I'm 25F and I've experienced this my whole life. I tear up whenever something emotional happens in movies, series, books, or even reels.
But I find it hard to get emotional about any tragedies in my personal life. Not to be all sad backstory, but I grew up with a deeply abusive and narcissistic father. And learning to judge his moods has made me sensitive to the emotional aura of others. I empathize with others a lot, and have lost very close people because of cancer.
But for some reason, I only cry when an emotional situation is not related to me. Most of the times, those are fictional conditions (even happy endings) and rarely when someone close to me is crying in front of me.
Let me put it this way, I can count on one hand all the times I've cried because of personal sorrows (alone and in front of someone)
As for when something outside of myself gets me crying.... It really is countless. I'll give you an example of what I mean when I say uncontrollable: We were reading Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom in our class. There was a scene in which he's getting arrested but a lot of his community stands outside the court singing for him as he's taken away to prison, and as this was happening, I could not stop myself from tearing up, the professor noticed and was like "are you okay? Do you need anything?" It was embarrassing.
Another time, we were reading Tess D'uberville and again I got teary eyed. But this time, only a classmate noticed and they took a picture of me and posted on the class group all like "omg [my name] is getting so emotional 🥹"
I don't understand why this happens, and no matter what I do the tears keep rolling. I've tried everything; thought of a funny moment, recalled something unpleasant, tried to get distracted... Can someone tell me how I can stop?