Crying at work: why we fear it so much and what it really means

“Just two minutes, then I’ll go back.”

She is standing in a toilet cubicle on the third floor, door locked, a tissue held under her eyes so the mascara won’t run. Five minutes earlier, in front of everyone at the meeting, her manager said that her part of the project “clearly wasn’t a priority”. She didn’t answer. Her throat tightened, her eyes stung, and the only thought she had was: just not here. Now she is counting her breaths, checking her face in her phone’s camera and rehearsing the smile she will wear back to the table, as if nothing had happened.

A lot of people know this scene — from both sides of the door. Those who have cried in secret, and those who have stood outside a closed door not knowing whether to knock. Crying at work is one of those things that happens often but is almost never talked about. And that is exactly why it has so much power: a single tear in a meeting can turn, in the mind of the person crying, into proof that they are “not cut out for this job”.

In this post I would like to look at what tears actually are, why we fear them so much at work, what research tells us about them, and how to respond — when you are the one crying and when someone next to you is.

Why crying at work is such a taboo

Crying is more common in adult life than we admit. In William Frey’s classic study from the 1980s, in which people kept a crying diary for a month, women cried on average 5.3 times a month and men 1.4 times. The figures are old and vary between cultures, but the message stands: tears are not an exception, they are part of ordinary emotional life. And since adults spend a large share of their waking hours at work, it makes sense that they sometimes happen there too.

The workplace, however, has its own unwritten rules. We are expected to be composed, efficient, “professional”. In everyday speech the word professional is often used as a synonym for without emotion, even though nothing says emotions are unprofessional. Anger is still tolerated in some places as a sign of decisiveness, enthusiasm as a sign of motivation. Tears, though, seem to reveal something that ought to stay hidden: that something has hit us, that we are not untouchable.

Gender adds another layer. Women fear their tears will confirm the stereotype of being “oversensitive”. Men are often even more afraid, because for them the rule not to cry has applied since childhood — I wrote about how distress in men therefore often shows up differently in Depression in men: anger, withdrawal and silence instead of tears.

What tears actually do

The Dutch psychologist Ad Vingerhoets has been researching crying for decades and is one of the few who have taken tears seriously as a scientific phenomenon. His answer to the question of why we cry has two parts.

The first part is internal. Crying is part of emotion regulation. A review he wrote with his colleagues Gračanin and Bylsma suggests that crying sets off bodily processes that slowly bring the nervous system back towards rest after a peak of arousal — not instantly, but with a delay. That is why many people feel drained after crying, but somewhat lighter. Tears are not only a sign that distress is too much; they are also the body’s attempt to process it.

The second part is relational. Tears are a signal. Research shows that when someone else cries, people are more likely to offer help, soften and become less aggressive. Tears say: “I am vulnerable right now, I need someone.” It is one of the oldest human ways of calling for closeness.

What matters, though, is when crying genuinely brings relief. A large international study in which Bylsma, Vingerhoets and Rottenberg analysed several thousand accounts of crying found that people feel better afterwards mainly when someone is with them and supports them. When they feel shame or embarrassment while crying, the relief is smaller or absent. In other words: what matters is not so much whether you cry, but how the people around you respond to your tears — and how you respond to them yourself.

Warmer, but less capable?

The fear that tears will damage your reputation is not entirely unfounded. In a study published by Van de Ven, Meijs and Vingerhoets, people rated photographs of individuals with tears as warmer and friendlier — but at the same time as somewhat less competent. So tears really do trigger a double image: closeness and doubt.

But there is an important detail here. That doubt is not a property of tears; it is a property of how the environment looks at them. In a culture where emotion is confused with incompetence, tears will be read that way. In a team where it is clear that someone can cry and still do their job well, the same tear is read differently. A manager who sometimes shows the team that something has hit them may even become closer to people because of it — as long as they stay clear about the work. I wrote about how hard it is for a leader to show tiredness or distress in When you have to be a role model: the tiredness you’re not allowed to show.

What this means in practice: your tears say nothing about your ability. They say that you care, that you are under pressure and that you are human. How others read them depends partly on them — and partly on how you carry them yourself.

The workplace as a family: who cries for whom

In relational family therapy, the approach I am training in, we don’t see the individual as an island. Everyone is part of a system — a family, a couple, and also a team at work. Like a family, a workplace has its roles, its unwritten rules, its coalitions and its secrets. And as in a family, emotions in a team are not evenly distributed.

In families we often notice that one member “carries” an emotion for everyone. When all the others are composed and calm, one is angry, sad or anxious — and then everyone sees that person as the problem. Something similar happens in teams. When there has been tension in a department for a long time that nobody talks about — uncertainty about redundancies, an unfair manager, overload —, it often happens that one person breaks. Usually the one who is most sensitive or most overloaded. Their tears then become the talk of the corridor: “She’s been crying again.” It is rarer for anyone to consider that she may also have been crying for those who don’t allow themselves to.

The second systemic pattern is triangulation. A colleague in tears tells you in the kitchen what the boss did to her. You comfort her, and perhaps get angry with him yourself. The tension between her and the manager has eased for a moment — because it has moved onto you. There is nothing wrong with comforting her. But if you become the permanent station for tears about a third person, the relationship that needs sorting out never gets sorted out. And you carry someone else’s burden.

So whenever there is crying at work, I also ask: what is happening in this system that the tears came now, and in this particular person?

The shame that follows the tears

For many people the worst moment is not the crying itself, but what comes afterwards. The evening when the scene replays again and again. The morning when you have to walk into the office and look at the people who saw. The thought: “What do they think of me now?”

That is shame — the emotion that doesn’t say “something happened” but “there is something wrong with me”. I wrote more about it in Shame: the emotion that whispers “There is something wrong with me”, and you will find a short explanation in the knowledge base under shame. Shame after crying is insidious because it often does more harm than the event itself. People start to withdraw, avoid the meetings where they cried, or spend the following weeks trying to be especially tough to “correct the impression”.

This mechanism is very similar to what people go through after making a mistake at work: a single moment they believe has revealed something about them then takes up weeks of their lives. If you recognise this, you may also find Shame after a mistake: why one error eats up a whole month helpful.

It helps to tell yourself the truth: you cried because things were hard. That is not a character trait, it is a response to a situation. The people who saw it mostly saw a person under pressure — and many of them have been in the same position themselves.

When tears catch you in the middle of a meeting

And what about when you feel them coming and you really don’t want to cry? You don’t have to choose between “cry out loud” and “hold it in at all costs”. There is something in between.

• Slow down your out-breath. When your throat tightens, breathing is usually shallow and held. A few slow, long out-breaths help the nervous system return to the window of tolerance, where you can still think and speak.
• Name out loud what is happening. “I notice this has hit me. Give me a moment.” That sentence often does more than a desperate attempt to pretend. Tears that are named are less confusing to others than tears someone is trying to hide.
• Take a break without apologising. “I’m going to get some water, I’ll be right back.” You don’t have to explain.
• Return to the content. When you come back, carry on where you left off. That shows your tears haven’t erased your opinion.

And if the tears come anyway — let them. It won’t be the end of the world. Most people will remember how you carried on, not that you cried.

When someone else is crying: how to respond

Many people feel awkward when someone else cries at work. They don’t know whether to look away, say something, or pretend they haven’t seen anything. Often they do exactly what they fear: fall silent and withdraw, which confirms to the person crying that they have done something unacceptable.

It helps to remember that your job is not to solve the problem but to be with the person for a moment. In therapy we call this co-regulation: your calm nervous system helps calm someone else’s. It can sound like this (the conversation is composite, not a real person):

“Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, this really shouldn’t happen.”
“You don’t need to apologise. Would you like us to step outside for a moment, or shall I stay here with you?”
“I don’t know … outside, maybe.”
“Fine. And you don’t have to explain anything if you don’t want to.”
“It’s just that everything piled up today.”
“I understand. I’m here.”

Nothing heroic, no advice. Yet something important happens in this short exchange: the tears are accepted. They won’t become a secret to be ashamed of.

If you are a manager, you have one more task. When someone in your team cries, it is not just a personal matter. It is also information about the system. Ask yourself whether the pressure on that person was fair, whether there is something in the team nobody talks about, and whether others may be carrying a similar load without showing it. You can read about how to give or receive a hard message without anyone falling apart in How to take criticism without falling apart.

Exercise: after the tears, not against them

This exercise is for the evening after a day when you cried at work — or nearly did. It takes ten minutes and a sheet of paper.

1. Write down what happened just before the tears. No explanations, just facts: who said what, where you were, what you were doing.
2. Name the emotion underneath the tears. Was it sadness, anger, humiliation, tiredness, relief? Tears are often a wrapping for another emotion — and that is the one that matters.
3. Write down what shame was telling you. “Now they think I’m weak.” “I won’t be taken seriously any more.” Write it exactly as you heard it in your head.
4. Answer it as you would answer a friend. What would you say to a colleague who told you the same story? Write that answer down and read it aloud.
5. Choose one small step for tomorrow. Perhaps thanking the colleague who stayed with you. Perhaps settling with your manager the thing that triggered the tears. Perhaps simply going into the office and not running away.

The point of the exercise is not to “get rid of” the tears. It is to learn from them what isn’t right for you at work — and not to bury it under shame.

When crying is not just crying

I want to be honest here: not everything I have written always applies.

If you cry almost every day — before work, at work, on the way home —, that is no longer an ordinary response to a hard moment. It may be a sign of burnout, depression or prolonged overload. Then better handling of tears is not enough; it is important to talk to your GP and seek professional help. If shame is part of what keeps you stuck, you may relate to Burnout and shame: why it is so hard to say out loud. If, alongside the crying, you have thoughts of not wanting to live, in Slovenia you can call the crisis line Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 pm to 7 am) or the Samaritans helpline on 116 123 (24 hours a day), and in an emergency 112.

If your tears are a response to repeated humiliation, the answer is not to learn to hold them back. Then the question is what is happening in the team. If you suspect workplace bullying, you can seek advice from a trade union, from legal aid or, in Slovenia, from the Labour Inspectorate (Inšpektorat Republike Slovenije za delo). I can’t give legal advice here, but I can say this: in such a case your tears are a healthy signal, not a problem to be hidden. How to tell bullying apart from a difficult relationship is the subject of Workplace bullying or just a difficult relationship? How to tell them apart and what you can do about each

Not every environment is safe. In some teams tears really will be used against you. There it makes sense to choose whom you show your vulnerability to — that is not pretending, it is looking after yourself. What matters is that you have a place somewhere where you don’t have to be strong: at home, with a friend or in therapy.

And no, not everything has to be cried out at work. Sometimes it is very sensible for tears to wait until you are in the car or until the evening. Holding tears back for a few hours is different from holding them back for years.

What therapy has to say about it

People sometimes ask me whether they will cry in a session — and they are afraid of it. The short answer: perhaps they will, and that is fine. Therapy is one of the few places where tears don’t get in the way of the work but are part of it. When someone cries in the room and nobody runs away, something often shifts in them that couldn’t shift at work.

In relational family therapy we are particularly interested in where the rule “don’t cry in front of others” comes from. It often has a very old history: a home where tears were punished, mocked or threw someone into a panic. Once you see that rule, it loses some of its power at work too. You can start deciding where and in front of whom you show that you are struggling — instead of an old fear deciding for you. I also work with English-speaking clients, in person in Ljubljana.

What to remember

• Crying is common in adults and is not a sign of weakness, but part of emotion regulation and a call for closeness.
• Crying brings the most relief when the environment responds with support — and the least when it comes with shame.
• The workplace is a system: the person who cries often carries tension that others don’t show.
• When someone else cries, you don’t have to fix anything — it is enough to stay and offer a choice.
• If you cry almost every day, or because of repeated humiliation, it is a signal that you need help or change, not better hiding.