Pushpa, let’s not hate tears: 5 reasons why crying is good for you

Helps get support

If you have ever cried and found your parents or friends rallying around you, trying to make it better for you, then your tears probably did the work they set out to do! Crying increases attachment behaviour and is a sign for the people around to notice that something is upsetting you. It is a people-centric response that gets attention and urges your near and dear ones to help you.

Even though you may not have deliberately cried to ask for help or support, emotional tears are a call to action for people who care about you to hold you in that moment of crisis.

As an added benefit, tender and intimate moments like someone wiping your tears also strengthen social bonds. The importance of crying in one’s emotional wellbeing can simply not be denied.

Helps express negative emotions

We often hear people say that they just can’t bring themselves to cry. Whether it is the age old taboo of ‘boys shouldn’t cry’ that stops them or otherwise, not crying in response to deep sadness or anger is not a healthy thing. Repressive coping or the phenomena of people keeping their difficult feelings repressed within themselves is quite harmful according to experts. In fact, repressive coping is known to adversely affect the immunity system, blood pressure and mental wellbeing of people.

Imagine hurting from the loss of a dear one. Or the loss of a job that you held for years due to recession. Or dealing with a mammoth pandemic like Covid-19. It is not normal to have a strong front when something of such magnitude happens to you. Crying is not only normal but also healthy in coping with such losses. Of course, one doesn’t have to do it in public. Simply occupying a personal space and letting those tears out can help deal with such losses greatly.

Modern society has come a long way in the subject of crying. While thinkers of ancient, intellectual societies vouched for it, somewhere along the line, it became a gendered act. People began to treat crying as a weakness, as something strong men could not be seen doing. Such beliefs did a lot of harm as men began to repress their emotions and withdraw from their natural impulses of being vulnerable. Women too, were made to feel inferior for being able to cry or lower their defenses more easily than men. Since then, decades of unlearning have made crying gets its due as an important response to deeply felt emotions. Today, Japan has crying clubs where people gather to watch tear jerkers and cry their hearts out in a bid to release stress and feel better. In a nutshell, crying is good for people once in a while. As purifying and stress relieving as it feels, science backs it up too. So accept your tears for the true friend that they are and dismiss anyone who calls them your enemy.