I was in a busy supermarket recently, waiting in line next to a flustered-looking mum with a child in the midst of an epic tantrum. Despite her admirable efforts to console them, the kid was sobbing uncontrollably. Witnessing this while feeling overstimulated myself, I felt no judgement or annoyance. Instead, I felt quietly envious of the child’s social liberty to let it all out.
Crying is considered a normal behaviour in children. Yet at some point, we’re expected to outgrow it, or at least learn to contain it to private or socially acceptable contexts. We have come a long way in normalising talking about our mental health and emotional inner worlds, but sadly, there is still much cultural discomfort with adults shedding tears in response to strong emotions.
Robyn Mew, a somatics and dance movement practitioner, confirmed that some people still view crying as a sign of weakness that needs to be ‘fixed’, rather than a normal physiological response and a sign of a healthy nervous system. She said that many people misunderstand the role that crying plays in regulating our internal state, leading to unnecessary self-judgement and potentially harmful repression of emotions.
What’s happening inside us when we cry?
Most babies let out a big bawl as soon as they’re born into this world. It’s a sign that their lungs are working normally and that they are conscious and healthy. Crying is so natural and innately human, yet many of us have never considered why humans cry, or how this physiological process really works.
Mew explained that crying doesn’t happen solely in our tear ducts. It is a full-body response to the brain registering something as emotionally significant, such as loss, overwhelm, happiness, relief, connection or frustration.
“Once that happens, the autonomic nervous system becomes involved,” explained Mew.
She said that many people first experience an activation phase, in which their throat may feel tight or have a lump, their breathing becomes shallow, and their heart rate accelerates.
Once the tears start flowing, the body can shift into the release phase of processing the emotional stimulus. This creates a softening, which can explain why a good cry can make us feel calmer or even sleepy.
“The tears themselves come from the lacrimal glands, which are influenced by parasympathetic pathways – the branch of the nervous system associated with rest and settling,” said Mew.
“From a somatic perspective, crying can often be understood as the body completing a stress or emotional response that needed somewhere to go.”
The cathartic effects of crying
Human beings can release three different types of tears: basal, irritant, and emotional.
Basal tears coat the eyes all day, hydrating them and sharpening your focus. Irritant tears flow from the glands around your eyebrows when your eyes come into contact with debris or irritants. Many other animals have these types of tears, but the third type, emotional tears, is used to regulate the nervous system and release emotions, and is a uniquely human trait.
Mew explained that emotional crying can feel cathartic because it returns the nervous system to its baseline state of balance.
“People often describe feeling calmer, heavier or tired afterwards, which reflects the nervous system moving out of activation and back towards balance,” she said.
“The breathing pattern also shifts during crying, and the longer exhales that follow sobbing can help signal safety to the body.”
Despite how natural, normal and even beneficial a good cry can be, it can also be energetically taxing on your body. Shifting breathing patterns, tension held throughout your muscles, and the lack of oxygen the brain receives when we hyperventilate or have shallow breathing, all contribute to feeling drained after a crying session.
This feeling has an evolutionary purpose, as the stress response activated when we cry mimics an ancient nervous system strategy for encouraging a recovery period after escaping a predator. Feeling worn out or weary after bawling your eyes out means you have survived something difficult, even if it’s just the memory of something painful or a build-up of smaller, cumulative emotional stressors.
Some research suggests that emotional tears contain higher amounts of stress hormones like cortisol, but Mew explained that this link to the emotional release we feel after crying is not strongly supported. The catharsis we feel from crying is more likely related to nervous system regulation and the relief of surrendering to our emotions and allowing them to pass, rather than detoxing the body of cortisol.
“When crying is consistently suppressed, it can help someone maintain control in the short term, especially in situations where it doesn’t feel safe to express emotion,” said Mew.
“Over time, though, research on emotional suppression shows it can increase physiological stress and make emotional processing more difficult. From a somatic perspective, this often shows up as tension in the jaw or throat, shallow breathing, headaches, chest tightness, or a sense of feelings being held or stuck in the body rather than moving through and resolving naturally.”
Robyn Mew, somatics and dance movement practitioner.
The impact of our social environment on how much we cry
There is much individuality in how much a person cries, as emotional expression is influenced by a range of contextual factors and societal conditioning. For example, women tend to cry significantly more often than men, but this difference is not observed in infants, meaning it is not innate or linked to our hormonal or biological differences.
Rather, boys and men are taught that it’s either unsafe or undesirable to express emotion in this way. As we slowly make progress towards greater gender equality, it’s promising to see some signs that men are more likely to feel safe to cry and express emotion than in generations past.
Mew noted that “people cry in ways that reflect what their nervous system has learned is safe or permitted. Some people have had more space to express emotion openly, while others have learned to contain it, regardless of gender”.
In addition to emotional release, crying also plays an important social and relational role. Shedding tears is partly a way of signalling to those around us that we may need support.
Emotional tears indicate that a person is in distress, triggering innate empathetic response and helping instincts. Science suggests that tears developed partly as a way to show that a person was feeling helpless, and that they were not aggressive and therefore safe to approach and offer support.
The presence of tears helps reduce the potential ambiguity of facial expressions and creates a clearer picture of a person’s internal state to those around them.
Emotional tears also contain the ‘love’ or attachment hormone, oxytocin, which can contribute to a feeling of bonding and comfort after someone consoles us while we cry. This complex combination of hormonal, evolutionary, and physiological factors can all contribute to a feeling of safety, relief, bonding and relaxation or tiredness after shedding tears.
Mew explained that, while going for long stretches without crying is not inherently bad, it can signal a lack of connection to others or to your own internal emotional experience.
“This can happen when someone has learned to stay in control, to intellectualise feelings, or when the nervous system has shifted more into numbness or shutdown after prolonged stress,” she said.
“It can also be influenced by depression, burnout, medication or exhaustion. The question I tend to come back to is not whether someone cries, but whether they feel access to their emotional range and whether feelings can move through the body rather than being avoided or stuck.”
Crying doesn’t have a right or wrong
Mew explained that how easily someone cries is highly complex and individual, and crying more or less often doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem or lack of emotional attunement. Some people may feel embarrassed about crying ‘too much’, while others may feel concerned that their perpetually dry eyes are a sign of being somehow shut down or disconnected from themselves.
In reality, it’s an indicator of a wide range of factors, including how safe our nervous system feels with this specific form of expression.
“Crying tends to happen when emotion reaches a certain intensity, particularly when it relates to attachment or connection, such as grief, relief, tenderness, longing or feeling deeply seen,” said Mew.
Crying is also a common response to mixed or confusing emotions, overwhelm, or an opening of floodgates that were previously being held shut.
She also said that some people cry more easily from consuming art, like music or film, because it allows emotions to be felt from a depersonalised and therefore safer distance.
“The nervous system can open without the pressure or consequences of real-life situations. Others may cry in moments of joy but rarely in sadness, or the opposite, depending on what emotional expression felt safe in their early environment and what the body learned to hold in,” said Mew.
“Sometimes the nervous system is not avoiding emotion; it is simply depleted.”
Judging how often you cry is usually unhelpful and can distract you from tending to other ways your body is sending you information about your emotional needs.
Mew explained that some people may find themselves unable to cry for reasons beyond psychology or conditioning. Depression, shutdowns, some medications, burnout, or dry eye physiology can also inhibit a person’s ability to cry without signifying any deeper cause for concern.
Staying present with pain: Supporting others when they cry
While we have come a long way in our collective comfort with crying, it can still feel tricky to know how to best support someone when they’re weeping. Mew suggests worrying less about finding the “right” thing to say and more about being present and holding space for the emotions to be released.
“Crying is not only about sadness,” said Mew.
“People cry in moments of relief, joy, overwhelm, connection and meaning. In that sense, tears are a form of communication as much as emotional release. From a somatic perspective, crying can signal that the body is processing something important.
“Staying calm, listening and not trying to fix the emotion often helps the other person’s nervous system return to a regulated state.”
As well-intentioned as it can be, trying to ‘fix’ the cause of the crying can create a sense that the response is somehow wrong, unwelcome, or too much for the other person to handle.
Practising staying calm in the face of other people’s suffering is a challenging but meaningful gift we can offer those we love. Staying with someone when they’re at their most vulnerable sends a clear message that they are safe to feel whatever comes up, and soothes the inner child inside of us who needs to express emotion and feel safe, seen, and held while we do so.
