It’s important to recognize that crying is a normal and healthy emotional response. However, if someone finds themselves crying excessively or feels overwhelmed by their emotions, it may be beneficial to seek support from friends, family, or a mental health professional.
- Emotional Release: Crying allows for the release of pent-up emotions and feelings, providing a healthy outlet for emotional expression. It can help alleviate emotional stress and promote emotional well-being.
- Stress Reduction: Shedding tears can lower stress levels by reducing the levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol, in the body. This can lead to a sense of relief and relaxation after crying.
- Mood Improvement: Crying triggers the release of endorphins, which are feel-good hormones that can elevate mood and promote a sense of comfort and contentment.
- Catharsis: Crying can provide a sense of catharsis or emotional cleansing, helping individuals process and come to terms with difficult emotions or experiences.
- Social Connection: Crying can elicit empathy and support from others, fostering social connection and emotional bonding. It can help strengthen relationships and encourage emotional intimacy.
- Physical Detoxification: Tears contain stress-related hormones and toxins, and crying can help flush them out of the body. This can contribute to physical detoxification and cleansing.
- Resilience Building: Expressing emotions through crying can be a sign of emotional intelligence and resilience. It shows an ability to acknowledge and cope with challenging feelings, contributing to personal growth.
- Emotional Insight: Crying can provide insights into one’s emotional state and help individuals understand the underlying causes of their feelings. This self-awareness can aid in personal development and decision-making.
- Natural Pain Relief: Crying has been shown to trigger the release of endorphins, which can act as natural pain relievers, helping to alleviate physical and emotional pain.
- Communication of Needs: In infants and young children, crying is a primary means of communication to express hunger, discomfort, or emotional needs. It helps caregivers understand and respond to their needs.
- Empathy and Compassion: Witnessing someone else’s tears can evoke feelings of empathy and compassion, leading to a desire to provide support and comfort.
Overview
Crying is a common human action, and it can be triggered by many different emotions. But why do humans cry?
Researchers have found that crying can benefit both your body and your mind, and these benefits begin at birth with a baby’s first cry. Keep reading to learn more about the health benefits of crying.
There are three different types of tears:
- reflex tears
- continuous tears
- emotional tears
Reflex tears clear debris, like smoke and dust, from your eyes. Continuous tears lubricate your eyes and help protect them from infection. Emotional tears may have many health benefits. Whereas continuous tears contain 98 percent water, emotional tears contain stress hormones and other toxins. Researchers have theorized that crying flushes these things out of your system, though more research is needed in this area.
Crying may be one of your best mechanisms to self-soothe. ResearchersTrusted Source have found that crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The PNS helps your body rest and digest. The benefits aren’t immediate, however. It may take several minutes of shedding tears before you feel the soothing effects of crying.
Crying for long periods of time releasesTrusted Source oxytocin and endogenous opioids, otherwise known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals can help ease both physical and emotional pain. Once the endorphins are released, your body may go into somewhat of a numb stage. Oxytocin can give you a sense of calm or well-being. It’s another example of how crying is a self-soothing action.
Along with helping you ease pain, crying, specifically sobbing, may evenTrusted Source lift your spirits. When you sob, you take in many quick breaths of cool air. Breathing in cooler air can help regulate and even lower the temperature of your brain. A cool brain is more pleasurable to your body and mind than a warm brain. As a result, your mood may improve after a sobbing episode.
If you’re feeling blue, crying is a way to let those around you know you are in need of support. This is known as an interpersonal benefitTrusted Source. From the time you were a baby, crying has been an attachment behavior. Its function is in many ways to obtain comfort and care from others. In other words, it helps to build up your social support network when the going gets tough.
Grieving is a process. It involves periods of sorrow, numbness, guilt, and anger. Crying is particularly important during periods of grieving. It may even helpTrusted Source you process and accept the loss of a loved one.
Everyone goes through the grieving process in different ways. If you find that your crying is extreme or starting to interfere with your everyday life, it might be a good idea to check in with your doctor.
Crying doesn’t only happen in response to something sad. Sometimes you may cry when you are extremely happy, scared, or stressed. Researchers at Yale UniversityTrusted Source believe crying in this way may help to restore emotional equilibrium. When you’re incredibly happy or scared about something and cry, it may be your body’s way to recover from experiencing such a strong emotion.
A baby’s very first cry out of the womb is a very important cry. Babies receive their oxygen inside the womb through the umbilical cord. Once a baby is delivered, they must start breathing on their own. The first cry is what helps a baby’s lungs adapt to life in the outside world.
Crying also helps babies clear out any extra fluid in the lungs, nose, and mouth.
Crying may also help babies sleep better at night. In a small study on infant sleep, 43 participants used graduated extinction, also known as controlled crying, to put their babies down to bed. With controlled crying, babies were left to cry for a set number of minutes before intervention from their parents. The crying increased both the sleep length and reduced the number of times the infants woke during the night. A year later, the crying did not appear to increase stress in the infants or negatively impact the parent-child bond.
