The Difference Between Internal Motivation and Public Display

I ran into this problem really hard with valor and vanity. A lot of it also comes down to a gender thing. So how do we avoid the whiteness? How do we get across the characters feeling a strong emotion? I actually had to step back to my stage training, which is that there is a difference between watching a character cry and their verses watching them attempt not to. When you allow the character to cry, the audience no longer has to feel that emotion for them.