's Apollo 13 and non-human primates for me.
I have a beard and cry also. I'm a sap for funny, kid videos and things that remind me of my kids.
I can tear up over facebook posts, thinking about one of my kids leaving home, running out of wine (okay so I just go get some more, but I could, no I don't drive after I drink wine or anything).
I cry too but only if something sad happens to someone else. Whenever something bad happens to myself, I just feel numb and try to block out all emotions. But if I read about some injustice or tragedy somewhere in the world, I get all weepy.
There are known genetic factors for crying easily.[1] My oldest son and I cry easily; my wife and youngest son don't. By "crying" here I mean tearing up in response to both positive and negative emotions, including emotions expressed by others. My oldest son and I are about normal when it comes to outright bawling or crying in response to physical injury.
Some public individuals cry easily: definitely John Boehner and possibly Elon Musk.
Also a bearded male, a combat veteran, etc... I cry on the regular, and always have. Do you show those emotions around larger audiences? I'm very openly emotional, like you're describing, around my wife and immediate family members but, quite naturally now that I think about it, keep it from bubbling up around friends, etc...
I did the same thing last night! I fired up the overwatch trailer for my girlfriend and started crying quite a bit. Then I put on the Soldier 76 clip, and cried even more.
How much did you cry during the last episode of Game of Thrones? I was gasping for air between the sobs!
Saw the trailer. It seems to be a blend of the incredibles, batman the animated series, and warcraft. I wanted to like it but it doesn't seem to be very original. And the hair modeling on some of the characters it's really bad. Like plastic wigs. It seems to be aimed at small kids. Thumbs down.
For example last night I watched the trailer for Overwatch[1] and got so excited I started tearing up. I don't know why, anything that triggers ANY sort of strong emotion in me brings it on. Always has.
My wife makes fun of me for it. I don't see anything wrong with it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqnKB22pOC0