It varies. When I'm fighting off depression, nearly everyday. When I'm not, probably once or twice a month. Never at anything important. Never at movies (though Armageddon choked me up a bit, once.) Soundtracks can induce getting choked up, as can some novels.
I can't remember the last time I cried. It's been years. I never ever cry at funerals or afterward; I feel sad and sort of numb, but I don't cry. Similar for sad books and movies: I feel sad, but no tears.
The only times I cry are when I'm in heated, emotional arguments and I start to feel worn out by the stress of continuing to fight. That hasn't happened in a long time.
I cry only one every three months unless I'm doing fucking therapy, in which case I cry almost every single goddamned time.
Also: if I cry watching any commercially produced drama, my period will arrive within two days. It's more reliable than any of the other indicators.
I have gone years at a time without crying. On the other hand, matters of the heart have put me in the position of sitting behind closed doors weeping several times a day.
I also choke up at moves sometimes--who could not be moved by the end of the original A Star is Born--but I do not fully break out in tears.
More than I used to. Doesn't bother me either, though it seems to upset others. Choke up, break out in tears are all on a continuum for me; I call that crying.
I don't cry often enough to have a sense of how often it is. I think I cry more often than teo, who is apparently a soulless robot. And I kind of wish I could cry more easily; it seems really cathartic.
That said, I can tear-up at the drop of a hat. I think I've teared up while reading comments here, when the comments reminded me how amazing America can be. I know I teared up when I saw the last Jordan commercial the first time.
Since having kids, I will get teary at TV stories of sick oe injured children. And lumps in my throat at this or that. But actual crying? Not since my first marriage fell apart.
Choke up, break out in tears are all on a continuum for me; I call that crying.
Sure. But for me, at least, choking up at something moving like a movie is very different emotionally from what I feel if I am crying out of emotional pain.
I choke up all the time: during commercials, over paintings, reading books, maybe two to three times a week. But on the rare occasion that my tear ducts produce droplets of motor oil, this unit is instructed to report immediately to IT.
Since having kids, I will get teary at TV stories of sick oe injured children.
My response to the Jordan commercial was less about Jordan, and more about the kids; it made my biological clock chime.
I have not cried within my memory, going back at least to age 14. I have always felt bad about this.
The Happy Fun Kitty feels my pain.
Last time I cried was in January when my father died (the day I got the news, and the day after). I haven't cried since then, even though I think it might do me good occasionally.
My father used to cry at the drop of a hat. Interestingly, I have never seen my mother cry, not even once, in my entire life.
I bawled and bawled at the end of Midnight Cowboy.
I, like teofilo, am a soulless robot. I can't remember the last time I cried -- no, wait, I can, it was nine years and five months ago.
I do, however, also choke up during movies, even those that I hate. That annoys me. I feel like I'm more likely to choke up as a result of fiction (movies, books) than fact (actual sad things happening). Why is that?
I tear up on a regular basis (watching movies, drunken sincerity, a song I haven't heard in a long time), and I've cried outright a few times as an adult (my first few sessions of therapy, during fights and breakups, etc.), but I've only had full-on can't-stop crying jags twice. Once, it was because I got put on generic birth control and became completely unhinged, so when Max asked for a little break from our relationship, I would spend hours sitting in my apartment wailing. The other time was during and after watching The Thin Red Line in the theater. Malick movies are really hypnotic for me, and somehow I got really shaken up while seeing that one. I was bawling (aloud) in the theater for the last half of the film, and then afterwards I couldn't stop crying. My mom and I sat in the theater for twenty minutes as I tried to calm down and couldn't. We got in the car and I was crying too hard to drive. We stopped to buy beer on the way home, and after having a few, the tears subsided.
Thanks, Mom, for knowing how to comfort your 19-year-old daughter!
I choke up fairly often. But no tears.
Stories about people having to give away a beloved pet or have it put to sleep make me cry. But I haven't read a story like that in a while and I try to avoid thinking about the issue.
This talk of tearing up at the movies makes me wonder if anybody cries watching pornography.
This talk of tearing up at the movies makes me wonder if anybody cries watching pornography.
Pornography makes the baby Jesus cry, duh.
No, but I masturbated all the way through Philadelphia.
Yeah, Tom Hanks is teh Hott.
I cried when I had to have my cat put to sleep last month. and then when I picked up the ashes. Sorry, reggad.
Before that, not since therapy, when I cried every week.
I swear, some of Les Mis is computer-generated to achieve maximal sadness. Also some of Julee Cruise.
A League of Their Own, when that one player receives the telegram (about George)? Forget about it.
I tear up fairly easily at sentimental entertainment (oddly, poetry often makes me cry. It's something to do with the meter -- it happens with strongly rhythmic poetry even if it's not particularly sad).
I cry pretty often other than that, maybe once a month or so, maybe every two months. It can be a lot of things -- frustration, anger, feeling as if I've failed at something. I'm terrified of crying at work and getting busted -- I had an incident last summer where I had two partners telling me to do absolutely incompatible things, and after the third time one of them blew up about it I lost it after he left and had to slink off to the bathroom and hide in a stall for a long time until I could stop crying and put myself back together.
I don't cry much. Even the depression seldom makes me cry. I'll tear up at sad movies, and when I'm emotionally moved, and occasionally during therapy, and rarely during an angry fight, but since crying mortifies me and I'm extremely good at shifting my thoughts away from things that emotionally affect me, I usually manage to avoid it.
Except on those weird occasions when I deliberately engage in really distressing daydreams in order to cry.
I have that about poetry: my dad would quaver when reciting, and sometimes couldn't get through it, and I'm about the same.
There's no predicting crying, though. My father died this past year, and I remember when my cat was killed. Both major emotional events, and my reaction was closer to numb both times.
I cried on the subway once after the person evaluating my class told me I "clearly think [I] am a good teacher, but what [I] really [am] is someone who gets off on manipulating the affections of eighteen-year-old boys." I knew she was wrong, but that was the first time someone who had the power to fire me abused that power for the satisfaction of putting me in my place. It hasn't been the last. Crying on the train, though, is really embarassing.
Like I said above, my reaction to tragic events tends to be numbness rather than crying. My dad's the same way; he once said that when his parents died he expected that at some point he was going to start crying, but he never did. He was just numb the whole time.
The last time I cried was when a friend came to visit me in NYC and I took her to the Statue of Liberty. I've gone at least 5 or 6 times but every time I end up crying.
I also tend to tear up (briefly and usually only out of my left eye) at plays and live music performances. There's something about the overwhelming emotion of so many people being together for the sake of art that does it to me. Something along the lines of that scene in The Search For Signs of Intelligent Live In the Universe:
"Did I tell you what happened at the play? We were at the back of the theater, standing there in the dark, all of a sudden I feel one of 'em tug my sleeve, whispers, "Trudy, look." I said, "Yeah, goose bumps. You definitely got goose bumps. You really like the play that much?" They said it wasn't gave 'em goose bumps, it was the audience.
I forgot to tell 'em to watch the play; they'd been watching the audience! Yeah, to see a group of strangers sitting together in the dark, laughing and crying about the same things...that just knocked 'em out. They said, "Trudy, the play was soup...the audience...art."
I don't cry very often--maybe once a year, though I do tear up more often. The last time I really cried was at my grandfather's funeral in January. I wasn't expecting to at all, I was fine up until then, but when I stepped out of the car and saw the gravestone I burst into tears for a good half hour straight.
On every holiday and pretty much every God damn time I remember being a kid, which is why I drink so much at night, so as not to think about all of that.
It's too bad Unfogged gives just the appearance of being not-the-whole-freaking-internet. There are things I'd like to share with the former but not the latter.
Here's something I've noticed. When I'm distraught, I'm much more likely to cry after (or, more likely, during) saying aloud what's on my mind. To hear my own words and I speak them, so different from thinking the thought.
Me too. That's a big one -- saying something that I'm afraid will hurt the person I'm talking to.
I used to be sort of weepy, and then years ago I completely stopped and now just have one weirdly dysfunctional eye that constantly waters like a crocodile's. I also don't laugh much, but when I do I cackle like a hyena, which disturbs friends and frightens loved ones.
Yeah, 34 is true. For me, it's not b/c of what LB says in 36 as much as it is just exposing the feeling out loud.
I'm relieved, Teo and Clown, to hear that there are other people like that. That's how my boyfriend is, and it's hard not to worry about it sometimes. But if he's not the only one, then maybe it's just a thing some people have. Whew.
I cry when women are in danger in movies. The last time I watched a serial killer movie (in college -- I made a conscious decision never to do so again), I cried in the car the whole way back.
I was the only one in the car.
33 reminds me -- I cry myself to sleep every Christmas Eve.
39: What am I, chopped liver? Now I might cry.
The last time I really cried out-and-out hysterically was when I found out a good friend of mine committed suicide back in March. Then every day for almost a month afterward, I would find myself shedding a few silent tears a couple times a day--on the train, walking down the street, everywhere there was a bustle where I coudn't help but think there was this beautiful city, going on as it always had been, even without my friend in it.
I just about never cry on account of real-life events, except maybe a few tears at the deaths of beloved celebrities -- Douglas Adams, Jim Henson, Dr. Seuss.
The last time I can remember crying outright at a real-life event was when my sister was killed in a car accident, and that was 25 years ago, when I was 10. Deaths of elderly relatives - nothing. Seeing a close friend fall from a vine we were swinging on and break his neck when I was 15 - shock and depression, yes; tears, no.
I haven't experienced the death of a pet in many years, but I didn't cry at those either. Although come to think of it, I did tear up a bit - in joy - when we acquired a kitten (now 11 yrs. old) from the rescue.
Fiction, on the other hand, can easily make me cry. That scene in Two Towers, at Helm's Deep, when they hand this kid a battleaxe, and he looks on it with such fear - I cry every time I see that.
43 is really sad. I'm sorry, Silvana.
Sorry to hear about your friend, silvana. I had a friend who committed suicide a couple years ago.
Collapsed-time montages?
Every episode of Cold Case wraps up in a depressing yet cathartic music video, cueing my weekly crying session. When I care about the homicide victim, the flashbacks make me forget that's what the awesome subject is. I have often not remembered the person is dead even after I've solved the case, and I've had to wait for the on-screen resolution to jar me back to T.V. reality and then my actual reality. This may be because I find a solution to the conflict or a way to prevent it, and then I have to realize I'm not writing a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. On the other hand, I used to call myself a hopeful romantic, and I always hope Romeo & Juliet will make it this time.
Yeah, it sucked. Still sucks, I guess. The worst part about it was seeing how many people came together to console eachother, and console me, and how I went to ridiculously great lengths to do things that I thought would help other people (i.e. taking on planning the "perfect" memorial service), and it was just like, goddamnit, why couldn't we expend this kind of energy for him when he was alive?
The lesson that I tried to take from all of it (and am passing on, I guess) is that it's easy to think that when a friend doesn't return your calls or want to hang out with you, that he just has better things to do or people he likes more to be with, but we shouldn't let our pride enable people to get away from us that easily.
Anyway, on the less-depressing topic of the original post, the things that make me regularly cry when I'm not in a time of emotional distress are mostly 1) good music, especially live 2) seeing unhappy animals 3) beautiful buildings. I wept like a baby at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. It was awesome. But I never (or, at least, hardly ever) cry at movies or television or books.
48: Yes, I had an acquaintance who killed himself in college and thought many of the same things.
I was reading Miss Manners the other day--she gets a letter from someone who's neighbor's wife committed suicide--and the letter-writer mentions that she was young, so it wasn't a terminal illness kind of thing. In the course of her actual answer, Miss M points out that he can't know that. And it got me thinking (re. "why weren't we there more for him when he was alive?") that maybe there are situations in which a depression-related suicide (what this sounds like) *is* a kind of terminal illness thing. Living with depression is absolutely excruciating.
That's all by the way of saying that you know, of course, that all the energy from others in the world might not have saved him, and certainly wouldn't have assuaged his pain in any real way. Only time, therapy, and/or meds can do that, ime.
This thread made me cry. I answered it at Lindsay's, art is my only release. I am not cold in my relationships, but cool. Hip. Unless I am in rage. But alone in the woods with the dogs, watching a romantic movie, listening to Grobschnitt preparing the 11th guitar solo in Solar Music Live...I tear up. All joy. Used to be books too, when I was reading. Some posts make me cry. Daily. I cried reading and writing the Disch yesterday. I teared up when Ogged kept his stomach. Labile mudda, am I.
3-4 times in my life personal grief;3-4 times empathetic contact.
50: Yeah, I know. It's something that's nearly impossible not to think, though. All things considered, I don't feel that much guilt, but mostly just pissed off at myself that I didn't get to hang out with him a few more times.
39 -- I have an emotional state I know where I am thinking "I should be crying now" or less judgementally "I would be crying now if I cried" which state I think is probably the emotional state people who cry are in when they cry (or "tear up"). I experience this state infrequently, maybe every couple of months, and usually in response to images. Like I saw a photo of an orphan begging for food in some South American country that elicited that response from me.
Wow, when I was thinking about things I ought to have cried about, but didn't, I completely forgot about my brother-in-law's suicide.
In retrospect, I think he had undiagnosed depression. That was 1989, just at the beginning of the Prozac era.
"So, how often do you cry?"
Do we mean getting teary-eyed? Teary-eyed and tears leaking down one's cheeks? A single sob? Multiple sobs? All-out bawling?
There are significant degrees here. I get teary-eyed whenever I'm moved by sufficiently sad scenes in movies or occasional tv episodes, or news.
On the other questions, come to think of it, I'd have to control for month-by-month explanation of what the proximity of different people's stages of dying were, in recent years, to seriously answer in regard to any "norm" for me.
So I think not. General answer: in recent years, quite a lot.
3: "...unless I'm doing fucking therapy, in which case I cry almost every single goddamned time."
Yeah, that's one reason I quit therapy (others being that it didn't seem to do much for me, relatively speaking, beyond bits and pieces, no matter that I tried a number of types and therapists; mostly it made me focus on how depressed I was and how lousy I felt about a fucked-up life, more than it helped me get past it or deal with; I found developing technicques of cognitive therapy more on my own far more useful; again, I'm nothing if not the autodidact).
I can get the tears going by thinking about the dog I had to put down a a year and one-half ago. Opera climaxes (end of the act one of Tristan end of act one of Tosca are good for this). Various pop songs and classical works. But oddly enough I cry when I am asleep and dreaming-- I do this very often. And these lines, the mere printed page (though it works in performance), the final lines of Bosola from The Duchess of Malfi, make me choke up. Bosola is dying and he is explaining the death of another character to still another character (Malatesta):
MALATESTI. Thou wretched thing of blood,
How came Antonio by his death?
BOSOLA. In a mist; I know not how:
Such a mistake as I have often seen
In a play. O, I am gone!
We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves,
That, ruin'd, yield no echo. Fare you well.
It may be pain, but no harm, to me to die
In so good a quarrel. O, this gloomy world!
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!
Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust
To suffer death or shame for what is just:
Mine is another voyage.
[Dies.]
----
O metatheater! O Integrity that is no integrity! And such wisdom here! He is such a villain and yet he is redeemed at this last moment through the clarity of his vision.
I meant to hit preview not post--- please excuse the typos. Aack.
And about crying--- lumps in the throat and teary eyes are crying when we are talking about me. The last time I really shook and cried was when we were going to the vets with the aforementioned dog to put him down and then when we driving back home after we put him down. At the vets, I held him and comforted him until his little heart stopped. And yes just typing this has made me...
I cry once a week, roughly. In addition to the typical reasons -- loss, relationship breakups, sad movies, books, TV shows, songs, etc. (which I avoid) -- I cry a lot as a fear response. I sob while on planes and while driving on the interstate. My whole body shakes, and I try to regulate my breathing, and all the while I'm crying pretty hard.
I never cry when I do long division and find a remainder left over.
Wow. Full-on crying? Pretty much only if someone dies or in really, really intense emotional confrontations that can change relationships. As an adult, I think I may only really cry once every two or three years.
Getting teary-eyed? That happens more often, and usually music and either airplanes or alcohol are involed. This would be two or three times a year.
Therapy? Never cried, never even came close.
Maybe if I cried more, I'd be happier.
I sometimes cry when crying is the specific response evoked by a work of art, but I don't tear or get choked up when I see something I find beautiful. In those cases I think what I do, to the extent that I'm aware of what I do, is look or read or watch in a sort of state of awe, perhaps smile a bit, and try to hold on to as much of it as I can in my mind so that I can experience it again as a memory or try to share it with someone who wasn't there.
I haven't cried in twenty years. I'm not thinking this is a good thing.
6: Pretty much the same here, except with one added wrinkle. It seems that I've been socialized, like every other straight American male, to treat crying as if it's teh ghey and to never ever do it even in the most extreme circumstances. So on occasions when women would cry, my body resorts to a different method of stress release: puking. The first time a girl broke my heart I went to bed that night shell-shocked, woke up the next day, had a hearty breakfast in the dining hall, and promptly went back upstairs to my dorm room and puked my guts out. I did cry in front of my ex during my last breakup, though - progress.
I usually only do the really serious crying when first hearing about the death of someone close to me, or sometimes when in the act of breaking off a relationship. I mostly try to avoid doing it in public but there's been one or two occasions when it was unavoidable.
There are some movies (not many of them) that really do a number on me. My friend K. and I were shuddering wrecks after watching Dancer in the Dark, for obvious reasons. Steel Magnolias always manages to choke me up, which is much more embarrassing. And some songs can get me teary if I'm in the right mood; "Castle on a Cloud" from Les Miserables, for example, or "Names" by Cat Power, or "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues.
43: Sympathies. By a rather odd coincidence went through something similar around that time (but in February, not March). It really, really sucks.
31: Any reminder of Lily Tomlin & Jane Wagner's Search for Signs... makes me feel a bit misty (in that something-in-my-chest-is-expanding-slowly sort of way).
I saw a Sunday matinee of the original Broadway run in 1986; the one Broadway show I saw on my one visit to NYC ever. My 3 friends & I were seated on the four chairs attached to a tiny platform behind the last row of the balcony--a few feet short of watching from the lighting booth. Tomlin was on fire, so luminous on stage that I swear I could see every turn of an eyelash from what must have been more than fifty yards away... and at the end, when all the women in the story come together on the same street in Manhattan after an afternoon rainshower, well...
...and then we walked out of the theatre, the whole audience, slowly, dazed to find that the very rainstorm described in the play had actually happened, the first rain in at least four days of August rotisserie, and lots of strangers smiled in wonderment and breathed deeply and I'm sure some cried, me included; and then the 4 of us stopped somewhere for an egg cream, and then my friend Todd (whom I wanted so bad) & I climbed into a battered VW Bug and drove out of Manhattan, and then two weeks later I moved to Pulpit Hill to start college (drama major, 'natch) and basically never saw any of those friends or that crappy car or that stage or that city street again except for when I think of that afternoon, which is oftener than it once was.
Pardon my run-on, I couldn't help myself.
Crying is to me generally a manifestation of the Goose Bump Effect, or it means I've just visited my Dad in the home, or I've just awakened in the middle of the night from a dream I don't remember. Outside of that, the only serious tears since my last break-up (in another century) came this past winter, in the last 48 hours of the BlacKitty's life with us, and they came pretty steadily.
Good gods I do go on, I should be trying to sleep. I want to mention, though, that I know a handful of songs that work their magic on me regardless of circumstance. If you ever feel a healthy cry is called for, nothing I know beats "Calling All Angels", sung by k.d. lang and Jane Siberry. It's the sweetest sadness I know of, but also a sovereign remedy against despair. Sing along as much as you can.
I teared up when the assault weapons ban expired.
But seriously, I'm not quite the stone Clownęsthesiologist is, but I can't remember the last time I broke down and full on cried. Teared up there and there, but that's about it. Genetic? Environment? I've never even seen my father tear up, and my mom says she can only remember once or twice she's seen him in that fashion in over 30 years.
I cry fairly often I suppose -- 2 or 3 times a year, maybe? During intense personal arguments or when really angry, mostly. The latter is particularly annoying since I can be crying but not be upset -- probably some kind of displacement thing where it's either going to come out as tears or violence and so it comes out as tears.
I tear up, in the sense of getting moist eyes, a bit at movies or music quite a lot. Fiction, less so.
I don't usually cry at deaths, though. Like others that's just usually numbness. Except for one friend who killed himself when we were about 16. At the funeral his best friend stood up to give an oration and literally couldn't speak he was so distressed. It was a 'biker' funeral and the room was full of hairy guys sobbing.
I cry a lot I think. Probably at least once a week for a RL reason (which is not to tsay that I have some miserable life, just that things make me cry easily!), and I tear up at all sorts of ridiculous stuff. I've cried at the end of Armageddon more than once, to my shame.
Ye Ghods! What effect is the Mineshaft having on me? Let me relate a yarn: this morning as I rode the train to the city, I was reading Bleak House. I came to the end of Chapter 47, in which Jo draws his final breath as Allan Woodcourt is leading him in reciting the Our Father, which he (Jo) has never done before. And I experienced the emotional response that I talked about above in 53. A little unusual, and funny because I had just now been writing about it, but suddenly I noticed a feeling of a lump in my throat! and a tear in my eye! Wow -- I looked up and it quickly passsed, and soon I was chuckling as I thought about writing this comment. But.
I mostly only actually really cry when I've been really sick and afraid I was going to die. I tear up pretty easily, though. while I was pregnant or suffering from post-partum depression I couldn't watch nature shows because sometimes baby animals would die and I'd just totally lose it. therapy, yeah. I used to go three times a week to get analyzed. always with the box of tissues.
Cala et al., It's interesting that you say that you cry a lot when you're fighting depression. I can only remember crying once pr twice when I was really depressed. Depression for me is about not being able to feel (Anhedonia) and sluggishness, slowed down thought an movement (psychomotor retardation.) It's the feeling taht you can't think. It's poor concentration and the feeling that you're dragging yourself around. It isn't about sadness.
I'm not sure how often I cry. Recently, it's been more often than I used to.
Bosto would be a good clown name.
I'm going to use this thread to report something funny. I can't remember Sir Roger Bacon's name. Every time I try to remember it, all that comes up is "Sir Roger Bacon." You guys rewired my neural pathways. I could check my email to remind me what his actual name was, but I'm amused by the fact that I don't know.
I can't remember Sir Roger Bacon's name.
It was Sir Roger Hitler.
Sir Roger Shakespere Hitler-Bacon.
Okay, curiosity got the best of me and I checked.
Bosto would be a good clown name.
Or a mime's. For Christ's sake, I don't want to be either a clown or a mime.
ruggiero bacone
(okay. it's actually francesco bacone)
80: Didn't someone offer to take one for the team and sex Mutumbo? What happened with that?
81 -- How 'bout a Bostonaesthesiologist?
A League of Their Own, when that one player receives the telegram (about George)? Forget about it.
What about in Field of Dreams, at the end, when Ray Liotta (Shoeless Joe) says to Kevin Costner, "If you build it, he will come," and Kevin Costner looks over to the field and sees his father.
And then! They chit chat like his dad's just another player, and his dad starts walking away, and Kevin Costner says, "Hey dad...wanna have a catch?"
I'm totally crying right now. Those estranged father/son scenes...like clockwork. And for no reason! I have a great relationship with my dad, and always did!
Did anybody else cry at Jo's death in Bleak House? That scene was very touching -- I am wondering now if it would be properly described as "sentimental".
Sentimentalism often made people cry. That we now see it as maudlin, most of the time, is more about us than it is about sentimentalism.
Anything remotely sentimental gets me howling like a lost soul. On the other hand, bad shit IRL much less so. When my parents died I hardly cried at all - there was too much to do. But for the next year or so, every time I saw something interesting or funny and thought, "Must tell [parent] about that next time I call", I was reduced to a snivelling jelly.
Come to think of it, Kotsko wouldn't be a bad clown name either.
"I can only remember crying once pr twice when I was really depressed. Depression for me is about not being able to feel (Anhedonia) and sluggishness, slowed down thought an movement (psychomotor retardation.) It's the feeling taht you can't think. It's poor concentration and the feeling that you're dragging yourself around."
I'd triple all that. But, then, this is distinguishing between the common feeling of "depression," and actual clinical depression, which are two very different things that share the same word, unfortunately.
Complete inability to do necessary things, despite the knowledge of disastrous results if they don't get done: losing an apartment, losing one's job, losing one's career, losing all one's things, losing relationships, losing loved ones, losing health, losing anything and everything. Paralysis. Apathy. The knowledge of what the results will be, and the inability to do anything about it anyway.
Sometimes interleaved with a tiny remaining ability to still do perfectly useless things, save in keeping from killing one's self, such as staring at tv, or reading, or babbling on the internet.
"It isn't about sadness."
Pretty much not.
I'm glad to say that I've not had the really bad version in several years, although I had some intermediate level stuff because of situational response, during Anna's dying in late 2004, and for the next year (during which I spent six months crying about 80% of the day, every day, including while walking down the street, doing necessary errands, spontaneously and uncontrollably, or on the bus, or whatever, just because everything would remind me and I couldn't stop; this diminished slowly over the following six months of 2005, and in 2006, I tend to only do it a couple of times a week, sometimes less, sometimes a bit more, depending; and, hey, I'm finally just barely starting to be able to write about it, although not, of course, without triggering the response again; this is approximately the first time in "public," actually, and is still unexpectedly suddenly horribly painful; but that's with the terrible sadness, not the depression ).
Horribly agonizing sadness and sense of loss and all that is lost and forever lost, vs. paralytic anhedonia, self-hatred and loathing: not really fond of either, actually.
But I have confidence that if science works at it, then like chocolate and peanut butter, a way can be found to successfully combine the experiences.
It's that sort of faith that's always prevented me from being actually practically suicidal, rather than in the slow-motion, do-nothing useful, sort of way. Yay, me.
Oh, Gary. Hang in there, man.
What's up with your apartment? Do you have to move?
Farber's pretty much right. I've never had really severe depression, but even moderate depressions are really awful. Mild depression is no picnic either--even if it doesn't rise to the level of major depression or clinical depression. Low-grade depression that's worse than dysthymia but not profoundly incapacitating still interferes with one's ability to do intellectual work.
Gary, first of all, I'm sorry about all that, too. Depression sucks.
Now I will proceed to cavil with you and BG, which I'm sure you won't begrudge me.
"It isn't about sadness."
Pretty much not.
Sadness and anhedonia are too different affective manifestations of clinical depression. One is not more characteristic or diagnostic of depression than the other.
But, then, this is distinguishing between the common feeling of "depression," and actual clinical depression, which are two very different things that share the same word, unfortunately.
This is commonly said by people who've experienced clinical depression, and I really disagree. I think clinical depression is on a continuum with feelings of sadness, emptiness, guilt and low self worth, and concomitant physical disturbances that plenty of non-clinically depressed people have felt and can empathize with.
"Oh, Gary. Hang in there, man."
Don't worry. Starting to be able to talk/write about things, rather than only about other things, is a good sign. I'm okay.
And feeling pain is far healthier than being unable to feel it, along with starting to be able to express it being better than not, though in the latter case it's a matter of being at the beginning of the process of being able to get it under control, and not simply utterly overwhelming.
I've done the rounds before, now; it's a several-years-long process.
"What's up with your apartment? Do you have to move?"
The landlord isn't due back until tomorrow; assuming I can reach him tomorrow, and get a straight answer tomorrow, I hope to know then, but not before. Meanwhile I've been reading lots of apt-rental ads, and worrying, and contemplating decisions forks, and such.
One question I'm dithering about: if he should happen to say okay, you can stay, do I leave well enough alone there, or do I ask or insist that he actually renew my lease, which he's refused to do for two years, after the one-year lease expired, leaving me month-to-month. Would it a) be incredibly stupid to press him further, and maybe push him to go back to "you're a pain, get out"l; or b) should the fact that he demonstrated the ability to evict on whim mean that I should insist on the protection of a lease if I can get it, or settle for having to move anyway?
Having little idea what's going on here, I guess I'll just play it by ear, and hope I don't blow it either way, but probably the odds are overwhelming that he'll just evict me anyway, saving me the trouble.
Though I still can't quite get over the idea of being evicted for nothing. It seems sort Seinfeld-ish.
Anyway, if I find out tomorrow, and it's what I expect, it will be a ten-day notice from the end of the month, so that will give me three weeks to frantically beg for money, find a place to move, find a way to get boxes with no car, haul them up 3 floors, pack, hire someone to move me, make all the arrangements, etc.
Piece of cake. Hot, sweating, sweltering, pain in the ass, cake.
The hard part is whether I can find an affordable, decent, place in Boulder. I'm contemplating whether it's practical to try to find a place in Denver, where there would be a lot more choice, and certain pros and cons, but there are a lot of difficulties, particularly given my having neither car nor driver's license; despite having lived in Boulder for nearly five years now, I've only been into Denver once, and I don't know the town, so I don't know the neighborhoods and their pros and cons, and since it's two-plus hours by bus either way, looking for places by bus is fraught with difficulty, particularly since I'm in such crap physical shape that walking more than a block or two at a time is fairly problematic for me; I have to stop and rest about every half-block, and just can't do more than a few before I'm falling over. So my ability to check out places in Denver is extemely limited, at best. I don't know if it's even practical to try. Plus, Denver has Bad Neighborhoods, which Boulder just doesn't.
But TMI, probably. Sorry.
But, then, this is distinguishing between the common feeling of "depression," and actual clinical depression, which are two very different things that share the same word, unfortunately.
I would not taking uncontrollable crying as evidence that the depression cannot possibly be clinical, and must therefore not be actual clinical depression.
Feelings of hopelessness, despair, sluggishness can be accompanied by crying, or they might not. I'll grant that we often use the term 'depressed' colloquially, but that doesn't mean that if someone crying, they're not really depressed (or that they are, for that matter.)
Utterly OT, but I just don't feel up to blogging serious stuff on own blog (speaking of mild clinical depression), and it's sorta nice to have this come out in public about Bush's squelching the OPR/Justice investigation into the NSA "Program."
To be sure, Tia. Peter Whybrow puts forward a similar thery in his book A Mood Apart.
I didn't say that crying or sadness are never part of depression. In fact, I believe that excessive crying, along with "feelings of persistent sadness" is one of the criteria for diagnosing major depressive disorder in the DSM IV.
Depression is very heterogeneous. I do think that it could be useful to have a better taxonomy of depression. It might make it easier to treat the various sub-types more effectively. A lot of the formal diagnosis seems to describe a 40 year-old male who has one major depressive episode. Other types of depression, such as those where there is sme mood reactivity, are labeled as atypical. Women tend to suffer from 'atypical' depression more than men, but--if women are more likely to suffer from depression than men AND they tend to get atypical symptoms--how can that version ofdepression be the atypical variant?
And to bring this back to crying. The reason that my sister is in NC is that she broke down in tears in front of a Peace Corps person, and--since they knew that she'd been treated for depression n the past--they dismissed her for medical reasons.
Okay, sorry BG. Then I was just cavilling with Farber. I saw you say you agreed with him on preview, so I threw you in to the pot.
Clinical depression can definitely involve sadness/crying, but I'm not convinced by this, though: I think clinical depression is on a continuum with feelings of sadness, emptiness, guilt and low self worth, and concomitant physical disturbances that plenty of non-clinically depressed people have felt and can empathize with. IME, there are particular qualities of clinical depression that are extremely hard to describe from inside, let alone understand from outside.
And to bring this back to crying. The reason that my sister is in NC is that she broke down in tears in front of a Peace Corps person, and--since they knew that she'd been treated for depression n the past--they dismissed her for medical reasons.
This anecdote makes me, well, depressed. I hate that I have to lie all the time about my history of depression because if I were honest I'd be disqualified outright for tons of shit.
I was going to be a paid volunteer in an MDMA study, but got disqualified because they considered my reaction (three years earlier) to getting divorced and only seeing my son 50% of the week, a "depressive episode".
Wait, are you serious, apo? You were going to participate in an MDMA study? and they were going to pay you money for that?
Women tend to suffer from 'atypical' depression more than men, but--if women are more likely to suffer from depression than men AND they tend to get atypical symptoms--how can that version ofdepression be the atypical variant?
Because, unfortunately, the typical research subject is a white college boy.
103: Totally serious. I've been paid good money to get high on Uncle Sam's stash. (linking to the cached copy because my hosting company is having issues)
1. I haven't cried since I was about 18 or so. Usually it was from self-pity when I did cry, unfair punishment or whatever. My parents were highly unsympathetic to crying. Never at funerals.
2. I do tear up sometimes for stupid heart-warming stuff, for example when reading children's books to my nieces or watching silly movies I didn't even want to watch. I feel stupid doing it. I also tear up when I'm laughing sometimes.
3. I think that the question of depression is a can of worms. There seem to be lots of types and intensities. I've never known how "clinical depression" is defined, either. Does that just mean "serious enough to need treatment" or "bad enough that it soesn't seem normal"?
I've been mildly depressed my whole life, but nothing like the black depressions I've heard about from others. On the other hand, I through go long periods of apathy, unable to start even simple projects like cleaning the garage, writing a few routine letters, or making a few phone calls, and I'm pretty sure this is a kind of depression. But I don't feel especially unhappy when in this state, just completely lacking in initiative.
And what I do then is post voluminously on the internet.
So if I fall silent, it will probably be a good thing. (For me, that is. Y'all will be heart-broken, I'm sure.)
I request a thread devoted to depression, in the hope that someone here might actually know something about the topic.
I've been mildly depressed my whole life, but nothing like the black depressions I've heard about from others.
I think that's called "dysphoria"--a chronic low-level depressive state.
On the other hand, I through go long periods of apathy, unable to start even simple projects like cleaning the garage, writing a few routine letters, or making a few phone calls, and I'm pretty sure this is a kind of depression. But I don't feel especially unhappy when in this state, just completely lacking in initiative.
Yeah, that's depression.
Oh, and btw, John--the best book I've read about depression is "The Noonday Demon." It's part autobiography, hence long passages of what depression can be like, but largely good solid research aimed at a general audience. Both educational and a good read.
William Styron's Darkness Visible struck me as recognizable, insofar as I recall.
B, chronic low-grade depression is called dysthmyia. Dysphoria just means any really bad mood. It's the opposite of euphoria. It's generally used in the context of bipolar disorder when describing mixed states. DYsphoric Mania refers to agitated, high-energy black moods, sometimes violent ones.
You might like Kay Redfield Jamison's "An Unquiet Mind." She's an expert on manic-depressive illness who has it herself. She writes about her illness but also about the struggle to get tenure as a woman in the late 70's early 80's.
I have mainly only cried, as an adult, when someone died. That's pretty much the threshold for me. If someone I love dies, I will weep until I am numb.
That said, embarrassing but utterly true confession: I went to see Independence Day on opening weekend, absolutely stoned out of my gourd - like, really having difficulty interacting with the world I was just so wicked high - and I cried my eyes out at Bill Pullman's "this will be our Independence Day" speech. Reason #427 of Why I Stopped Doing Drugs. Nobody needs to live like that.
I think 'functional dysphoria menorrhea' may be the official 'diagnosis' when a sympathetic university OB/GYN wants your birth control pills to be covered by your health plan.
"She writes about her illness but also about the struggle to get tenure as a woman in the late 70's early 80's."
I was once on a tenure track to be a man, but now I just have temporary positions.
Something to not be depressed about: Ralph Reed may be losing his primary election. Though it's early returns as yet.
In general, books make me cry harder than movies, but there are a few that alway get to me - Joy Luck Club, last scene of The Color Purple. Lately I've started to get weepy over all the new hotel-related good deed commercials.
Secret shame: for years the preview to Angels in the Outfield would set me off (mind you, I've never seen the actual movie, but the preview was at the beginning of a VHS tape of some other movie). Finally, I realized that I was just susceptible to the unbelievably sappy music in the trailer - the soundtrack from Rudy (another movie I've never seen); after I figured this out it stopped the waterworks.