A few months ago, over coffee and late-night voice notes, I asked several therapists a simple question.
What makes people cry the most in the room?
Their answers were tender and direct. They repeated each other more than I expected.
Different ages, different backgrounds, different reasons for booking the appointment—yet the same six stories rose to the surface.
I’m sharing them here because naming what hurts often reduces the shame around it.
You’ll also find practical ways to ride the wave when tears come, whether you’re the one on the couch or the person supporting someone who is.
1. The grief that never got a funeral
These are the losses without casseroles and condolence cards.
A breakup that quietly ripped the floorboards loose. An estrangement that turned holidays into obstacle courses.
The miscarriage that a couple never told anyone about. The friend who drifted away without a fight or a reason.
Therapists told me that people cry not only for what they lost, but for the ceremony they never received.
No ritual. No witnesses. No place to put the love.
If this is you, create your own rite.
Write a letter you won’t send.
Walk a familiar block and say goodbye out loud.
Hold a small object as a stand-in and choose where it belongs now.
Grief needs movement and meaning. Give it both.
2. The “strong one” finally sets the backpack down
These tears come from people everyone leans on. Oldest daughters.
Team leads.
Quiet sons who pay the bills and soothe the parents. They arrive with a polished story and a tired smile. They apologize for crying.
The therapists I spoke with said the dam usually breaks when someone says, “You don’t have to be fine here.”
It’s astonishing how foreign that sentence can feel.
Strength is valuable. Self-neglect is not.
If you’re the reliable one, try practicing receiving in tiny doses.
Let a friend cook the side dish. Take the first five minutes of a meeting to breathe and then speak, not the reverse. Say “yes, please” when care is offered, even if your reflex is “I’m good.”
When the backpack comes off, your nervous system remembers it has a body, not just a to-do list.
3. The parent-shaped ache that lingers into adulthood
Not a villain story. A longing story.
People cry for the hug that didn’t come, the consistent presence that never formed, the praise that arrived only with achievement.
They cry for the parent who struggled with their own demons and couldn’t meet them. They cry because they loved someone who didn’t have enough fuel to love back in the way they needed.
Understanding your history isn’t the same as blaming it.
This is where responsibility and compassion can share a seat.
You didn’t choose the training. You do choose what you do with it now.
Re-parenting sounds abstract, but it can be beautifully ordinary.
Make breakfast that honors your body. Speak to yourself in the tone you wish you’d heard at eight.
Ask for reassurance like an adult: “I’m telling myself a scary story. Could you remind me we’re okay?”
Repairing the parent wound doesn’t erase longing. It does reduce the way it drives the car.
4. The relationship ending right in front of them
These are the sessions where truth finally gets oxygen.
Someone says, “I want a different future.” Or both realize they want incompatible lives and love each other too much to keep pretending.
Tears here carry shock, relief, anger, nostalgia, and the grief of a shared language dissolving.
Therapists told me that what breaks people open is not just losing the person. It’s losing the story of who they were together.
If you’re in this room, a few small moves make a difference:
- Name the season: “We are ending.” Naming ends the limbo and reduces re-injury.
- Set time-bound logistics: thirty days to sort housing, money, and pets. Clear timelines reduce panic.
- Honor the good: choose one memory each to keep on purpose. It will otherwise choose you.
- Create a no-contact container for a period you both agree to. Space helps your brain recalibrate.
- Ask for witnesses: one or two trusted friends who know the plan and keep you anchored.
Endings deserve dignity. And closure is a series of respectful choices when it would be easier to burn the bridge.
5. The shame story that thinks it’s protecting you
Shame cries sound different.
They’re quieter. They often begin with, “This might change how you see me.”
Therapists hear tears around debt, sexuality, abortion, chronic illness, kink, neurodiversity, infidelity, addiction, family secrets – the private files we keep in a locked drawer.
Shame tells us secrecy is safer. Then it isolates us until the isolation hurts more than the truth.
I’ve sat in that chair too.
I felt the heat rise in my face as I spoke out loud the thing I’d avoided seeing in myself. The body softens when you realize you didn’t explode and the other person didn’t run.
This is where a line from Rudá Iandê’s new book, Laughing in the Face of Chaos, keeps me steady.
Rudá—who co-founded The Vessel, the site you’re reading—writes, “Our emotions are not barriers, but profound gateways to the soul—portals to the vast, uncharted landscapes of our inner being.”
I’ve mentioned this book before because his insights have helped me treat shame like a messenger, not a prison guard.
When the blush surfaces, I slow down.
What is this emotion trying to protect? What value is it pointing at?
If your shame story is loud, practice speaking facts without the courtroom tone.
- “I have credit card debt and I’m getting help.”
- “I explore X in consensual ways.”
- “I’m in recovery.”
Your honesty will choose better people for you.
6. The life that is “fine” but not alive
Sometimes the tears come from people who can’t justify their pain on paper.
They have work. They have housing. They have a partner who isn’t cruel.
Everything is fine, which is exactly the problem.
Therapists told me these sessions hold the quiet grief of unlived life.
A career chosen for approval. A town that never felt like theirs. A routine that protects them from risk and also from joy.
Minimalism taught me something useful here.
When you remove what’s not essential, you can finally hear your own desire.
I’ve done this in small ways—closing tabs, saying no to opportunities that look shiny but bend me away from purpose, choosing fewer, better commitments so my nervous system has room to breathe.
If your life is fine but bloodless, start with one honest hour a week.
Write, paint, dance, climb, volunteer, learn a language.
Don’t post it. Don’t monetize it.
Follow the warm thread and let it tug.
Your body knows the difference between performance and aliveness, and it will tell you if you’re quiet enough to listen.
Final thoughts
We’re almost done, but this piece can’t be overlooked.
Crying in therapy isn’t a failure of control.
It’s evidence that something tender is finally safe enough to surface. If any of these six stories is yours, take one small action in the next 24 hours.
Book the appointment. Name the ending. Plan the ritual. Tell the truth to one person with kind eyes. Put the shame story on the table and watch how its power changes in daylight.
And if you want a companion for this kind of work, I’ll gently point you to a resource I trust.
Rudá Iandê’s Laughing in the Face of Chaos helped me question old programming and return to the wisdom in my body—something I lean on in my writing, my relationship, and my practice.
I know I’ve mentioned it before.
That’s because when a tool helps people become more honest and more whole, it’s worth picking up again. The invitation is simple.
Let your tears be teachers.
They’re not gates you can’t pass through. They’re doors you’ve finally found.
Just launched: Laughing in the Face of Chaos by Rudá Iandê
Exhausted from trying to hold it all together?
You show up. You smile. You say the right things. But under the surface, something’s tightening. Maybe you don’t want to “stay positive” anymore. Maybe you’re done pretending everything’s fine.
This book is your permission slip to stop performing. To understand chaos at its root and all of your emotional layers.
In Laughing in the Face of Chaos, Brazilian shaman Rudá Iandê brings over 30 years of deep, one-on-one work helping people untangle from the roles they’ve been stuck in—so they can return to something real. He exposes the quiet pressure to be good, be successful, be spiritual—and shows how freedom often lives on the other side of that pressure.
This isn’t a book about becoming your best self. It’s about becoming your real self.
