Keke Palmer says she makes time to cry alone: ‘It’s a release’

Between acting, hosting, podcasting, and raising her son, Keke Palmer, 32, says she has developed her own ways to recharge.

“I cry actually alone quite a lot,” Palmer said on Tuesday’s episode of the “Good Hang with Amy Poehler” podcast.

Palmer said she’s an easy crier and sometimes simply decides, “time to cry.”

“But I love to cry alone, and I save space and hold space for it,” she added.

Palmer said crying gives her an outlet for emotions she may have been carrying for years.

“It’s a release of this sadness that you need brought out that you buried. Maybe it was from yesterday, maybe it was from 10 years ago, but you caught it in the ether of your mind,” she said.

Crying can provide emotional relief in the right circumstances, health psychologist Grace Tworek said, per the Cleveland Clinic. She said crying can help the body shift out of its fight-or-flight response, which may leave people feeling calmer and able to think more clearly.

Beyond crying, Palmer also relies on other routines to help her unwind and manage stress.

When it comes to sleep, the actor said she feels “really happy” if she gets to go to bed at 10.30 p.m. She also squeezes in naps during the 30- or 45-minute rides between jobs.

Palmer enjoys Pilates and said it helps her find “balance” and feel less “disembodied.”

For things that weigh on her emotionally, Palmer has another practice: She uses a cord-cutting visualization to detach from draining connections.

“I just started visualizing where this cord is,” she said. “Every day I was axing it, and it would try to come back. It would try to rejuvenate itself. And I kept axing it, axing it, axing it, and now it’s gone.”

This isn’t the first time Palmer has spoken about the practices she uses to take care of herself.

In a January interview with Marie Claire, Palmer said she tries to keep five hours in the morning for herself, “where I’m waking up early and I’m doing whatever I want to do.”

“Those rituals really help me to feel secure in myself because those are things that I’m doing with myself,” she said.

In February, Palmer told Women’s Health that the most “underrated wellness tip” she lives by is “cutting people off.”

“Nobody cares. Not like my baby does. He actually needs me. And it put things into perspective,” she said. “It was like a liberation that happened, where it’s like you can care, and you can still do less, and everything’s going to be all right.”