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You cry when your boss says “can I have a quick word?” You cry in the middle of an argument you were winning, which is the worst part, because now you’re the one who looks unreasonable. Somebody is kind to you at the pharmacy counter and your throat closes. And afterwards there’s the second wave: what is wrong with me, why can’t I hold it together like a normal adult?
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Self ground.
Nothing is wrong with you. I learned that the slow way.
When I was eight, I had something like a seizure on the way home from school. My left foot started dragging, I fell, I got up, I fell again, and then a trembling moved up through my whole body while I was awake for every second of it. I called out to the kids walking past. They laughed. Children laugh when they’re frightened.
When I came to, I was on a couch in the principal’s office, and the adults were whispering. Not speaking to me. Whispering around me. Nobody sat down and said “you’re safe, this is what happened, you’re not broken.” So the feeling never finished. For years afterwards I paced. Stillness felt dangerous. One day, during exams, I fled to the toilets and walked in circles on the cold tiles, sure it was happening again.
A teacher found me there. He didn’t fix anything. He just looked at me, saw that I was terrified, and didn’t look away. I saw tenderness in his eyes. That moment planted the seed of my whole working life.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. Your tears were never the problem. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, eyes, throat, chest, and whether something in you softens or tightens up to hold the line. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If your eyes stung reading that line, let them. If something in you braced against it, that’s worth noticing too.
Your body keeps a record of everything that ever happened to you. I call it the first ledger. It records truth, not narrative. And there are two kinds of entries in it. The ones that got completed, where someone held you, named what happened and let the feeling move all the way through. And the ones that didn’t. Those stay open.
An open entry doesn’t go quiet. It keeps broadcasting: this isn’t finished. So when something in the present rhymes with the old hurt, a raised voice, a kind face, a scene in a film where someone finally gets held, the open entry answers. The tears aren’t really about the film. They’re about the thing the film touched. That’s why it feels out of proportion. It isn’t out of proportion. It’s in proportion to the account, not to the moment.
And then there’s the shame on top. Somewhere along the way you learned that tears were inconvenient, embarrassing, weak, too much. So now you cry, and then you attack yourself for crying, and the second hurt is often worse than the first. That’s not a character flaw. That’s a body that never got the experience it needed, still asking for it, and a protector part that’s mortified it keeps asking. You make sense.
The loop, on your situation
I don’t teach people to stop crying. I use a practice I learned from my teacher Aftab Omer, reflexive participation. At its simplest: what am I noticing now, how am I affected, and what creative action is being called for? Here it is, run on the tears.
Get ground in your body first
When the tears come, the instinct is to get out: blink hard, look at the ceiling, leave the room. Try one thing first instead. Feel your feet on the floor and let one breath go out slower than it came in. You’re not stopping the tears. You’re giving them somewhere to land.
What happened
Pick the last time you cried and didn’t want to. Say it in the present tense, plainly. “I’m in a meeting, my manager says the report needs work, and my eyes fill up.” Just the event. Not the verdict about what kind of person cries in meetings.
And notice the conditions. The week my dog Zephyr died, I fired off an email I’m still ashamed of. I wasn’t resourced. There was nothing left in the tank. These things grab you hardest exactly when you have the least left to meet them with. If you’re crying more than usual, ask what your tank looks like.
Where it lands in the body
Where does it start? A heat behind the eyes? A tightening in the throat, like a hand closing? A wobble in the chin? Find the very first sensation, the one that comes before the tears. Don’t push it away and don’t push it out. Just find it and stay with it for a breath.
Who’s driving
Two parts are usually in the room. One is the young one who’s finally feeling it. The other is the protector who arrives a half second later with a verdict: pathetic, pull yourself together, they’ll think you’re unstable. Omer called that voice the Gatekeeper. In my book I call these protector parts. They were built to keep a child safe, and their whole identity is protection, so don’t argue with them. Ask instead: what is this part afraid will happen if I let the tears be seen?
Trace it
When did you learn that tears were a problem? Who rolled their eyes, went quiet, told you to stop that now, or just whispered around you? I grew up in Irish pubs where, however raucous the room, a sad ballad could stop every glass from clinking. Those songs carried the grief of a whole people, and music was the only place that sadness was allowed to speak. Men didn’t cry. The songs did it for them. Find your version: your family’s rule about tears, your culture’s rule, and the rule of the workplace you walk into every morning.
Feel it and tell someone
What heals an open entry isn’t analysis. It’s the missing experience, arriving now. The tears that couldn’t come then come now, and this time someone stays. So the next time you well up with a person you trust, try not apologising. Say the true sentence instead: “I cry easily. It’s not about you. Something in me is finishing.” Then let them see it. That’s what my teacher on the tiles gave me. One person who didn’t look away.
One creative action
Make a place where tears are allowed. A song you only play when you want to feel. A walk with no podcast. Somewhere the young one knows it won’t be shushed. Grief, given a container, has somewhere to go. Over time it becomes compassion, for yourself first, and then for everyone else who’s been crying in the toilets at work.
One thing to do tonight
Before bed, put one hand on the place where the tears start, the throat, the chest, behind the eyes, and say quietly, “You can come. I’m not going anywhere.” Then notice what happens next. You might cry. You might feel nothing at all. Either is fine. You’re teaching that part of you that someone finally stays.
Would therapy help with this?
For a lot of people, coaching is the right size. Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go, and we only address the past when it emerges in the present. Crying easily is the past emerging in the present, over and over, so there’s plenty to work with right here.
But please be honest with yourself about two things. If the crying is new, constant, or comes with feeling numb, hopeless, or not wanting to get out of bed, that can be depression, and it’s more than coaching can hold. Talk to a licensed therapist where you live. And if it’s arrived alongside physical changes, a new medication, or anything hormonal, see your doctor too. If you’re thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself, so a feeling can move through you without knocking you off your feet.
There are two ways to keep going. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together over several weeks.
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Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
Cry in the next meeting anyway? Good. That’s not going backwards. You begin again. I do too.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
Why do I cry so easily when someone yells at me?
Because a raised voice is one of the oldest danger signals there is, and if a raised voice once meant you weren’t safe, your body still answers it as if it does. The tears are the old entry opening, not proof that you’re weak. Ground yourself first, then decide what to say.
Why do I cry so easily as a man?
Probably for the same reasons anyone does, plus years of being told you shouldn’t. A lot of men carry a full ledger of feelings that were never allowed out, so when one finally gets through, it comes fast. That isn’t something broken in you. It’s something finishing.
Why do I cry so easily even when I’m not sad?
Tears aren’t only sadness. People cry from relief, tenderness, anger, being seen, or being overwhelmed by beauty. Often it’s an open entry being touched by something kind. Notice what happened just before. The tears usually know something your mind hasn’t named yet.
Reflexive participation and the Gatekeeper come from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
