Crying easily

Tears that come faster and more often than they used to, and over smaller things. Not always sadness. Sometimes tiredness, sometimes being touched by something, sometimes nothing you can name.

Crying spells are one of the items on Greene's Climacteric Scale, a standard list of menopause symptoms published in 1998, which is why Roshara's symptom score asks about it. That tells you women going through the menopause have reported it for a long time. Women's Health Concern, the patient arm of the British Menopause Society, also lists crying spells among the emotional and cognitive symptoms of menopause, beside anger, irritability and mood swings. Neither tells you why it happens, and none of the clinical guidelines Roshara follows names crying on its own or explains it. So this page describes it and tells you when to get help. It makes no claim about the cause.

The nearest topic with guidance behind it is low mood, and mood changes covers the wider picture.

Welling up at a nasheed, a wedding video, or a stranger being kind to a child. Crying at a drama you are only half watching. Crying because someone asked if you were all right. Tears that start before you have decided anything about them, and stop as suddenly. Leaving the room so the children will not see, and blaming the onions.

And then the part that hurts more: being teased for it, or having it held against you. "Why are you crying now?" from someone who loves you can still sting.

It can feel like a relief, a pressure valve. Or it can frighten you, because it is so unlike you. Both are real.

Crying easily on its own is something to note, not to panic about. Bring it up at your next appointment, alongside anything else that has changed, such as your sleep, your periods or your energy. Your symptom score puts it on one page with the rest. It also helps to note when the tears come: after a bad night, before a period, around a hot flush. A pattern gives your doctor something to work with.

See a doctor sooner if the tears come with other signs. The NHS website lists feeling very tearful among the symptoms of depression, together with lasting unhappiness, hopelessness and losing interest in things you used to enjoy, and it says depression means feeling persistently sad for weeks or months, not a few days.

You may have been told to be strong, or that tears are a kind of ingratitude. Neither is a fair reading of something a standard menopause scale lists. If the people around you are confused, show them this page.

If you have questions about tears and worship, a qualified scholar is the person to ask. Tears that frighten you, or that will not stop, belong with your doctor too.