Latest / Living Deeply with Markieta Carter / Why Someone May Respond to Your Tears With Anger

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Why Someone May Respond to Your Tears With Anger · Living Deeply with Markieta Carter

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Hey, it's Markita. Welcome back to the Living Deeply Podcast.
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In part one, I talked about what it feels like when you cry in front of someone,
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and instead of receiving compassion, your tears are met with anger.
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I talked about being called stupid, manipulative, weak, mentally unstable,
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and the worst person in the world.
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I talked about the shame I felt after because I cried.
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But after processing that experience another question kept coming up for me,
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why why would seeing or hearing another human being cry make someone angrier,
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why would someone's sadness cause another person to become more aggressive dismissive
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or cruel why would someone look
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at tears and immediately interpret them as manipulation instead of pain.
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And that's what i want to explore today But I want to be very careful about how I do it.
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I am not a mental health professional.
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I'm not diagnosing my co-parent or any person.
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I'm not diagnosing your partner, friend, ex-spouse, or anybody else.
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Mental health conditions should be evaluated by qualified professionals.
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What I'm saying is that sometimes the person pointing at your emotional reactions
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may have emotional or psychological struggles of their own.
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And those struggles may be undiagnosed, untreated, unacknowledged,
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or simply something we know absolutely nothing about.
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And sometimes there may be no mental health disorder at all.
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And that's important too.
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So this episode isn't about figuring out what's wrong with somebody,
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it's about understanding that another person's reaction to your vulnerability,
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may be telling you something about their emotional world and not yours.
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So why would crying make someone angry? Crying is communication.
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Sometimes we're crying because we're grieving.
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Sometimes it's because we're afraid.
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Sometimes it's because we're overwhelmed.
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Sometimes we're frustrated.
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Sometimes we're experiencing physical pain and sometimes someone has hurt us.
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Sometimes our nervous system simply reaches its limits.
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But the person witnessing those tears brings their own history into that moment.
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Your tears don't enter an empty room.
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They enter a room with another person's experiences, beliefs,
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coping mechanisms, fears, insecurities, emotional regulation skills, and learned behaviors.
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That's why two people can see the same person crying and respond completely differently.
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One person moves closer and says, what's wrong? Another freezes,
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another walks away, and another gets angry. The tears are the same.
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What's happening inside the observer may be completely different.
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Your tears may trigger their defensiveness. Imagine that somebody says something
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hurtful to you and you begin crying.
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Their tears may communicate to them, you hurt me.
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They may experience that as an accusation, even if you haven't accused them of anything at all.
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And if acknowledging your pain will require them to examine their own behavior,
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defensiveness can become easier than accountability.
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Instead of saying, I hurt you, the story becomes, you're too sensitive.
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Instead of, maybe I shouldn't have said that, it becomes, you're manipulating me.
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Instead of, I don't like seeing the impact of my behavior, it becomes, stop crying.
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Now, the focus is smooth. You're no longer talking about what happened.
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You're talking about your reaction to what happened.
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And that doesn't automatically mean the person has a mental health condition.
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Defensiveness is human, but when it becomes a persistent pattern,
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it's worth recognizing the dynamic.
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Some people have never learned how to stick with vulnerability.
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Some people grew up in environments where crying wasn't safe.
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Maybe they were told, stop crying, toughen up, I'll give you something to cry about.
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Maybe sadness was mild.
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Maybe vulnerability was associated with weakness. Maybe emotional conversations
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didn't happen in their family.
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Maybe anger was acceptable, but sadness wasn't.
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Someone can carry those lessons into adulthood without realizing it.
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Then they can encounter someone like me, someone who feels deeply and whose
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emotions can sometimes be visible.
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My tears may activate something in them that has very little to do with me at all.
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They may have spent their entire
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life suppressing the exact vulnerability they're watching me express.
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And sometimes people are uncomfortable witnessing in others what they don't
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permit themselves to experience.
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Anger can feel safer than sadness. For some people, anger is easier to assess than fear.
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Shame, sadness, guilt, or helplessness. Anger can feel powerful.
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Sadness can feel vulnerable.
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Fear can feel vulnerable. Shame can feel vulnerable.
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Saying I'm angry may feel much safer than saying I'm scared,
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or I feel guilty or I don't know what to do with your pain seeing you cry makes
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me uncomfortable or even I know I hurt you and I don't know how to deal with
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that again none of that excuses harmful behavior
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understanding a possible,
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reason or mechanism isn't the same thing as giving someone permission to hurt you,
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Sometimes there may be untreated mental health struggles.
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And that's another possibility. The person responding to your tears may be struggling themselves.
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Maybe there's anxiety. Maybe there's depression.
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Maybe there's unresolved trauma.
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Maybe there's chronic stress. Maybe difficulties with emotional regulation.
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Maybe something else entirely. Or maybe none of those things at all.
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Unless that person has been professionally evaluated, we will never know.
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That's why I don't want us casually diagnosing people based on how they behave
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during conflict. But I also don't believe we should assume I have received mental
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health treatment and they haven't.
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Therefore, I must be the unstable person.
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Those two things do not logically follow. A lack of treatment isn't proof that
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you are well psychologically.
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And a lack of diagnosis isn't proof that someone's never struggled.
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Sometimes it simply means that there was no diagnosis.
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I want to make this distinction because it's important. When I say someone may
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have undiagnosed mental health struggles, I'm not saying every angry person
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secretly has a psychiatric disorder. They don't.
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Someone can behave terribly and have no mental illness at all.
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Someone can lack empathy in a particular moment with not having a disorder.
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And someone can have poor communication skills.
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Someone can have unhealthy learned behavior. Someone can be defensive.
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Someone can be emotionally immature in certain situations.
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Someone can simply make a bad choice. Mental illness should never become sharpening
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for behavior we don't like.
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And people living with mental health conditions are not inherently cruel,
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angry, abusive, or unsafe.
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Most are not. So I'm not interested in stigmatizing mental illness at all.
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I'm an advocate. I'm interested in challenging the assumption that people whose
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mental health history is documented must automatically be the least emotionally
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healthy person in the room. Those are different conversations.
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But sometimes people know that they're struggling and still don't seek help.
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And there's a difference between being unaware of a struggle and knowing something
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is happening, but still not getting help.
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People avoid mental health care for all kinds of reasons.
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Fear, denial, shame, stigma, family beliefs, cultural and religious expectations,
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cost, access, previous negative experiences with treatment, fear of medication.
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Fear of receiving a diagnosis, fear of what might be discovered about themselves,
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and sometimes career concerns.
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Someone may believe having a documented mental health history could affect their
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job, their professional license, their security clearance, fitness for duty
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evaluation, or professional reputation.
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Whether that fear reflects the actual rules of their profession is a whole nother
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question, but if they believe seeking help could threaten their livelihood,
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that fear may become a powerful barrier to treatment so they may decide i'm
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fine i'm just gonna pray about it i'm,
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just gonna give it to god i don't need therapy nothing is wrong with me and
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sometimes the people around them experience the consequences,
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of whatever remains unaddressed.
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Denial can protect the person from having to look inside.
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This is something I've thought about. If I acknowledge that I have a problem,
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I may have to do something about it.
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If I acknowledge my anger is affecting people, I may have to change.
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If I acknowledge that I struggle with emotional regulation, I may have to learn new skills.
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If I acknowledge that my past still affects me, I may have to revisit some powerful painful experiences.
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If I acknowledge that something is happening psychologically I may have to seek
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professional help too denial,
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can temporarily protect someone from all of that but denial doesn't necessarily
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protect the people interacting with them,
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and this is where my own story is interesting because I did seek help during
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my former marriage after years of repeated betrayal I experienced anxiety and depression,
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The pattern of betrayal Continued for more than 15 years When I was told fix
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yourself I was told get over it or get out So I did what I could To take care
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of myself I saw professional mental health treatment.
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I needed help continuing to function while also processing betrayal, grief, fear, and shame.
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And the treatment helped. I stayed in treatment consistently. I learned our process.
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I developed tools. And throughout the years of that type of work,
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I basically came to understand that what I experienced was situational and directly
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associated with that particular chapter of my life.
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I got to experience myself outside of that relationship and I discovered that's not my story anymore.
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That's not my life anymore. I am a much, much different person today.
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But my willingness to get help could be later used against me.
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And that's the irony. I was told to fix myself. I stopped help,
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the help work, and then having sought mental health treatment could later be
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framed as evidence that I was unstable.
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And that's one reason this subject matters so much to me because having a documented
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mental health history doesn't automatically tell you who is healthier in a conflict.
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One person may have spent years in treatment examining those patterns and the
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other person may have never been evaluated at all.
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And that doesn't mean the second person has a mental health condition,
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but it certainly doesn't prove they don't struggle either. We simply don't know.
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I don't need to turn the accusation around. This is where I had to be careful.
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If somebody tells me you're mentally unstable, I don't need to respond,
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no, you're mentally unstable.
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That's not growth. That's the same weapon, changing hands.
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I don't need to diagnose my phone parent. I don't need to figure out whether
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he has an underlying condition.
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I don't need to prove that someone else's anger is actually evidence of some diagnosis.
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That's not my job.
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I can observe behavior without diagnosing its source.
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I can say, you called me stupid, you called me manipulative,
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and you called me the worst person in the world.
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You responded angrily when I cried.
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Those are behaviors I can describe. I don't need to diagnose him to decide that
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they aren't acceptable to me.
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Compassion doesn't require access. I can also hold space for the possibility
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that another person is struggling.
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Maybe there are rooms that I know nothing about. Maybe there are fears I don't understand.
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Maybe there are reasons that they respond to vulnerability in the way that they do.
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I can have compassion for that possibility, but compassion doesn't require access.
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Understanding someone doesn't require me to remain available for mistreatment,
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and especially in a co-parent term relationship.
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I can distinguish between necessary communication and emotional access.
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We can communicate about our daughter. We can talk about school,
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health, schedules, responsibilities, decisions, and needs, but I don't have
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to continue participating once the conversation becomes personal degradation.
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My tears don't need a defense, and this is one of the biggest lessons that I'm
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carrying from part one to part two.
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I spent too much time asking, why did I cry?
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Now I'm asking a different question. Why did I believe crying required a defense?
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I had just lost my sister. I was grieving. I was overwhelmed.
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I was called stupid, manipulative, the worst person in the world.
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My motherhood was questioned and I cried. And that is an emotional response.
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Someone else responded with anger and that's an emotional response too.
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Need a response by ourselves gives us information.
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Enough information to diagnose to either person. Emotional dispersion is not
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the same as emotional instability.
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I really want people to understand this.
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Visible emotion is an automatically instability. Crying is an automatically
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dysregulation and appearing emotionally detached is an automatically stability.
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Someone can cry and still think clearly. Someone can experience grief, and still function.
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Someone can receive mental health treatment and still be competent.
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Someone can be calm on the outside and struggling tremendously internally.
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Someone can express anger confidently and still be emotionally overwhelmed.
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You cannot reliably measure another person's mental health by simply asking, who cried?
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I also take accountability for my own story. Part of my healing has meant looking at myself too.
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The betrayal in my marriage wasn't my choice, but staying was.
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I stayed for years. I stayed through a pattern that continued for more than
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15 years, and I take accountability for that decision.
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But I don't use accountability to punish myself anymore.
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I have forgiven myself. I've forgiven myself for staying, for hoping,
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for giving chances, for believing things might change, for not knowing then what I know now.
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I can take full responsibility for my choices without assuming responsibility for someone else's.
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That distinction has changed my life.
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I'm not trying to stop someone else anymore. There was a time when I might have
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spent an enormous amount of energy asking, why are you like this?
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Why can't you understand how I feel?
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Why doesn't my crying make you softer? Why doesn't seeing my hurt make you stop?
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Why can't you show me compassion?
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Now I understand that sometimes I may never get those answers.
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Maybe there is an untreated mental health issue.
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Maybe there's trauma. Maybe there's emotional avoidance. Maybe there's shame.
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Maybe there's fear. Maybe there's a learned pattern.
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Maybe there's nothing diagnosable at all. And I may never know.
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And I don't need to know in order to protect myself. Sometimes the most important
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question isn't what's wrong with them.
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It's what do I need?
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What boundary do I need? What conversation am I willing to participate in?
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When do I disengage? when access, what access does this person actually need to have to me?
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What belongs to me or what doesn't? And that's where my power is now,
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not in diagnosing somebody else, not in convincing them to get treatment,
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not in proving that I am psychologically healthier,
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in knowing myself.
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And now I know myself differently today.
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I know the woman who experienced anxiety and depression during a past marriage.
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And I have compassion for her. She was trying to function while experiencing
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repeated betrayal. She sought help. She stayed in treatment. She learned.
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She eventually left that chapter behind. She forgave herself and she became me.
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And that is why I refuse to let someone reach backward into my mental health
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history and use an old chapter to define the person I am today.
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And I also refuse to do the same thing with somebody else.
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I don't know their mental health history. I don't know what they've addressed.
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I don't know what they've avoided.
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I don't know what they're afraid of. I don't know what they carry,
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but I know what I will accept.
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If someone responds to you with tears, your tears with anger,
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don't immediately assume their response is telling you something is wrong with you.
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Maybe your tears make them uncomfortable.
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Maybe they feel defensive. Maybe they're experiencing guilt.
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Maybe vulnerability frightens them.
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Maybe anger is the emotion they know how to express.
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Maybe they have unresolved struggles. Maybe they need professional support and
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haven't started. Maybe they don't at all.
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You don't have to solve that mystery. And please don't diagnose them yourself.
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Instead, pay attention to the behavior. Ask yourself, do I feel emotionally
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safe expressing vulnerability around this person?
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Can this person disagree with me without degrading me?
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Can they see me hurting without making my hurt something to punish?
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Can they repair after conflict? Can they take accountability? Can I?
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Those questions may tell you far more about the relationship than trying to
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determine what someone's diagnosis will ever be.
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The final thing I learned is that someone else's inability to respond compassionately
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to my tears does not determine whether my tears were legitimate.
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Their anger does not invalidate my pain. Their lack of treatment doesn't prove
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they're healthier than me. And my history of treatment doesn't prove that I'm less healthy than them.
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And neither one of us should be diagnosed than the other. I can't understand.
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I can understand that people are complicated. I can understand that hurt people
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sometimes respond from places I can't see.
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I can acknowledge that untreated or undiagnosed mental health struggles can
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sometimes influence someone's behavior. And I can recognize that mental illness,
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isn't required for someone to behave hurtfully.
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Most importantly, I can stop making another person's internal world my responsibility.
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I spent years trying to understand somebody else while trying to fix myself.
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Today, I'm doing something different.
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I'm understanding myself. I am protecting myself.
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And I'm taking accountability for myself.
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I'm also forgiving myself. And I'm allowing other adults to be responsible for
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understanding and caring for themselves.
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That's their work. This is my work.
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It's Martita, and this is the Living Deeply Podcast. if someone's anger has
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ever made you question whether you were,
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wrong simply because you cried remember your tears are information their anger
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is information neither is a diagnosis and you don't have to figure out what's
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wrong with someone else before you're allowed to decide what isn't healthy for you,
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protect your peace honor what you feel seek support when you need it and keep living deeply.