It starts slowly, with a lone tear running down the child’s face. A whimper, then a loud slow wail with the cries soon becoming louder and more frequent. This is soon followed by a reprimand, “Keep quiet! You’re making noise. I’ll give you something to cry about if you really want to cry!”
Some children have mastered the art of silently choking back their sobs as soon as they get ‘the look’. ‘The look’ lets you know that crying is not an option, especially not in public. As the unspoken commandment goes, ‘Thou shall not embarrass your parents in public.’ Is it any wonder then, that some of us have developed an unhealthy relationship with crying from childhood?
Is crying beneficial?
In the research paper Is Crying Beneficial? Jonathan Rottenberg, Lauren Bylsma, and Ad J.J.M Vingerhoets express that lay opinion and extensive survey data shows that crying is a cathartic behaviour that serves to relieve distress and reduce arousal. However, laboratory data often indicates that crying exacerbates distress and increases autonomic arousal.
Does gender play a role in our response to crying?
Furthermore, research by Leah Sharman et.al exploring The Relationship of Gender Roles and Beliefs to Crying in an International Sample revealed that across countries, gender, self-ascribed gender roles, and gender role attitudes (GRA) were related to behavioural crying responses, but not related to emotional change following crying. Interestingly, how a person evaluates crying appears to be highly related to one’s beliefs about the helpfulness of crying, irrespective of gender.
In cultures where gender differentiation for emotional expression is pronounced, this socialization tends to culminate in the attitude that showing vulnerable emotions is a weakness for boys, illustrated with the well-known saying that ‘boys don’t cry’. This detrimental worldwide sentiment has led many men to seem emotionless and festered many problems in the process. Given this socialization, perhaps unsurprisingly, differences in shame felt when crying have been found, with men reporting greater humiliation than women across the countries studied.
Heather MacArthur and Stephanie Shields explore men’s negotiation of emotional expression within larger social discourses around masculinity with a focus on competitive sports in North America. They offer possible explanations for why counter normative emotional expressions may be particularly prevalent and public, despite wider cultural discourses that appear to discourage men’s openly expressive behaviour.
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Is crying in front of people helpful?
Furthermore, Sharman’s research examined whether crying in front of others helps or not. When a crier reported that they were helped, they also tended to report feeling better following crying than those who cried around others but did not receive help.
“The way in which people remember and evaluate their crying experiences are influenced by many factors. These may be whether the cause of crying was positive or negative, how long since the crying occurred (with crying remembered more positively the more time has passed), and social variables, such as the number of people present,” Rottenberg et.al details.
The role of culture
Although cross-cultural research has been limited in crying literature, Marleen C. Becht and Ad J.J.M Vingerhoets’ 2002 research paper Crying and Mood Change examined weeping across at least 35 countries. They found a consistent gender difference; women cry more frequently and tend to report more positive crying experiences across cultures. This difference is particularly pronounced in many Western countries as women from those countries show considerably higher frequencies of crying as compared to women in Asian, South American, and in some West and East African countries.
The difference in emotional improvement after crying between men and women was considerably smaller, and in some instances, non-existent, with gender overall explaining very little variance in emotional change. The results suggest that how one feels after a crying episode depends on how common crying is in one's culture and on one’s general feelings of shame over crying.
"Many have fallen into depression and stress because of the failure to express themselves through crying"
Let’s get personal
I can’t quite remember when it was that my relationship with crying turned sour. What I can remember is that after being dragged enough times by my brothers I decided to toughen up and stop being a cry baby. From about the age of 11 or so crying became an act that was not only shameful but created in me a great deal of displeasure. I can’t quite say why really, but crying took a back seat in my life. I relegated it to funerals and I suppose other socially acceptable major life events.
I’m quite sure that I’m not the only one who bottles up the emotions and relates to the many memes about crying in the comfort of my bedroom’s darkness. However, even then, the crying becomes less about whatever it is that has triggered the emotions of distress but more about the frustration of the fact that my eyes indeed are leaking and I am doomed to wait on this phenomenon rocking my body to pass.
It’s only in recent months when exploring the healing of my inner child that I have even considered I truly do have a negative relationship with crying and that perhaps it is time to change that. Thankfully, I’m not alone in searching for a better relationship with my tears.
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How do we change our relationship with crying?
Natasha Mwaba Mwelwa, who is a HIV Testing Services Associate at Clinton Health Access Initiative in Zambia, expresses that she’s decided in the last couple of years to work on her connection with crying.
“I would say I have developed a healthier relationship with crying. I have decided in the past couple of years to not hold back from crying. If something feels wrong emotionally, physically or mentally I do cry. If someone is mourning I mourn with them. Holding back crying makes my heart heavy and it becomes difficult for me to move past an event or feeling.”
Mwelwa reveals that suppressing her tears would lead to feelings of emotional distress, “Every time I was told to be strong for other [sic] I felt a part of me dying and I couldn’t do it anymore. When my mother died I was told to be strong for the sake of my young siblings and I would find myself struggling to hold tears back whenever I heard of anyone lose a parent [sic]. And sometimes I would still want to be strong about it but I couldn’t keep up. So I decided it was not worth to bottle up emotions,” she shares.
She expresses that once we understand that it’s normal to cry and we accept that, we are beginning a process of healing and recovery.
When asked how she employs this healthier perspective about crying in her work she expresses that it is imperative to first understand that as humans we all feel things in different ways.
“We experience and see things differently as individuals. Others cry and some others won’t. I always encourage people to let loose bottled emotions because only then can you move on. Many have fallen into depression and stress because of the failure to express themselves through crying,” Mwelwa explains.
As uncomfortable as crying may be for many of us, it does really provide us with many benefits such as emotional relief, stress reduction and mood enhancement. Here’s to embracing the discomfort that comes with growing and healing, as well as the tears that are likely to come with it.