Why I Think it’s Healthy to Have at Least One Cry a Month

As someone who doesn’t like to get emotional when things get tough, I have a rule of thumb that one good cry at least once or every other month is needed.

When we’re bottling in all of these emotions of doubt, sadness, anxiety, rejection and worries, it’s good just to release that lock on the tear ducts and cry away. 

I just feel that humans are meant to feel all sorts of emotions and we should be allowed to release and express them anytime we start to feel overwhelmed. It’s harmful to our minds and souls if we try to suppress these emotions for too long, so watching something sad is a great tool in releasing those pent-up emotions and thoughts. 

Living with four roommates and sharing a room with one, I feel like there’s never any time or place to allow myself to mope and cry freely. After I get a bad grade and my mind starts to spiral, thinking any shot I had after school is shot, I’ll arrive home, and my roommates are goofing around in the living room or someone’s chilling in my room.

I’m left with zero options but to keep it in and try to forget about it.  

But when I suppress these emotions, they start to build and next thing you know, I’m crying on the way home because I watched a sad video online. After that happened during my first semester here at Penn State, I knew that I had to create a system.

For when there would be rare slivers of silent moments where all of my roommates are off running errands or in class, I would settle in bed, grab a treat (mainly Reese’s peanut butter cups) and just cry. This might all sound psychotic, but sometimes it’s hard to just randomly pout and start to cry.

When these sweet spots appear out of the blue and you’re not feeling the sad emotions you bottled up two days ago, here are some tips to get those waterworks going.

For me, my go-to watches to make myself cry are videos of military families reuniting on TikTok or watching movies like “The Titanic,” “A Walk To Remember” or “Selena.” As soon as the videos finish and the credits roll, I’m feeling all of the emotions I suppressed earlier, recounting what I was sad about,and then I’m sobbing like a kid. 

But if visuals on a screen don’t work, reread a sad part of a book you never forgot about, listen to a song you keep close to your heart that relates to you or think about a past relationship if you want to go that far. Anything that helps you feel those emotions will help lead you to be in that mindset to safely release all of your emotions. 

Everything you’re pushing down and shutting out will come back up, and you’ll finally be able to release all of the tension and worries that have been plaguing your mind for days. 

This might be a weird tactic or notion that a good cry needs to happen every once in a while, but I swear by it, and I always find myself feeling lighter once the tears come to a stop. 

• college
• crying
• emotions
• mental health