Yes, I cry all the time but am I too sensitive?

by Claire Isaac

Not long ago I was watching a catch up episode of Masterchef. And I was crying. Like, bawling.

And I was doing it silently because my husband was in bed and he’d think I was ridiculous. Which, in the style of Carrie Bradshaw, got me thinking:

Why does a woman crying make some people so… flummoxed?

I cry at a lot of TV shows. Things set me off that maybe shouldn’t – cats, dogs, babies, old people. As soon as any of them do pretty much anything the tears start flowing. An old man and a dog combined and I am gone.

If it’s a genuinely sad movie or a poignant TV show, I know, you get it. But as I get older, it doesn’t even have to be heartbreaking for me to well up. The perfect storm of older gent, young baby, a duckling — for example — or a small puppy… and I can be a goner for days. And I can’t help it.

It’s hormonal, I know. And it’s tricky to navigate when you’ve always been a cry baby. Every boyfriend and family member I have ever had has called me over-sensitive at some point.

Having been a big sooky baba since I was, well, a little sooky baba, I cried all through my childhood. I cried when my mum left me at school, when I went to people’s houses, when I didn’t go to people’s houses, when my dad moved countries three months before the rest of us, when he came back, when I hated school, when I loved school, when someone was mean… you get the idea.

I had no chance.

My husband says I have leaky tear ducts and often uses my crying as a kind of sport — watching from the other side of the couch in glee as my bottom lip wobbles and my chin trembles. His joy and incredulity at my OTT suffering would be funny and just slightly irritating if I could see him through the tears.

So now add into that perimenopause and a sudden drop in hormones and look out Kleenex, you may want to up your game.

Which is how I come to be on the couch, crying at Melissa Leong crying.

BTW, I’m a little bit obsessed with Melissa Leong actually, as she’s so smart and glam and also so… what’s the word, yes, bogan. Underneath her coiffed exterior is a woman who loves a pie. AND SHE CRIES A LOT.

Her crying over Poh or, I don’t know, someone’s Nan’s pasta, had me in floods of tears. I went out in support.

And you know what, I think that’s ok.

It shows I am human, I have feelings. It shows I’m loving and kind. It shows I am NOT A ROBOT.

And you know what? I have had enough of being called “too sensitive”. Honestly, it’s enough to make me cry… JK.

In our book How Not to Live Your Best Life, we talk about it in fact, and how being, ahem, overly sensitive, is actually good because it shows empathy, that you’re attuned to your environment, you have soft skills which are now highly valued in workplaces… and you have a conscience. And when I say “you” I mean, well me. Being sensitive shows we’re lovely people, right?

We say that getting told off for having feelings is not a good thing.

I get that too much crying can get in the way of things, like maybe getting dinner sorted, driving the car or leaving the cinema after a particularly sad movie has just finished (E.T for example, destroyed me!) but hear this — there is nothing wrong with having a lot of feelings. Crying over something (Masterchef-related or not) shows that you care.

And Melissa and I must simply care A LOT.

So I’m calling it. It’s not “too sensitive” to cry more than most. It’s just the care oozing out of our eyes. Deal with it.