3 ways to stop yourself from crying

I am a cryer.  Yes I admit it.

I will cry at a Kleenex commercial, christenings, award ceremonies, various emotional moments and when I’m sure the world is ending, you know the usual.

Do you ever find yourself crying at the most inconvenient, inappropriate and annoying moments?

Don’t panic, you can stop those tears before they start I know because Oprah told me so.

Well actually Taffy Brodesser-Akner who wrote for Oprah told me and it is a brilliant tip.  You can find it right here.  But basically the crux is this, make your face a mask of neutrality and your brain will think there’s no need to cry.  So no squinting of your eyes, furrowing of your brow or dropping of your bottom lip just a perfectly non-readable facial expression.  This will fool your brain into thinking that there is no need to cry. But wait there’s more.

Other tips I found include pinching the webbing between your index finger and thumb really hard.  But this one’s more problematic, it leaves bruises, but it does work.  You could these solutions it in scenarios like these;

It’s your nephew’s christening, you’re doing the reading and all of a sudden you feel the choking sensation in your throat, your voice is cracking, here come the waterworks.  Or you’re receiving an award and you get up to speak but those damn tears are coming again.  Then there’s my favourite ‘One born every minute” on Foxtel where every birth is guaranteed to bring tears.   If my top two picks to help tears don’t help you could try these

Other more boring suggestions but supposedly effective reasons include pretending you’re crying about your contact lenses/dust in your eye or other potential eye hazard, to keep moving, to think of something else completely different from where your are and my personal favourite to state the obvious, ‘oh I’m crying now that’s embarrassing isn’t it, don’t worry it will stop soon, this never happens.”

So sit back relax and play that episode of ‘One born every minute’, every eye in the house will be dry, unless of course you’re significant other hasn’t learnt how to stop crying.

3 ways to stop yourself from crying

  1. Set your face in a neutral expression so your brain thinks there’s nothing wrong
  2. pinch the webbing between your thumb and your index finger
  3. Pretend there’s a foreign object in your eye

PS – I googled Taffy Akner and here is another stellar piece she wrote about Nicki Minaj, it’s gold. I think Taffy might be my new writerly obsession.

 

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