What to do when you start crying at the bank

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A tipped over glass with lots of coins spilling out in black and white

On Saturday 7 July, we held our first official Let’s Talk About Loss fundraising event – a black tie ball at St Nic’s church, Nottingham. The aim was to build on the incredible success of our recent Crowdfunder (where your support helped us raise over £1000!) and raise more funds so we could register as a charity. If you’re not familiar with the lengthy legal process, to register as a charity requires lots of things in place – one of which is £5000 in your bank account. So I was hoping to raise £2000 from the Ball.

I can reveal that thanks to the overwhelming generosity of the 100 people who joined us at the Ball, we absolutely smashed that target and once the money raised was split with the other charity beneficiary, Child.org, we had raised £4500 for Let’s Talk About Loss. So I’m feeling pretty proud right now – and very excited for all that is to come.

The low that follows the high

Anyway, none of that has much to do with the title of this blog post, but it sets the scene. As you can imagine, I had a fair bit of cash on my person following the Ball and so the obvious job, first thing Monday morning, was to go to the bank – and that’s where the crying happened.

There are probably a few reasons for the tears but at first they shocked me – I couldn’t work out why I was crying. I hadn’t counted the money, and the staff member who served me said I should have. I felt guilty, but I didn’t really need to cry. I was also exhausted – completely drained after pulling off the event that had taken months of intense, stressful planning. I was also on high alert, worried about how much cash I had and whether I would get there safely. But nothing suggests tears as an acceptable response.

Crying in public is awkward

The cashier was shocked. I was shocked. The people in the queue were shocked. Why on earth was I crying? I needed to stop, quickly, but my body was LOVING releasing the tension and stress of the last few months and it wasn’t going to stop. Instead I was ushered away, given a private side room and some coin bags and left to cry and count in peace.

So what do you do when you cry in public?

If you have a mental health condition, you’ll know how completely horrible it feels when you can’t cope. You feel helpless, isolated, vulnerable, and you wish that there was someone around who understood. Except, if someone approached you and tried to help, you would probably feel even more mortified and want even more to run and hide – I know I would.

So what on earth do you do when you are crying in a bank? I know how scary and embarrassing that is so here’s my tips from experience:

  1. Don’t panic – no one is annoyed, angry or staring at you. Stay as a calm as you can.
  2. Take a deep breath – this will help calm you down and stop the crying.
  3. Ask someone if you can go somewhere more private. The bank staff were only too happy to find me my own private office – it is much better customer service than to leave someone crying!
  4. Make plans to get home – or to a safe, calm place – as soon as possible. I had loads more admin tasks to get done that day but I knew that nothing was more important than getting back home. It was a relief to get home, put my pyjamas on and not have any more social pressure to contend with!
  5. Don’t beat yourself up. Mental illness strikes at the most inconvenient times and it happens to all of us! I could think “I failed, because I cried at the bank”. Instead I thought “I cried at the bank today because I was understandably overwhelmed. Despite that, I still managed to deposit the money so that was a successful trip”.

Believe me, you are not the first person to cry in the bank – or at work, out shopping, at a friend’s house, and all the other “inappropriate” places. Join the crying club with pride and accept that it’s a natural human response to pressure.

Be proud of yourself – you are so brave.

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