Personally, I find periods of having nothing to cry about even better for my mental health.
Shaking your fist at the sky and yelling “DAMN YOU WILLIS!” is also pretty cathartic. even if people look at you funny. Meh, they were going to look at me funny anyway.
Regret
It can be hard to tell the difference between “having nothing to cry about” and an inability to be aware your feelings.
Pilgrim
Sorry, gotta quibble here: If you aren’t aware of your feelings, do you even have them? Feelings demand your attention by definition. I’ll accept denial, confusion, numbness, indifference or inarticulateness, but feelings have to be felt by definition.
There is such a thing as knowing your feelings are there, but distancing yourself from them.
Librain
You can absolutely be affected by your feelings without being self-aware enough to understand how or why, or even recognise that it’s happening at all.
I’ve been working with my psych for a long time to try and unpack exactly what the hell is going on in my head, sometimes even just the basic emotions are just completely unrecognisable. I mean, you can’t measure sadness, it’s all just people trying to describe it – often using very abstract terms and poetic language. How is that supposed to help me know what sadness feels like?
It’s like trying to describe a colour to a blind person. Without being able to point to something and say “this is sadness”, it’s all vague gestures – usually coming from a very neurotypical perspective that I can barely decipher, let alone identify with.
jdorr
I occasionally realize I’m feeling an emotion by its physical side effects more so than actually feeling the emotion(makes it real fun when it’s heart hurting sadness)
Taellosse
No, feelings do not demand attention. They happen all the time without any attention being paid to them. Feelings can sometimes capture one’s attention unexpectedly, but much of the time, they’re just a thing that happens as one does things. We often have to stop and examine what we’re feeling and try to place them into a relevant context (“What was I thinking about when I started to feel this way? Did it remind me of something else? Did something significant happen?”) before we can even know what feelings they are at any given moment.
Emotional responses happen at a level below conscious thought. That’s part of why they’re so hard to control. But it also makes it easy for them to be affecting your actions without you even knowing they’re there.
Stifyn Baker
I work with children with severe mental trauma (abuse victims and the like). Lack of emotional intelligence – the inability to recognise or deal with their own emotional states – is a very real problem for them.
Daniel M Ball
I could only WISH I cold be so compartmentalized that I don’t have to experience my emotions, it would make decision making and getting things done so much easier. Unfortnately, people who HAVE that ability tend to also be afflicted with some serious mental illnesses. It would be favorable to be logical without being either a sociopath or a psychopath, but that’s not realistic.
anyway, it’s about time she broke down and let it out.
Catfishenfuego
Interestingly, tests on people who’ve had brain damage affect their ability to feel fear, anger or sadness tend to actually be terrible at making decisions. People who’ve physically lost the ability to feel fear especially straight up can’t make decisions for themselves anymore. ‘Negative’ emotions are really important for healthy thinking functioning and its a real issue that modern society has come to stigmatise them so much.
TempleBuilder
First time poster, so if something technical is messed up in this comment, that’s why.
People often say that “the grass is greener on the other side”. I believe that this is applicable to your desire. Muting your emotions over the long term reduces your experience of the world into nothing. When I was still trying to not feel, so my mind would be clear, it was as if the world was overcast and gray, filled with fog. It was a lifeless existence. I did not feel fear, I did not feel sorrow, I felt no joy or contentment. There was no net positive, nor no net negative feeling. It all just reduced down to zero. Some would consider this a type of tourture, or hell. In doing this, I caused myself lasting mental damage, that lingers to this day. Namely, I can’t always tell when I feel emotion, much less what exactly I am feeling.
Secondly, I am neither a sociopath or psychopath. I am just autistic, who, when younger, bought too much into stoicism. I am also pretty sure sociopaths and psychopaths can, in fact, feel emotions and aren’t more innately logical than anyone else.
I don’t know if you’d call it stoic, but I know I have feelings. Very strong ones. I know they’re there, but much of the time it just takes energy to express them, to make them easy for others to read. And when I do it’s exhausting.
I’m just so grateful that I can make THESE digital faces easily, ? without having to exhaust my brain. And it makes me worry less about people making hurtful assumptions about me and how I feel about anything.
Laura
Thank you for sharing your experience, TempleBuilder.
Needfuldoer
She’s all too aware of her feelings, but deflects or compartmentalizes them instead of confronting and processing them.
Spencer
Yep.
Amber crying and admitting she misses Mike is an admission to herself that she deserves to cry.
I rarely feel better after crying. Usually I feel worse, and I cry a lot these days. I don’t particularly like it, and I often wish I could just stuff all those emotions back in like I used to.
Taellosse
We cry for different many different reasons. Expressing grief after a loss by crying is a healthy release for many. But emotional pain can feel oppressive and relentless, too, depending both on what is causing it and how your particular brain responds to it, and in that case tears might feel hopeless instead of cathartic.
I’m sorry you’re feeling that way right now. I’ve been in a similar state myself. But in the long run, letting your emotions out is better, even if it doesn’t feel like it from where you are at the moment.
She’s been stomping down her emotions. Considering how that was working out, I think a good cry might actually be a healthier response. A little messy, maybe, but at least she’s actually trying to process and acknowledge what she’s feeling.
I think they implied in the movie that one of the randomly-opening interplanetary wormholes Sakaar is notorious for just happened to randomly open over the Quinjet Hulk was in, from memory.
Thag Simmons
I guess that’s fine? Bit contrived but whatever.
Bryy
oh it was so effing contrived.
Delicious Taffy
Good. More comic book bullshit for the sake of putting Hulks on planets, please.
vlademir1
Everything involving Bruce and his alt in the MCU is contrived, since Disney can’t legally make the films to tell his story without Universal being part of that… their deal being that Disney can use Banner, Hulk, et al in MCU films that aren’t expressly Hulk films and Universal can make whatever Hulk films they like including none at all for the duration of the MCU (with Disney having some sort of right of refusal for scripts). Universal, to my understanding, consider such films too expensive for their return so don’t intend to bother.
Pilgrim
“Too expensive for their return” being a euphemism for “massive flop”. Because while the character is popular, his backstory doesn’t provide much grist for good filmmaking. Marvel got the better part of that deal by being able to use the Hulk without having to explain the Hulk.
Needfuldoer
Any standalone Hulk movie is going to be DOA because audiences will expect it to tie in with the MCU.
Taellosse
It doesn’t have to be that way – there’s nothing stopping Universal from working out an agreement like Sony’s over Spider-Man (in fact, they already did – the Hulk movie that had Edward Norton as Bruce is a part of the MCU already). They’re just not bothering because they think Hulk can’t carry a movie alone (and point to 1 bad and 1 mediocre movie as proof).
I don’t think those are the types of movies that you should look at while keeping the part of your brain that knows about the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation active.
In fact those movies pretty much require shutting down every part of your brain that knows anything about conservation of mass, conservation of energy, and the rules of thermodynamics.
Shield quinjets sure, but an Avengers quinjet? Built by Tony Stark in what would’ve been the height of his “Oh God aliens are going to invade again we have to GET READY” PTSD and paranoia? I can see that being spaceworthy enough to get the Hulk to a wormhole.
My brain immediately thought of this strip… which, it turns out, actually DOES have a line of dialogue, and almost certainly was way too early anyway, but screw it I’m linking it anyway
Your comment actually reminded me of this strip, which I thought was going to be what you linked to. But this one actually does have no dialogue. Don’t know if it’s the most recent no-dialogue strip.
Nono
There’s also technically any strip where Sal and Marcie communicate entirely in sign, but uh, that’s a technicality.
You know most of Reed Hall needs to be getting regular therapy for their traumas, or at least all the main cast. How many assaults and murders have they seen or been close to? I mean on a personal level? Joyce’s near-rape, Amber beating her father half to death in front of Danny, the kidnapping and Toe Dad’s murder, Toe Dad kidnapping Becky in front of Dina and his armed assault, Ryan trying to assault Joyce in her dorm and getting fillleted with his own knife by Amber in front of Dorothy.
Amber, Joyce, and Dorothy need full-time monitoring all by themselves.
No see what you don’t get is that Amber is aware that this is a comic and thus crying up into the ceiling frames her better for us the audience to see her emotions in these panels. It’s really for our benefit and shows what a true professional Amber is that even in a time of emotional distress she’s doing her best to entertain us!
Kind of. But I guess it was pretty bad if you have to ask. So I can’t really claim it was now. Which also makes me sad thus countering my attempt to cope with humor.
176 thoughts on “Crying”
Ana Chronistic
oh no the F – E – E – L – S
Twitcher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJfYCbGnLjA *Plays Gales of Song on the hacked muzak*
The Wellerman
That’s good. She needed to cry.
Cholma
Yes. Nothing like a good, body wracking, cathartic cry for one’s mental health. Everyone should try it once in awhile.
Clif
Personally, I find periods of having nothing to cry about even better for my mental health.
Shaking your fist at the sky and yelling “DAMN YOU WILLIS!” is also pretty cathartic. even if people look at you funny. Meh, they were going to look at me funny anyway.
Regret
It can be hard to tell the difference between “having nothing to cry about” and an inability to be aware your feelings.
Pilgrim
Sorry, gotta quibble here: If you aren’t aware of your feelings, do you even have them? Feelings demand your attention by definition. I’ll accept denial, confusion, numbness, indifference or inarticulateness, but feelings have to be felt by definition.
The Wellerman
Do you become wet just by looking at water?
There is such a thing as knowing your feelings are there, but distancing yourself from them.
Librain
You can absolutely be affected by your feelings without being self-aware enough to understand how or why, or even recognise that it’s happening at all.
I’ve been working with my psych for a long time to try and unpack exactly what the hell is going on in my head, sometimes even just the basic emotions are just completely unrecognisable. I mean, you can’t measure sadness, it’s all just people trying to describe it – often using very abstract terms and poetic language. How is that supposed to help me know what sadness feels like?
It’s like trying to describe a colour to a blind person. Without being able to point to something and say “this is sadness”, it’s all vague gestures – usually coming from a very neurotypical perspective that I can barely decipher, let alone identify with.
jdorr
I occasionally realize I’m feeling an emotion by its physical side effects more so than actually feeling the emotion(makes it real fun when it’s heart hurting sadness)
Taellosse
No, feelings do not demand attention. They happen all the time without any attention being paid to them. Feelings can sometimes capture one’s attention unexpectedly, but much of the time, they’re just a thing that happens as one does things. We often have to stop and examine what we’re feeling and try to place them into a relevant context (“What was I thinking about when I started to feel this way? Did it remind me of something else? Did something significant happen?”) before we can even know what feelings they are at any given moment.
Emotional responses happen at a level below conscious thought. That’s part of why they’re so hard to control. But it also makes it easy for them to be affecting your actions without you even knowing they’re there.
Stifyn Baker
I work with children with severe mental trauma (abuse victims and the like). Lack of emotional intelligence – the inability to recognise or deal with their own emotional states – is a very real problem for them.
Daniel M Ball
I could only WISH I cold be so compartmentalized that I don’t have to experience my emotions, it would make decision making and getting things done so much easier. Unfortnately, people who HAVE that ability tend to also be afflicted with some serious mental illnesses. It would be favorable to be logical without being either a sociopath or a psychopath, but that’s not realistic.
anyway, it’s about time she broke down and let it out.
Catfishenfuego
Interestingly, tests on people who’ve had brain damage affect their ability to feel fear, anger or sadness tend to actually be terrible at making decisions. People who’ve physically lost the ability to feel fear especially straight up can’t make decisions for themselves anymore. ‘Negative’ emotions are really important for healthy thinking functioning and its a real issue that modern society has come to stigmatise them so much.
TempleBuilder
First time poster, so if something technical is messed up in this comment, that’s why.
People often say that “the grass is greener on the other side”. I believe that this is applicable to your desire. Muting your emotions over the long term reduces your experience of the world into nothing. When I was still trying to not feel, so my mind would be clear, it was as if the world was overcast and gray, filled with fog. It was a lifeless existence. I did not feel fear, I did not feel sorrow, I felt no joy or contentment. There was no net positive, nor no net negative feeling. It all just reduced down to zero. Some would consider this a type of tourture, or hell. In doing this, I caused myself lasting mental damage, that lingers to this day. Namely, I can’t always tell when I feel emotion, much less what exactly I am feeling.
Secondly, I am neither a sociopath or psychopath. I am just autistic, who, when younger, bought too much into stoicism. I am also pretty sure sociopaths and psychopaths can, in fact, feel emotions and aren’t more innately logical than anyone else.
The Wellerman
I don’t know if you’d call it stoic, but I know I have feelings. Very strong ones. I know they’re there, but much of the time it just takes energy to express them, to make them easy for others to read. And when I do it’s exhausting.
I’m just so grateful that I can make THESE digital faces easily, ? without having to exhaust my brain. And it makes me worry less about people making hurtful assumptions about me and how I feel about anything.
Laura
Thank you for sharing your experience, TempleBuilder.
Needfuldoer
She’s all too aware of her feelings, but deflects or compartmentalizes them instead of confronting and processing them.
Spencer
Yep.
Amber crying and admitting she misses Mike is an admission to herself that she deserves to cry.
june gloom
I rarely feel better after crying. Usually I feel worse, and I cry a lot these days. I don’t particularly like it, and I often wish I could just stuff all those emotions back in like I used to.
Taellosse
We cry for different many different reasons. Expressing grief after a loss by crying is a healthy release for many. But emotional pain can feel oppressive and relentless, too, depending both on what is causing it and how your particular brain responds to it, and in that case tears might feel hopeless instead of cathartic.
I’m sorry you’re feeling that way right now. I’ve been in a similar state myself. But in the long run, letting your emotions out is better, even if it doesn’t feel like it from where you are at the moment.
Tsa
same. I’m glad she found it in herself to allow this kind of release.
Wizard
She’s been stomping down her emotions. Considering how that was working out, I think a good cry might actually be a healthier response. A little messy, maybe, but at least she’s actually trying to process and acknowledge what she’s feeling.
Sirksome
Well someone’s a crybaby. Look at her totally missing her dead friend and being sympathetic and relatable! Wimp!
MrBookBoy
Oh god, YOU’RE that awful voice in my head! Howdja ya’ escape an trap yerself in some scarved jerkass?
brionl
Amber two years later: What the hell am I doing on Sakaar?
Doctor_Who
Amazi-Girl is the Grandmaster’s new champion.
Thag Simmons
Wait how did the Hulk even get to Sakaar in those movies. Quinjets wouldn’t be capable of leaving orbit
AbacusWizard
He’s a scientist. He can use one of his PhDs.
King Daniel
I think they implied in the movie that one of the randomly-opening interplanetary wormholes Sakaar is notorious for just happened to randomly open over the Quinjet Hulk was in, from memory.
Thag Simmons
I guess that’s fine? Bit contrived but whatever.
Bryy
oh it was so effing contrived.
Delicious Taffy
Good. More comic book bullshit for the sake of putting Hulks on planets, please.
vlademir1
Everything involving Bruce and his alt in the MCU is contrived, since Disney can’t legally make the films to tell his story without Universal being part of that… their deal being that Disney can use Banner, Hulk, et al in MCU films that aren’t expressly Hulk films and Universal can make whatever Hulk films they like including none at all for the duration of the MCU (with Disney having some sort of right of refusal for scripts). Universal, to my understanding, consider such films too expensive for their return so don’t intend to bother.
Pilgrim
“Too expensive for their return” being a euphemism for “massive flop”. Because while the character is popular, his backstory doesn’t provide much grist for good filmmaking. Marvel got the better part of that deal by being able to use the Hulk without having to explain the Hulk.
Needfuldoer
Any standalone Hulk movie is going to be DOA because audiences will expect it to tie in with the MCU.
Taellosse
It doesn’t have to be that way – there’s nothing stopping Universal from working out an agreement like Sony’s over Spider-Man (in fact, they already did – the Hulk movie that had Edward Norton as Bruce is a part of the MCU already). They’re just not bothering because they think Hulk can’t carry a movie alone (and point to 1 bad and 1 mediocre movie as proof).
vlademir1
That was indeed the case.
someone
I don’t think those are the types of movies that you should look at while keeping the part of your brain that knows about the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation active.
In fact those movies pretty much require shutting down every part of your brain that knows anything about conservation of mass, conservation of energy, and the rules of thermodynamics.
EnerPrime
Shield quinjets sure, but an Avengers quinjet? Built by Tony Stark in what would’ve been the height of his “Oh God aliens are going to invade again we have to GET READY” PTSD and paranoia? I can see that being spaceworthy enough to get the Hulk to a wormhole.
King Daniel
When was the last time we had a strip with no dialogue?
King Daniel
(Excluding the Timeskip™ strips, which had no dialogue but also had no characters present for the possibility of it)
davidbreslin101
Timeskip strips- I’m now picturing dialogue rising from the university skyline, as they sometimes do in newpaper strips.
RassilonTDavros
(TW: Ryan, and everything that implies)
My brain immediately thought of this strip… which, it turns out, actually DOES have a line of dialogue, and almost certainly was way too early anyway, but screw it I’m linking it anyway
Yumi
Continued Ryan TW
Your comment actually reminded me of this strip, which I thought was going to be what you linked to. But this one actually does have no dialogue. Don’t know if it’s the most recent no-dialogue strip.
Nono
There’s also technically any strip where Sal and Marcie communicate entirely in sign, but uh, that’s a technicality.
ValdVin
I also thought of this one because it includes Amber and massive facial expressions & tears.
And Amber being here certainly contributed to her finding herself in this arc.
Opus the Poet
You know most of Reed Hall needs to be getting regular therapy for their traumas, or at least all the main cast. How many assaults and murders have they seen or been close to? I mean on a personal level? Joyce’s near-rape, Amber beating her father half to death in front of Danny, the kidnapping and Toe Dad’s murder, Toe Dad kidnapping Becky in front of Dina and his armed assault, Ryan trying to assault Joyce in her dorm and getting fillleted with his own knife by Amber in front of Dorothy.
Amber, Joyce, and Dorothy need full-time monitoring all by themselves.
RassilonTDavros
Did some further digging, and I’m pretty sure it’s this one.
Reltzik
Yup, that’s the one I was about to link.
Rabid Rabbit
And that technically has words in it, so may not entirely count.
Delicious Taffy
I mean, if we’re counting environmental text, a stop sign counts as dialogue.
Reltzik
… actually, YESTERDAY’S strip had no dialogue.
Amber was actually talking to herself, and that makes it a monologue.
chuckroast
Never thought I’d be so glad to see a character cry, but fuck yeah.
Hampsterpig
Yes! Process your grief in a healthy fashion!
Hampsterpig
I also think it’s cool as hell that it is only amber in this strip, no alternates to confuse the issue, just pure grief.
Yumi
GOOD FOR HER
Nick Piers
“Niagara Falls!” – Scrooged
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch…
butts
about TIME
Nono
Wait, people cry not face first into a pillow?
The Wellerman
When you’re sad like that, you’re often too exhausted to do ANYTHING, including turning around.
Sirksome
No see what you don’t get is that Amber is aware that this is a comic and thus crying up into the ceiling frames her better for us the audience to see her emotions in these panels. It’s really for our benefit and shows what a true professional Amber is that even in a time of emotional distress she’s doing her best to entertain us!
The Wellerman
I guess humor can work as coping too.
Wait, was that an attempt to be funny?
Sirksome
Kind of. But I guess it was pretty bad if you have to ask. So I can’t really claim it was now. Which also makes me sad thus countering my attempt to cope with humor.
Yumi
I was amused by it, for what it’s worth.
The Wellerman
Nah, don’t sweat it. My humor and sarcasm detectors break down almost every other day. Neurodivergence! ?
Thag Simmons
Sometimes. It’s not necessarily the preferred option but it’s still a viable one
Robbie
I think she’s trying not to cry so she didn’t get into crying posture. been there.
Yumi
I like to try to avoid getting my pillow all snotty, personally.
Keulen
Same.
Reltzik
Not with glasses on, ideally.
I mean, “In the case or on your face” doesn’t really include pillow cases.
Nicole