Crying or weeping is a normal emotional response to many different factors, including fulfilment and happiness as well as failure, loss, and sadness or other negative feelings, such as anger and guilt. Crying or weeping is the shedding of tears in the eyes in response to an emotional state, pain or a physical irritation of the eye. Tears originate in the lacrimal gland located at the outer end of the eye ball. Emotional crying is controlled by the hypothalamus, which is part of the limbic system of the brain. The limbic system is involved in generating basic emotions such as sadness, fear and anger. Crying is a natural response. Humans have a range of emotions including sadness, grief, joy, and frustration.
Various forms of crying are known as sobbing, weeping, wailing, whimpering, blubbering and bawling. In different situations people cry differently. Many psychologists consider the environment in which a person cries can alter the experience of the crier. However, crying studies in laboratories have shown several physical effects of crying, such as increased heart rate, sweating, and slowed breathing.
Most people don’t think there would be variety of tears. In fact, there are three types of tears; basal tear, emotional tear and reflex tear. They all are produced by glands around eyes and all three are needed for good eye health.
Basal: The tear ducts constantly secrete basal tears, which are a protein-rich antibacterial liquid that help keep the eyes moist every time a person blinks. As the National Eye Institute, USA explains, the lubricating effect of basal tears helps people to see more clearly. When the membranes dry out, vision can become blurry.
Reflex: These are tears triggered by irritants such as wind, smoke, or onions. They are released to flush out these irritants and protect the eye.
Emotional: Humans shed tears in response to a range of emotions. These tears contain a higher level of stress hormones than other types of tears.
The common side effects of crying are feeling a lump in the throat (Globus sensation), quivering lips, a runny nose, bloodshot eyes. swelling around the eyes and general puffiness in the face and cracking voice. Sometime people especially children make sad noises along with tears, to yell loudly. When crying hard enough, many people experience headaches. Tension headaches occur when muscles in the head tighten. They can also cause some pain and discomfort in the neck and shoulders, as these muscles may tighten as well. Crying can trigger sinus headaches and migraine headaches
When humans cry in response to stress, their tears contain a number of stress hormones and other chemicals. Researchers believe that crying could reduce the levels of these chemicals in the body, which could, in turn, reduce stress. Other studies show tears may trigger the release of endorphins. Endorphins are hormones that make one feel good and reduce pain. It is not unusual to cry. Male and female, both sexes can cry. It is assumed that females cry more than males. According to the German Society of Ophthalmology, which has collated different scientific studies on crying, the average woman cries between 30 and 64 times a year, and the average man cries between 6 and 17 times a year.
As Hobbes (1658/1966) pointed out, “those who weep the most are those, such as women and children, who have the least hope in themselves s and the most in friends”. Although crying clearly expresses one’s lack of confidence in one’s own capability or resources to solve the problem at hand, the crying person can still rely on or hope for others’ help.
“Severely depressed people are unlikely to cry, because they have renounced all hope of their desires being fulfilled. “In the same vein, a severely neglected infant is likely to stop crying” (Bowlby, 1973).
Aristotle wrote about cathartic crying, and described it as the deepest type of crying, a type that often leads to a catharsis or a transformation of one’s personality and to new insights. People may fall into transformational tears when they attend a funeral or see a tragic movie or experience a tragic event in their lives, such as the death of a loved one. The tears often become deep sobs that cannot be controlled, and once the sobs break loose, they can go on for a long time, even days.
Recent psychological theories of crying emphasize the relationship of crying to the experience of perceived helplessness. From this perspective, an underlying experience of helplessness can usually explain why people cry. For example, a person may cry after looted on gun point because the person feels powerless or unable to influence what is happening. Being a sign of surrender to suffering and frustration, crying can reinforce one’s perceived helplessness, thus inducing further suffering. For the same reason, crying favors discouragement and disconnect from goal pursuing. Other possible detrimental effects are embarrassment as well as loss of self-esteem.
Crying can help people get support from others around them. It is found in researches that crying may have a direct, self-soothing effect on people to reduce stress. We consider self-soothing to be a form of emotion regulation. Crying can help reduce pain and promote a sense of well-being. Crying may help lift people’s spirits and make them feel better and improve mood.
There are people who usually cry for no particularly good reason, if someone is tearful everyday over activities that are normal in life, that may be due to depression or mental stress that’s not normal and it is treatable.