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It’s a Tuesday night, and I’m crying in a softly-lit, north London yoga studio full of strangers. This is crying therapy, where we've all paid for the pleasure of crying together.
At first, I’m hyper-aware of my breathing and the questions buzzing through my mind: Am I supposed to be crying yet? What if nothing happens? What if too much happens? But after some initial ‘preparation’ (which included swaying around the room, practicing making guttural noises and chanting), the leader — a short, soft-toned therapist and creative wellness expert — asks us to picture the last time we swallowed down emotion instead of letting it out (“Go back to that moment and give your body the reaction it didn’t get to have”). I feel myself start to relinquish control. She encourages sound, little sighs, then louder releases, offering up an emotional permission slip. Suddenly, I’m crying — properly crying. The room echoes with the tearful rhythm of sobs.
At some point, I stop worrying about how I look or whether I’m being too loud — you can’t make out one person’s sobs from another’s anyway. Plus no one knows who I am here. They don’t know why I’m crying, and they don’t care. I am keenly aware of the liberating lack of responsibility to mute or explain my tears. My jaw unclenches; my shoulders drop, and there’s a strange heat behind my ribs. Nobody tries to comfort anyone; that’s the point. We’re all here to let our emotions run without interruption or interpretation. By the time the leader gently brings us back, the room is quiet in a soft, stunned way. My face feels hot, my eyelashes are stuck together, and yet my chest feels lighter than it has in months – years even.
There’s something freeing about letting it out in a neutral space, at a specific time, and then being given permission, a deadline even, to stop and return to the world a little (or a lot, as it turns out) lighter. I meander back to the tube station as though in a bubble, feeling an almost contradictory mixture of softly tired and ecstatically energised. Something I’ve never felt after a traditional therapy session. I’m hooked.
And I’m not alone in wanting to swap crying alone in my room and hushed-up therapy for sob circles, scream clubs and radical emotional honesty. In fact, crying in public is having a real moment. Post-pandemic emotional backlog, burnout-as-baseline, and a wave of online “vulnerability culture” have created a collective pressure cooker – and these spaces offer a release valve. From Reddit threads offering advice on where the best places are to cry in London to club nights like Born to Cry (a pleasing nod to Lana Del Ray’s classic, Born to Die, featuring “sad girl anthems”, the appetite for communal catharsis is very real.
Healing out loud, whether that be by screaming, shouting or crying, is on the rise. There’s a palpable shift in society’s understanding of healing. No longer is it solely viewed as a private state of being, one to be kept away from the light, but rather as a constant and natural state of energy in flux that needs an outlet. I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was a teenager; I come from a family full of therapists. But there are days when the most honest thing I can do is simply cry. Not analyse it, not explain it, just feel it. I’ve spent so many years trying to rationalise my feelings, I’m not always sure what they even are anymore.
It’s something psychotherapist Shelly Dar, who specialises in supporting women through anxiety and stress, sees mirrored in her work. She tells me that “crying clubs and events tap into something I see a lot in trauma work. Emotional release often works best when it does not rely on words. Much of trauma sits in the body as a sensation rather than a story. When people try to think their way through it, they often get stuck. A guided crying space lowers the mental pressure and lets the body lead. The sound, the music, and the slow build of the session help people reach sadness in a safe and steady way.”
For me, what felt so strangely relieving in that room wasn’t just the crying, but the structure that supported it. Shelly explains that part of the power comes from the collective setting itself: “There is also the impact of group energy. Humans regulate emotion through one another, and we respond to the cues around us. When someone cries, others soften too, and the nervous system starts to settle. Being in a room of people who are there for the same purpose creates a quiet sense of safety. You are not alone with your feelings, or worried about being too emotional. You are surrounded by people who get it and want the same release.”
“Even when I wasn’t talking to anyone, I didn’t feel alone.”
I think back to the moment my own sobs deepened, almost on cue with the rest of the room. It wasn’t performative; it was contagious. Shelly sees this often: “Many people carry their sadness alone and feel ashamed of it. A shared space removes that pressure. No one asks why you are crying or whether your reason is valid. You are simply allowed to feel. For people who hold everything in, the mix of music, guidance, and like-minded company can make it the first time they realise nothing is wrong with them needing to cry. It feels less lonely and more human.”
And that, really, is the heart of it. Crying in public isn’t about spectacle or self-indulgence. It’s about recognising that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is give our feelings room to exist, and let them run their course in the company of others who understand exactly why we showed up.
In fact, as Maria Lodetoft, a holistic practitioner who leads workshops geared towards helping people feel comfortable among the tears and screams of themselves and others believes their rising popularity is due to the idea that crying in public can sometimes feel less scary than crying to loved ones.
“It’s easier to cry with strangers sometimes, rather than to allow the people closest to you to know you are not ok,” she tells me. “The people we love are more likely to jump into trying to make us feel better, rather than allowing us the space to just cry, and this often stops the emotional release.”
Her workshops include a variety of different practices and exercises to trigger emotion, culminating in encouraged crying. “We ask clients to write love letters to themselves and then read these aloud. There’s something really powerful with vocalising what you have been holding,” she says. “We never attempt to stop the crying or to shorten the grieving process either. For some people, that means they will cry for 10 minutes, and everyone else will just hold the space, not talking or interrupting or moving on, just being there.”
And it’s not just cathartic for the person crying, it’s important for the people watching on too. “We have a tendency to jump to try to make someone feel better, but sometimes we just need to cry in order to process. Learning to sit with and feel comfortable watching someone cry is really important. It makes us better listeners, better at processing our own emotions.”
Dr Cassidy Blair, a licensed clinical psychologist who also runs crying workshops to help participants work through their feelings and create a space for healing and emotional release. “Today we’re seeing an increasing number of people discover the value in allowing themselves to cry in a supportive environment where they feel safe enough to do so,” she tells me. “The release of tears is typically associated with sadness, but the true value lies in providing a space for healing. This allows individuals to process unresolved and long-held emotions that have typically been suppressed by stress, loss, or unresolved trauma.”
“You can’t go back to how things were – that reality doesn’t exist any more.”
It’s common for clients who participate in crying workshops to find instant emotional relief when they do cry, she adds. “Crying workshops give you the chance to process your feelings about things that may have been weighing on you for years. Crying is far from just expressing your emotions; it helps stimulate your body to let go of the stress hormone that has built up inside of you, which gives you true physical relief. In some ways, crying helps to serve as an emotional reset so you are able to deal with your challenges clearly and with fewer emotional distractions.”
“The best method is crying workshops where the release is through light sensory stimuli rather than intense emotional stress,” Dr Eleni Nicolaou, an art therapist and creative wellness expert, explains. “To stimulate the tears to flow in a natural manner, I sweep the cheeks using a small paint brush dipped in cool water that triggers the trigeminal nerve.
“Nowadays, people who have not cried in several months begin to weep in just three minutes, since the body interprets the feeling as harmless. A paint-by-numbers canvas would bring their system into consistency and reduce the stress bursts that are currently likely to manifest themselves in high-stress environments. The greatest advantage is obvious at a young age. The body opens the door to release and, at the same time, remains stable enough to process the emergence.”
Referring to her own workshops, Dr Eleni says that every release round lasts between 12 and 15 minutes and this “allows the nervous system enough time to rest without exhausting an individual”.
And though it may feel radical to many, crying therapy isn’t new. Japanese entrepreneur Hiroki Terai coined the term ruikatsu (literally “tear activity”) for structured sessions designed to help people cry. Early gatherings involved emotional films, heartfelt stories or letters, guided by “tear therapists,” and quickly grew into a recognised form of emotional wellness.
Today, versions of ruikatsu have resurfaced worldwide, adapted into workshops, community meet-ups and even workplace programmes aimed at easing burnout. What once felt niche is becoming mainstream again, a reminder that the urge to release emotion collectively isn’t a trend but a long-standing human instinct. We’ve always created containers for our sadness; we simply reinvent them to suit the moment we’re living in.
Crying intentionally in public takes courage, but it also breaks the quiet contract of isolation so many of us have been keeping, and gives our complex inner life somewhere to land outside of our own chest.
I'm already booking my next one…
