So, Angry Crying Is The Worst

You are fire. You are vengeance. You will burn everything they love to the ground with your wrath, and they will tremble in fear. As soon as you stop angry crying, that is.

Angry crying is the absolute worst, and it’s one of those afflictions I’ve been cursed with my entire life. I will be trembling with rage, prepared to cut down my enemies, and instead some tears leak out, because my body is a traitor and might be in league with the patriarchy to undermine my anger. Like a lot of women I know, I’ve spent my life crafting a reputation that leads people to believe that they never want to see me angry. I like walking into a room and having people in it go, “Oh shit, I would never want to piss her off.” I like having the common assumption be that my eyes will turn red and I will not leave until the ground has run red with the blood of my enemies (look, I’m Scottish and French, alright? It’s in my DNA to be bloodthirsty and anti-tyrannical. It’s literally in the French national anthem).

So you can imagine how utterly disappointing and frustrating it is when, in lieu of being able to call up my pack of dragons, I end up standing there and giving the source of my ire a tearful lecture. Not cool.

How do we combat this? Being an angry crier is difficult for everyone, but especially women, who already have to work hard to be taken seriously in many aspects. Because society has deemed us as slaves to our emotions, when our response to great swells of emotion is to break out in tears, it only proves them right.

According to Psychology Today, those of us who experience the angry cry do so because underneath our fury, we’re actually experiencing hurt feelings. Which I can buy to an extent. This Ted-Ed video suggests it’s because of excessive stress, and tears are our bodies’ way of chilling us out and restoring our equilibrium. Which sounds more pleasing to me, so it’s the explanation I’m going to choose to believe.

There are dozens of comment threads all asking for advice on how to stop angry crying all the time, and most of the answers involve helpful suggestions like taming emotions, finding an outlet, or just ignoring it. But every now and then someone pops up and offers this earth-shattering advice: Just go with it. Some people need to cry, and repressing it can often make the situation seem so much worse.

I’ve got no suggestions on how to kick this obnoxious habit—although I’ll admit that ignoring things does actually work quite well—but maybe the key is to stop worrying so much about what the subject of your wrath thinks about you, and what you think about yourself. So go ahead and angry cry. Let your enemies learn that a crying woman can be just as scary as a yelling woman. Embrace the crier inside, and sprinkle the battlefield with the blood of your enemies and some tears.