How healthy is it to cry anyways?
I remember that for two years of my life I decided not to cry. It was my personal, childish way of protesting my parent’s divorce, as if a lack of tears stood next in sacrifice to a hunger strike. I have always wondered if it would have done me better to cry, to vent and accept the fact that this was happening; would tears have been an easier and quicker way to cope?
According to this Nwe York Times article, which is based on several academic studies published in the past year, the effect of tears may not be as beneficial as commonly believed.
“Now, some researchers say that the common psychological wisdom about crying — crying as a healthy catharsis — is incomplete and misleading…Placing such high expectation on a tearful breakdown most likely sets some people up for emotional confusion afterward.”
It first depends on what kind of crier you are, to what public you are crying to and what is the purpose behind the burst of tears. People who are confused about the origin of their emotions — a condition that in the extreme is called alexithymia — also tend to feel not much of a benefit from crying, studies have found. it is likely that you won’t find any true benefit from tears since they become less of a release and more of a reaction. Also, if the people around you react negatively toward your tears, as opposed to the empathy that they usually search for, the feeling will be more unpleasant than calming.
And then there are the “protest criers,” those who, according to the article, keep the childish reason for crying and that is to get some sort of result or resolve from the shedded tears.
The conclusion for the misleading common belief is pretty much that people tend to remember better memories than worst, and when it comes to crying they recall those few times when it did, actually, help.
