Frequent crying
Assessment and therapy at the Psychological Help Centre, Karachi, when crying has become frequent or hard to explain — in clinic in PECHS and DHA, or online.
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What people describe
People describe tears that arrive at the wrong times. During an advertisement. At a question as ordinary as are you all right. In the car outside the house, for ten minutes, before going in and being fine.
What unsettles people is the absence of a reason. Something small happens, the response is enormous, and afterwards there is no account of it that makes sense even to the person giving it.
Others describe the opposite, and find it harder to say out loud: they cannot cry at all, and that flatness worries them more than weeping would have.
Most describe managing it — the bathroom at the office, the long route home, the sunglasses — and the embarrassment, which in Karachi households arrives faster than the sympathy does.
Recognising yourself in a paragraph on a website is not the same as knowing what is going on. This page describes; it does not assess you, and there is nothing here for you to score yourself against.
When it is worth speaking to someone
Crying is not a condition. It is a signal, and what it is signalling is the actual question — which is why a website cannot answer it and a first session can.
What a clinician pays attention to is frequency, duration and cost. Tears most days over weeks rather than a hard fortnight that has passed. Days arranged around it — meetings avoided, visitors put off, a route chosen because it is private.
It is also worth ruling out the physical. Exhaustion, thyroid difficulty, the weeks after a birth and some medicines all affect how close tears sit to the surface, and those are a doctor's questions.
Only a qualified clinician can tell you what is going on — a website cannot.
How PHC approaches it
PHC is an assessment-first practice. Before therapy begins there is an initial session, and its job is to work out what is actually happening rather than to start treating it.
- An initial sessionWe ask what has been going on, for how long, and what it is costing you. Nothing is administered before this conversation.
- Emotional assessment and symptom screeningA structured screening of emotional functioning and what you are presenting with, using internationally validated instruments. Its purpose is to decide which further tests, if any, are clinically warranted — you will not be given tests you do not need. Here that is most of the work: crying sits on top of many different things, and which one it is changes everything that follows.
- A psychologist matched to what the assessment foundPsychologists at PHC are not assigned on availability. Assignment is based on speciality, your presenting needs and clinical fit.
- Therapy, reviewed as it goesWhat is indicated follows what the screening finds rather than the crying itself. Where low mood is underneath, the modality most often indicated is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which PHC uses for depression, anxiety and negative thought patterns. Sessions are 50 minutes, in clinic at our PECHS clinic or in DHA, or online.
Who you would see
Psychologists at PHC hold a minimum postgraduate qualification in clinical psychology and over 800 supervised clinical hours. No clinician on our team names crying itself — nobody would, because it is a presentation rather than a speciality. The two psychologists below name the areas it most often sits on.
Aisha AhmadClinical Psychologist · Workshop Facilitator · 5+ years
Master's in Clinical Psychology. Depression and mood-related difficulties, emotional dysregulation, anxiety and stress-related concerns, self-esteem, trauma, attachment. CBT, DBT and attachment-informed approaches.Read her profile →Who you see is decided at the initial session, not before it.
Questions people ask first
I cry easily. Have I always been like this, or is something wrong?
Both are possible, and they are not distinguished from a website. What a clinician looks at is whether something has changed, and when. If you can say roughly when it started, bring that.
Is this just depression?
It might be, and it might not. Frequent crying turns up in low mood, anxiety, grief, exhaustion, after a birth and in several physical conditions. Separating those is what a screening is for. Depression has a page of its own.
Should I see a doctor first?
Often it is worth it, and it is not a detour. Thyroid difficulty, exhaustion and some medicines affect how easily tears come. If a doctor has looked and found nothing, bring that with you.
I cannot cry at all, even when I want to. Is that the same page?
It is a reasonable place to start. Feeling nothing where you expected to feel something is brought to clinicians as often as the opposite.
Confidentiality, session length, fees and choosing your psychologist are answered in full in questions people ask before booking.
Speaking to someone starts here
PHC is appointment-only. Message or call and a real person answers — Monday to Saturday, 10am to 8pm PKT.
Not sure whether this is us? Contact us anyway. We will tell you directly whether we can help, and refer you elsewhere if we cannot.
Six details, and we can match you
- Name of the person who will attend
- Their age
- What is going on, in your own words
- Whether you would prefer a male or female psychologist
- Online, or in clinic in Karachi
- Whether the person attending is a minor or elderly
If someone else is paying, we will also ask for guardian or payer details. A slot is held once the booking payment is received — half the fee, at least 24 hours ahead.