I’m taking a counselling communication course, and we hone our skills on each other. The gal I was working with today got really upset with what we were talking about (it’s a heartbreaking situation) and she started to cry.
:o
I guess I’m going to have to get used to that.
Al.
It was nearly 30 years ago, but so did I…
She was a 1[sup]st[/sup]-grader, I was in 2[sup]nd[/sup]. She had a crush on me. And not knowing how to get my attention in the way she really wanted, she started taunting me, calling me names, challenging me to a fight, etc.
After about a week, her friends and my friends rallied around us actually fighting. I reluctantly got pushed into a ring of students with her in the middle too. She began taunting me again, saying I was too wimpy to hit a girl.
I proved her wrong. 
She began crying. Her girlfriends surrounded her to comfort her. My friends started cheering me for hitting the mouthy little 1[sup]st[/sup] grader.
It wasn’t until a few years later that one of my girl-friends (who had witnesses the original incident) explained the I-love-him-but-I’ll-be-mean-to-him mentality that was behind that little girls actions. Boy, did I feel like a complete heel.
I do it all the time… Comes with people asking you to tell them the truth about personality matters…
Should I ask for clarification here?
I hit a girl once, too. It was in middle school, and we were the same age.
In my favor…she really kinda deserved it. And it -was- in self defense. She didn’t cry, but she had a nasty black eye afterwards.
I did make people cry when I was younger…I’m not even “old” yet, but I was so disturbed when I was smaller that the memories still haunt me–every face of every person I ever attacked by force or emotion lives on in perfect detail in my mind, and it’s a horrible truth that I may never get over.
Huh. Now I’m dead-set on becoming a doctor one day. To heal people. Ain’t that a daisy?
Join the club. I’ve been known to make the same girl cry three times in one hour.
Not my fault, though. She hurts me, and when she realizes she hurt me, it hurts her and she cries.
Aww, hell… that’s nothing. Mr. Bobkitty can get his pretend therapist to cry over his issues. Don’t know why no one ever wants to be his partner in class… 
Of course, I’m no better. NO classmate of mine, in the several technique courses I’ve taken, has ever been able to successfully counsel me. I’m a frustrating client.
But yeah, get used to it. Or become a cold-hearted bastard like me. 
_BK
~~It’s been about 4 months since Anticay made a girl cry
but it doesn’t count because she was @$%@#@# insaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane!
She asked why people were suddenly being mean to her, and I told her (nicer than this, of course, but she got the meaning I meant behind it) that she’d been really ahem witchy lately, and hadn’t cared about other’s feelings. I also am forced to point out to her when he latest paranoid theory is completely false… then she just says I don’t understand. No one but she does… strange how that works. She should wear a tin foil hat some days.
Did you ‘make’ her cry? Did you force her to say / listen to something that was awful for her? Or was she crying because it was just a tough topic to discuss?
Sometimes crying is a good thing, right? (Joni Mitchell: “laughing and crying - it’s the same release…”)
It’s pretty tough to make someone cry. And if you’re in counseling classes, then you probably know better than most that sometimes the most innocent of issues for one person is a field of landmines for others.
Ain’t life crazy? Better than the alternative, though.
Kinda both I think - tough topic for sure, but when we were done she said that she didn’t talk about this particular thing with anyone, and I was very perceptive in my questioning. She’s pretty pulled together, so I think if I would have asked clumsier questions, she would have kept it together better.
She also said that she felt better after - so that’s good.
I was just quite nonplussed is all.
Al.
You can’t make someone cry. The person that is crying must choose to do so. All you can do is put some sort of external influence in front of them that may cause the person to cry.
And when I say someone ‘chooses’ to cry, I don’t mean something thinking ‘hey, I think i’ll have a cry now’. I mean someone that is either consciously or subconsciously allowing their mood to be influenced by their surroundings. This is something we all do every minute of every day.
Wow, that’s deep given i’ve had just three hours sleep. Still, I consciously choose not to be tired. The subconscious on the other hand …