Go ahead, have a good cry

by Lional Wijesiri

Everyone was so proud of her at the funeral. All her friends praised her for being so good and not giving in to her emotions, for holding back her tears and not creating a scene. She faced the death of her husband - a man with whom she shared six years of a beautiful and passionate love I have rarely seen equaled - without the sobbing or wailing to be expected from a widowed mother of three small children, so as not to make those offering condolences feel uncomfortable.

And just three months later, I had to try to help the very same person locate a good family counsellor and a medical doctor. She has become a zombie and bent on self-destruction, a victim of our contemporary detestation of the divine gift of cathartic tears and the blessing of therapeutic emotion.

What is it about our value system that makes crying a crime and the show of feelings the most shameful failing? I cannot be sure of the cause. But I know that Soren Kierkegaard, the famous Danish philosopher was right: What our age lacks is not reflection but passion - and we pay the price in incalculable pain and suffering -

How many times have I witnessed heart-rending moments of grief where expressions of natural sorrow were repressed as socially inappropriate!

To shed tears is termed undignified. That is why a friend of mine still has not accepted the reality of the death of his teen-age daughter. “Don’t let him cry,” said funeral director. So the body was cosmetically restored to lifelike perfection. “Don’t let him cry,” said his friends at the cemetery.

So he was kept back from viewing the interment of his daughter, to be allowed near only when a lawn like cover was placed over the coffin.

“Don’t let him cry, said the comforters who came to visit during the week of mourning. So the conversation was steered away from any meaningful discourse about the remarkable quality of an all-too-short life, to be replaced by simplistic prattle whose sole purpose was ‘ ‘to keep Dad smiling.”

Is it any wonder that after six months he still keeps her room exactly as she left it, refusing to recognize the unalterable decree? Can we possibly expect someone to cope with a loss that he has not yet been forced to acknowledge?

Studies

Why does one person get choked up over a TV commercial, while another sheds tears only for the death of a loved one? Does the exhortation “Have a good cry” carry physiological or psychological merit? And how do crying behaviors differ among cultures and between the sexes?

New research done by psychologists is beginning to answer these questions, helping us better understand what human tears mean from social, psychological and neuroscientific perspectives.

In the 1980s biochemist Dr. William H. Frey, spent over 15 years studying crying and tears.

He is the author of “Crying: the Mystery of tears.’ Frey found that women cry an average of 5.3 times a month, while men cry an average of 1.3 times per month, with crying defined as anything from moist eyes to full-on sobbing. Those averages still appear to be about the same, suggests newer research, including work by Dr. Lauren Bylsma, of the University of Pittsburgh.

A study of people in 35 countries found that the difference between how often men and women cry may be more pronounced in countries that allow greater freedom of expression and social resources while people in poorer countries - who presumably might have more to cry about - don’t do so because of cultural norms that frown on emotional expression.

Human Response

In her book ‘Seeing Through Tears: Crying and Attachment’, psychotherapist Judith Kay Nelson, concludes that securely attached people are more comfortable expressing emotions and cry in ways that are considered normal and healthy, while those with insecure attachment may cry inappropriately - with easily activated, difficult-to-soothe tears.

The study also found that people who are overly dependent on others - cried more often than securely attached people. According to William Frey, crying is not only a human response to sorrow and frustration, it’s a healthy one. Crying is a natural way to reduce emotional stress that, left unchecked, has negative physical effects on the body, including increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and other stress-related disorders. Here are four reasons why crying is good for you:

Crying relieves stress

Because unalleviated stress can increase our risk for heart attack and damage certain areas of our brain, the human ability to cry has survival value, Frey says.

Crying lowers blood pressure

Crying has been found to lower blood pressure, pulse rate, and body immediately following therapy sessions during which they cried and raged.

Tears remove toxins

In addition, he says tears actually remove toxins from the body. Is that they may be removing, in their tears, chemicals that build up during emotional stress.”

Emotional crying means you’re human

While the eyes of all mammals are moistened and soothed by tears, only human beings shed tears in response to emotional stress.

Emotional expression acknowledges the feelings you’re having. Emotions motivate us to empathize, coordinate and work as a unit to best survive.

It is the tragedy of our times that we look on nature’s way of healing as a weakness. Why must the sobbing mourner be made to feel apologetic?

Why must the response of human behaviour be “cool” when the warmth of emotional commitment best expresses the language of love and concern? Surely, man’s dearest ideal ought not to be insensitivity to death.

The increasing research into crying and its beneficial health effects will make shedding tears less of a taboo behaviour.

So next time you feel those tears welling up or that lump in your throat, go ahead, have a good cry.