Crying: 7 Great Benefits

When we see another person cry, we usually think the worst. We rarely think that crying not only expresses nostalgia, sadness, pain or anger, but also helps us to manifest happiness and joy.

Not surprisingly, numerous studies highlight the great benefits that letting go and crying have for physical and emotional well-being.

Crying allows us to express how we feel in each moment, but these feelings don’t have to be negative. Crying is natural, it’s good for you, and it’s more common than you think. Those who hold back are not psychologically stronger or more stable. One thing is certain, crying has its advantages !

Experts say it: “crying, in addition to being a physiological process of organic purification when we experience intense emotions, is also a means of communication. Through crying we can communicate our emotions ”.

Not all tears are the same

We produce three types of tears, each with a different composition depending on the function performed. The basal ones are mainly protein and allow you to keep your eyes moist after every blink of an eye.

The reflex ones are triggered by external agents, such as smoke or wind. Their function is to protect the eyes from irritation.

And then there are the emotional tears, which are shed in response to a range of emotions and are what we mean when we say we are crying.

They contain neuromodulatory elements (prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormones and leucine-enkephalin) which act as natural analgesics.

Tears have a calming effect

Crying helps us relax, release emotions and let off steam, but it also allows us to change and alleviate a much deeper underlying condition: episodes of distress.

In other words, tears have a direct effect and participate in self-care in people. This is because crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is responsible for maintaining or promoting relaxation and rest of the body after exertion.

In turn, the activation of the SNP triggers a series of reactions in our body, through which it can act on the level of stress and participate in metabolic regulation. In this way, we counteract the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which keeps us alert and active.

Crying relieves pain and improves mood and sleep

A 2014 study found that emotional tears release two essential substances for people to feel good: oxytocin and endorphins.

When we cry, we relieve our physical and emotional discomfort, because this hormonal burst generates a pleasant feeling of deep well-being.

Surely it will have happened to you at times, after having cried, to burst out laughing or to feel extremely relaxed. How can it be that a moment before we were running out of a whole box of handkerchiefs and seconds later our mood changed?

Because oxytocin and secreted endorphins help improve mood. Their relaxing effects, positive effect on mood and pain relief help you sleep and help you sleep better.

Tears cleanse the eyes of bacteria

Lysozyme, an enzyme found in tears, plays an essential role in the eyes. It acts as a bacteriostatic barrier, because it alters and breaks down the walls of bacteria.

On a physical level, therefore, it is an effective and natural liquid to fight these organisms and keeps the eyes clean.

In fact, field discoveries claim that crying also helps protect against substances such as anthrax and overcome the resistance bacteria have developed to antibiotics.

Crying calms anxiety and stress: a natural pain reliever

We expel a variety of substances through tears. Therefore, when we cry in response to stress, we release a series of chemicals that are “the cause” of the same stress. This is one of the main benefits of crying. Paradoxical, right?

For example, when we cry, the levels of manganese are lowered, a mineral closely related to states of anxiety, nervousness or aggression.

Likewise, we also eliminate adrenaline and noradrenaline, substances that we secrete in greater quantities in situations of stress or danger.

For this reason, after crying, we often feel sleepy too. This is because we enter a state of calm so great that it causes some people to sleep.

Crying is a call to empathy

Usually when one person sees another crying, they empathize and try to offer help. Seeing someone cry, we think that something bad has happened, that they need help because a tragedy has happened or that they are in great pain, or in any case that they are deeply distressed. In any case, his cry pushes us towards the other person.

Our empathy and compassion lead us to approach the person who is crying and to interact with others by offering a hug or a few words of comfort. Crying is capable of provoking empathy. How many times have we got a tear of empathy in a situation in which we were not directly involved?

Another benefit of crying is that tears can help you gain comfort and support from those around us. This responds to elementary attachment behavior. From this perspective, crying is a kind of wake-up call or a way to gain social or interpersonal benefit.

As mentioned in the introduction, crying can be a form of communication. However, it is not always necessary to see someone cry: we also know when someone has cried. Hence, it helps us to communicate our emotional state to another person.

Crying helps us to know ourselves better

Some authors, such as Michael Trimble, claim that there is a real “science of crying”. This could explain, for example, why some people are more prone to cry than others.

Other experts such as Ad Vingerhoets state that the number of times another person cries depends on two specific personality traits: empathy and neurosis.

Either way, getting to know yourself better is one of the great benefits of crying. Crying is often seen as a sign of weakness, but in reality it is nothing more than a sign of great emotional strength

Tears say a lot about us: they allow us to know what our weaknesses and vulnerabilities are, when and how much we need others, what concerns us more or less and what our needs are. In this way, by investigating ourselves, we can get to know each other better and this becomes a method of personal self-discovery.

From all this we can deduce that crying is good for health. By trying to hold back the tears we are blocking that emotional cleansing that we so badly need.

There is no need to feel fear or shame in expressing what we have inside. Releasing our anguish, pain, or joy through tears is an act of selflessness towards ourselves.