Crying That Heals

Did you know humans are the only animals that cry emotional tears? Other animals have tear ducts but no other animal cries emotional tears.
“Other animals whimper in distress, but humans are believed to be the only species wired so that strong emotions provoke the shedding of tears. (4)”
Benedict Carey, a reporter for the New York Times had this to say about tears…
“They’re considered a release, a psychological tonic, and to many a glimpse of something deeper: the heart’s own sign language, emotional perspiration from the well of common humanity. (5)”
We all know that having dust or some foreign particle in your eye is going to promote tear creation to help the eye clean things up. But what’s far more intriguing to me are the tears we shed not because of some foreign-bodied irritant but because of emotion. We cry because of joy, anger, frustration, sadness, anger, hopelessness, despair, anxiety, remorse, sorrow, loneliness, failure, gratitude, and empathy.
What possible purpose could crying serve aside from cleansing and protecting the eyes?
According to the Harvard Health Letter tears can infer vulnerability and evoke compassion. From an evolutionary standpoint, for example, crying may confer protection of a woman from a too-aggressive man. Through the vulnerability expressed through tears it’s also suggested that stronger bonds may be built in communities and thus confer reproductive advantages.
The theory of evolution says, by the way, that only those behaviors or physical adaptations that are essential to the continued survival of the species are passed on to subsequent generations. Emotional tears, ipso facto, must serve a useful and necessary purpose. This seems to be confirmed by the chemical makeup of tears (6).
Emotional crying releases toxins.
“Tears produced in response to human emotions are very different from basal and irritant tears, both chemically and in volume. They contain large quantities of hormones also secreted by other organs as a normal stress response. Additionally, emotional tears hold increased amounts of potassium and manganese. These elements are by-products of the stress response and act as toxins in the human body. …given the unique chemical composition of emotional tears, crying may have a positive impact on the physical and psychological health of the human body by relieving the effects of stress. (6)”
Crying may release built-up stress and emotions. Many academics and laypeople alike believe crying can be cathartic (i.e., cleansing). Freud wrote about how a large part of emotion disappears if it’s expressed. Numerous studies report that people say they feel better after crying.
Emotional crying is healing.
“As a holistically viewed phenomenon, crying appears to bridge the divides between mind and body, mind and spirit, and body and spirit. In doing so, crying contributes to healing. Just how it does so is open to interpretation (6)”.
Emotional crying does seem to be associated with a calming effect as well. Again Harvard reports …
“…weeping is associated with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows the heartbeat and winds us down, not up. Several years ago, Dutch researchers reported that the heart rates of 60 study subjects increased as they watched cry-eliciting movies, but then subsided after they started to cry. It seems that there’s a handoff from fight-or-flight arousal to parasympathetic calming, which is certainly how many of us experience crying.”
Therese Borchard wrote in an article for Beliefnet there are seven key benefits to tears:
Tears help us see.
Tears kill bacteria.
Tears remove toxins.
Crying can elevate mood.
Crying lowers stress.
Tears build community.
Tears release feelings (7).
I’ve got to give some ink space to Christians as well to include the possibility that God designed each of us with the capacity to cry for reasons beyond what was given to all other animals. Indeed, as Jerry Bergman wrote in his 1993 article “The Miracle of Tears”
“Tears are just one of many miracles which work so well that we take them for granted every day. And it is one more reason to realize that our marvellous body is not the result of evolutionary trial and error. (8).”
Not everyone benefits from crying or in the same way for the same reasons. Crying is so biologically universal, however, that if you can’t cry it’s given a medical term called Familial Dysautonomia.
Sometimes, for almost all of us, there are just things that we are faced with that simply feel overwhelming for all the reasons previously mentioned and more. Crying that heals appears to do just that in a number of ways for most people. Having a good cry is healthy, normal and very likely beneficial to the healing processes.