“Those who do not weep, do not see.” – Victor Hugo
Crying is sometimes considered a sign of weakness and low emotional stamina, especially in men. It is even sometimes discouraged and if someone around us is crying, we feel the urge to fix things and cease the crying immediately rather than treating it like any other emotional response like laughing or getting angry. Crying is a completely natural response to emotional distress in our lives and actually holds some psychological benefits. A good cry feels cathartic like nothing else. Bottling up emotions on the other hand can be a sign of low emotional health and intelligence.
Not having the emotional awareness and strength to release negative emotional malaise can turn into vying types of emotional outbursts. Bottled up emotions can also turn into passive aggression whereby we might repeatedly hurt people around us because of an event that remains unresolved in our hearts and minds. At a larger level, crying makes us feel alive. It reminds us the good and bad aspects of life. If we become completely numb to the ups and lows in life, this might be a sign of an unhealthy state of mind. Crying is very nuanced; crying alone, with a friend, crying as you journal, as you read a book or say a prayer, all these have different impacts on us and yield psychological benefits that we might not have thought something as trivial as crying could have. Today I’m offering up a number of ways crying can benefit your mental, emotional, and physical health:
1. The Perfect Litmus Test For Something Wrong
Ever felt down for days not knowing why and then just as you are returning home a gloomy Wednesday evening, you let your guard down and tears roll down your cheek? Your thoughts become clearer. You realise that you had been repressing so much and that one remark your colleague made is still hurting you, or that you need to finally make time and meet your friends, or you miss your Mum etc. Crying often can be the litmus test for something being wrong or upset in your life when you mentally or on an intellectual level are trying to keep it altogether pretending like you are okay can be really tough. Just when you think you finally have your act together, the veil slips and you sometimes involuntarily find yourself crying. Hence, the pain that you have been repressing and just living life on autopilot, is identified by the crying which then leads you to deal with it in a much healthier way.
2. Improved Social Connection
This is a tricky one. While one may believe that we should know how to deal with our emotions on our own, sometimes, finding a shoulder to cry on is just what we need, and we should not deny ourselves that. When you let yourself open and cry in the presence of someone you love or trust, you rally a lot more emotional support than you could by bursts of passive aggression or delayed fragmented communication. Your crying helps the other person to understand that you are truly upset and that you need them without you having to make the initial effort to sustain the other person’s attention to let them know you do not feel okay. Think of babies and children, they render support when they cry. Well, this analogy is not necessarily an invitation to act childish but just a reminder that sometimes even as adults we should not expect coherent communication from ourselves and others all the time, and just a good cry in the company of a loved one can do the job.
3. Emotional Clarity
Sometimes we can only gain perspective about certain things after the fog of emotion around something that has happened in our lives. This fog cannot always be removed by other means but can be helped with a designated cry. So, for instance, if you are working on a project and your boss or supervisor said something mean while giving you criticism, crying can subsequently help you to take back your control of working on what you genuinely need to do. Crying can help you distill the feedback from the meanness and set you up for real productive work. Hence, the psychological clarity that crying gives you is often underrated.
4. A Better Mood
Ever watched a film that made you cry and left your heart feeling full and whole? Heard a song that makes you cry happy tears. This is all because research shows that a good cry releases happy hormones in our body known as endorphins. Apart from this, crying when we feel ecstatic and especially happy is also a highly valuable experience. A lot of times, people find it hard to experience joy and truly take in what is happening with their lives. We often fear that the joy at hand would be soon lost, or we are just unable to take the good parts life has to offer. In these precious moments, tears of joy and gratitude can aid you in processing the ups in life rather than just treating them as fleeting moments in life compared to the energy we drain on the downs.
5. Improved Sleep
After a good cry, our body and mind feel relaxed. At the same time because of crying, we also feel physically drained which can help initiate a deep calming spell of sleep. While crying at night into your pillows can often feel burdensome and the stress of the entire day befalls us, it can also provide a strange sense of calm before we sleep and call It a day. If crying at night becomes a too much of a common occurrence; however, it is best to seek professional mental health help and not take it lightly.
6. Grappling With Grief
Grief is commonly said to have five stages: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. At a psychological level, the first three stages of grief can only be developmentally passed through by effectively releasing emotion through crying. Research shows crying is an essential ingredient to initially grapple with the loss of a loved one or anything tragic in life. This is a beneficial way to progress towards the stage of acceptance of what has happened; otherwise, a person might remain for a prolonged period of time, stuck in the denial phase. You are likely to have seen some people pretend as though they are okay and go about their lives when they experience a death of a loved one or anything life-shattering and then in the future breaking down completely at very frivolous and trivial stuff. This is a sign of undealt with grief that may requirs crying as a crucial tool to heal and find its catharsis.
7. Emotional Equilibrium
Crying is a great balancer. If you feel any intense emotion, crying helps balance it out. It does not necessarily have to be a negative emotion, it could be anything ranging from excitement, confusion, or just anticipation for something. Crying helps restore balance. A great analogy could be that it makes you feel like you are at the perfect 36 degrees room temperature, neither hot nor cold, and this feeling of neutrality helps you lead life and make decisions in the sanest manner.
8. Purifies The Body
Tears are of three types: basal, reflex, and emotional. The first two are one produced automatically by the body to release any toxins or as a reaction to something strong respectively. A mixture of these two with emotional crying ensures that the toxins in our body and especially around our eyes are released.
9. Builds Empathy And Human Connection
Someone who is always on the guard and is scared of confronting their emotions can often also experience a hard time connecting with other people and expressing themselves. When we regularly cry and release stored emotion and shame, we allow other people to do the same when we are in their company. When we know what it feels like to experience pain and relieve it through crying, we are able to identify and understand other peoples’ pain as well. This at large helps us build connections with other people on a deeper level as we allow ourselves and the other person to emotionally vulnerable.
10. Prevents Arguments
Some of the most harrowing arguments at home or work take place because we are thinking of something might have happened last week. In that process, something completely trivial might trigger us emotionally and we set on to pick a fight. Hence, crying and dealing with our frustration at the time that it occurs, we save ourselves from a lot of mental turmoil, avoiding fights and arguments being one of them.
11. Releases Toxic Shame
Shame is one of the most stubborn emotions to deal with. It crawls deep inside our bodies and beings and builds nests there. It is not similar to anger or confusion that gets calmed down overtime. Shame is stubborn and latches on like a leech sucking our blood until we actively deal with it and let it go. Crying helps with it in multiple ways. Firstly, it makes us realise that there is a problem deep within that needs attention. Secondly, it allows you to be vulnerable reminding you that you are a fallible human and you do not need to be perfect all the time, holding up an act all the time. Lastly, it gives catharsis to things we might never have the courage to say or admit to ourselves or anyone in the form of words but the world less cries say it all.
12. Prepares Your For Adversity
Crying prevents emotional burnout. Hence, for a person who cries regularly and is generally in the state of emotional equilibrium, it is easier for them to adjust whenever calamity strucks. They do not get shocked by the enormity of what they have to deal with but are rather living in the present moment in alignment with their inner selves. This allows them to deal with the problem at hand rather than trauma or the frustration of other things spill over onto their way of dealing with the new problem. Hence, crying and dealing with your emotions regularly is an investment for the future that whenever a difficult situation arises, you are preferably in a state of emotional neutrality.
“Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
Final Word
In conclusion, while in the fast-paced world we live in today where being emotionless and “put-together” is the more in fashion thing to do and be, allowing ourselves to cry is allowing ourselves our humanity. Regardless of gender, age, and the problem at hand, it is okay to cry when we feel like it.
Crying has psychologically been proven to release feel good hormones which is all the more reason to let out a good cry and respect how your body works. In addition to this, crying is essential to maintain our sanity and emotional equilibrium. It puts us into a state of emotional neutrality which we might not be able to achieve through any other form of emotional regulation.
Crying is a natural way uplift our mood and cherish the life we have. Crying is good for building real human connections which have space for vulnerability and your true broken self. It also keeps the emotional environment of homes and workplaces in check as people who cry regularly in a healthy amount are more likely to avoid sudden outbursts of anger and arguments. However, at the same time, too much crying is a red flag and needs to be professionally dealt with before things go out of hand. If you are crying every single day or night to bed, it is important that you see a doctor!
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