Sometimes when you’re having a bad day or a rough life period in general, anything can send you into a crying session, but most likely from the outside, you may seem selfish and unnecessarily dramatic.

This woman was grieving her friend’s brother, so her parents decided to throw her a secret birthday party. She was enjoying it until her 5 Y.O. cousin blew her candles out and that made her cry, but more hurtful was her dad calling her a “selfish brat.”

More info: Reddit

Blowing out birthday candles is the celebrant’s privilege, but this 23-year-old didn’t get to do it and it brought her to tears

Image credits: Beth Scupham (not the actual photo)

The dad blamed his daughter for being a “selfish brat,” not thinking that there was more going on, despite knowing she lost a friend recently

Image credits: rjp (not the actual photo)

Even his other kids thought that he was being too harsh to his oldest daughter

Image credits: Liza Summer (not the actual photo)

Image credits: birthdayaitaaccount 

The man thought that his daughter was just being dramatic until he found out the friend proposed to her and she was planning on saying yes

The Original Poster (OP) is a father to 4 kids aged between 13 and 23. The family doesn’t celebrate birthdays with big parties anymore unless it’s a significant age, but they made an exception for 23-year-old Zara this year because she was recovering from the loss of a friend.

The party seemed to have cheered Zara up until it came time to blow out the birthday candles. There were 23 of them and right before Zara could blow them out with a wish, her 5-year-old cousin did it first. The woman finished blowing out the remaining candles, but it must have triggered something in her heart and she started crying, so she left the party.

The dad felt that his daughter was being a little brat getting upset over candles at the age of 23, so he told her that, not even considering that this was not about the candles and forgetting that she recently lost a person she loved.

The readers were immediately suspicious whether the friend meant more than just that, and later the OP came back to the comments to write, “I know they were friends but I thought it was just that, and it wasn’t serious. I found out later that he had apparently proposed to Zara and she was going to say yes. But she needed time to think about it. No one bothered to let me know and it just seemed like a big drama.”

Whatever the relationship was with the person that passed, ignorance doesn’t excuse the harsh behavior, because people in the comments were convinced that the dad should have known that there was something more going on if his adult daughter broke into tears over candles. Even his own kids thought he was being unfair. People also added that 5 years old is enough to have self control on someone else’s birthday, so the cousin isn’t without blame either.

Image credits: Victor Gregory (not the actual photo)

Judging from the dad’s reaction, Zara isn’t usually bothered by things like a 5-year-old kid stealing the joy of blowing candles, because for a 23-year-old, it truly isn’t a big deal. What is weird is that the dad immediately assumed that it was the case despite it being uncharacteristic for his daughter.

If a person doesn’t usually cry over small things but starts to, it means that the direct reason isn’t that small thing. WebMD mentions “Crying spells, crying over nothing at all, or crying about small things that normally wouldn’t bother you” as one of the possible symptoms of depression.

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But it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Psychotherapist and relationship specialist Lisa Brateman says that “Minor stress is connected to more frequent crying. Even a small increase in conflict or fear tend to trigger the need to cry.”

Dr. Pamela Rutledge, psychologist and director of the Media Psychology Research Center, is of the same opinion: “Stress causes fatigue, which diminishes our ability to self-regulate. This makes us more vulnerable to emotional exhaustion which can also make us quicker to cry.”

Woman’s Day explains that sometimes we try to ignore that stress because it’s difficult to manage your emotions if there are a lot of them and there’s more than just one thing that is bothering you, but eventually the emotions spill out, which can happen at the least opportune times.

However, crying shouldn’t be perceived as a negative thing, because as Lisa Brateman claims, “Crying can reduce the buildup of emotions that feel overwhelming to manage. Often words are not available in those moments, and crying is a different path towards release to express what words cannot.”

If you are interested in the more scientific explanation, Leo Newhouse, a licensed independent clinical social worker, wrote in his article for Harvard Health Publishing that emotional crying, as opposed to crying because of an irritation in the eye, for example, is beneficial to our mental health because “crying releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, also known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals help ease both physical and emotional pain.”

So if a grown adult is crying, most likely, there is a more serious and less obvious reason behind it; that is why the readers of the Reddit story deemed the dad to be a bit too insensitive. Do you agree? Do you think that Zara should have told her dad about the proposal? Do you think his reaction would be justifiable if the man would have been just a friend? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

But people in the comments believed the dad should have sensed that the real reason his daughter cried wasn’t just the candles from the start

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