Is crying a good therapy when you are stressed out?
At times when we are stressed out, we didn’t make a way out to relieve the stress. So we always chose “crying out loud” to alleviate the stress. So does science back up this “Magic formula of crying”?
Recently, scientists and authors were at harsh disagreement over the point of crying. In King Henry VI, Shakespeare wrote, “to weep is to make less the depth of grief”, and the American writer Lemony Snicket said “unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit”.
After analyzing some views of authors and scientists we come to know that there exists some reality in crying to change your mood from stressed out to relieved person. Crying is a complex physiological response to some kind of emotional stimulus. The most well-known feature is of course the shedding of tears. But it also comprises of changes in facial expressions and breathing patterns. For instance, “Sobbing” refers to the rapid inhalation and exhalation that so often accompanies crying.
But if we look at from a scientific perspective, the story seems different; crying is different from the production of tears in response to a chemical irritant, like when you accidentally rub your eyes after eating spicy foods. Minnesota psychiatrist William H Frey II discovered that tears came out by sad movies had more protein in them than those that brought on in response to some freshly chopped onions.
However, you must know that adult crying is not really all that different from the sort that babies do, when it comes to its social nature. In other words, it’s a different sides of a same page, weeping is a literal cry for attention, babies always cry when they need something or call for attention of parents and loved ones. Similarly adults weep, when they feel solitude and need support and help from their friends. It’s a way of communicating our inner emotional state when we may not be able to fully express it. While many researchers found that adults often cry when they are completely alone, another possibility is that crying might serve as a means of “secondary appraisal”.
And then finally there comes a notion of catharsis, crying provides relief from emotionally stressful situations. To ensure the idea we can set out with the words of Shakespeare, but with the Roman poet Ovid, who wrote: “It is a relief to weep; grief is satisfied and carried off by tears.” The Greek philosopher Aristotle also wrote that crying “cleanses the mind”. In a 1986 study of popular US magazines and newspapers, one psychologist found that 94% of articles about crying recommended that it helped to ease psychological tension.
In some studies, the results are quite different, some reported no change after a crying session, and some even said that they felt worse afterwards, they also found that some people feel less resolved than if they cried alone or with a single close friend.
The idea of having “a good cry” seems the right kind of social support to be effective. It means in the end, adults might just cry for much the same reason as human infants, to ask for help from their friends and family.