Emotional crying has been seen as something negative. Most people avoid it. When people see other people crying, most of them will try to soothe them and it’s usually accompanied with a sentence like, “Don’t cry”, “Please stop crying”, “Oh you’re crying, now I want to cry, too, please don’t cry!”

Parents soothing their children usually say more or less the same thing, “Ssshh, I’m here, don’t worry, don’t cry.”

“Shut up and stop crying!! Or I’ll give you something to cry about!” That’s another common parenting style. 

“Why are you crying over stupid things?” A rude way to stop someone from crying, which probably makes the person cry even louder.

Basically, to most people, crying is a big no-no. We are trained not to cry. We are trained to soothe other people who are crying by comforting them, confronting them, or diverting their sadness, just for them to stop crying.

Some would naively say, “Happiness is a choice” to remind people not to be sad, not to cry, disregarding the depth of their experience and emotion. 

Many of us even avoid crying in a more deliberate way. Some take a warm bath, some take a walk. Some just sleep it off. Some drink alcohol. Some abuse food. Or drugs. Anything to avoid crying. 

To those of you who avoid sadness or other uncomfortable emotions by naively forcing your mind to say “happiness is a choice”, read my other post “Yes Being Happy Is Good, but Don’t Avoid Your Uncomfortable Emotions.” 

There are serious risks if you keep avoiding your uncomfortable emotions, in this case, pretending you’re happy when you’re actually sad or angry.  One of them is that you’re likely to experience unexplainable physical pains in parts of your body.

Another risk is that repressing your uncomfortable emotions will eventually numb you emotionally. When emotionally numbed, you won’t be able to feel anything anymore. Not even happiness. That’s not an enjoyable life. 

Benefits of Emotional Crying

Despite the tendency of seeing emotional crying as something negative, there have been studies showing the benefits of emotional crying. 

Emotional crying:

✴️ Has Self Soothing Effect

In 2014, a study found that crying when we’re sad activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) which gives a self-soothing effect. 

✴️ Reduce Physical and Emotional Pain

Furthermore, the 2014 study also found that shedding emotional tears releases oxytocin and endorphins, naturally occurring hormones produced by the brain. These hormones improve mood and can ease both physical and emotional pain.

✴️ Reduce Anxiety, Irritability and Aggression

Another research shows that emotional tears contain manganese, a mineral in our body that is associated with anxiety, irritability and aggression. This means crying reduces the manganese level in our body, and thus, reduces anxiety, irritability and aggression.

How to Cry

Choose a private place and allocate some time to cry. Don’t cry in the supermarket. Unless you want free food. I haven’t tried that. Let me know if it works. 

To me, the best place to cry is at home. Alone. I haven’t been able to cry in front of any friends. Maybe simply because every time I see my friends, I just want to laugh with them. 

Most people were raised to believe that crying is annoying, noisy, or weak and very few experience what it’s like to be consoled. 

Therefore, I believe crying is more liberating when we are by ourselves. We don’t expect anyone to console us, and we can cry as much as we want, without annoying anyone, without having to report to anyone why we cry and how much tears we’ve shed. 

Pity Party: Rock On 🙌

Whilst crying is generally seen as negative by many of us, there are people who glorify sadness, exhibiting how wronged they’ve been treated and indulging in excessive self-pity. Sometimes with a tub of ice cream. Or bottles of alcoholic beverages. 

Throwing a pity party can feel amazing as we validate our sadness. Suddenly our self-pity feels justified. But if you do this too often, you can easily slide into the victim mentality and soon find yourself struggling to get out of this mentality.

What’s Wrong with Victim Mentality?

People with the victim mentality wallow in negativity. They don’t want to take any accountability for what happens to them. They’re trapped in the thought that no matter how hard they try, there’s always something or someone bad. With this mentality, they believe they’re powerless so they don’t work on finding any possible solution to their problems and putting blames on others. 

☝️ It’s a recipe to have a miserable life 24 hours, 7 days a week. 

When To Seek Help

If your crying starts to interfere with your routines and you become much less productive, it’s time to check with a professional as it may be a sign of depression. Left untreated, depression can lead to suicide. Not that it’s completely bad to kill ourselves, but there should be a really good reason to kill ourselves, and depression shouldn’t be the reason. It’s treatable. 

Also, perhaps it’s a good idea to look at how many times per month people cry on average. 

“On average, American women cry 3.5 times each month while American men cry around 1.9 times each month…”

Source: Healthline.com

All in All

Crying, when done proportionally and accordingly, is good for our well-being. When done excessively, it’s easy to fall into the victim mentality. And if we feel the need to cry every day, we should check with a professional as it may be a sign of depression. 

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