Why can’t I stop crying?

Why can’t I stop crying?

Psychology

Crying is a physiological response to our emotions, which many times we cannot avoid

The things of crying are complex, because there is no one who cries the same as another person does. In a very wide spectrum, which goes from someone who cries to see a tender photo of a little animal, to who does not shed a tear even when faced with the saddest situation, each one is related to crying in a different way. Most of the time we cried without wanting to. Even in the most inappropriate situations, you can’t keep your tears at bay, and then a few small drops give us away and show how we really feel. But how can it be that we are not able to control them?

The first thing that is important to know is that, although the association seems obvious, cry

 a lot does not have to mean that we are more sensitive people. “Crying is the expression of an emotion, but it is not the emotion itself”, explains the psychologist Rafael San Román, from ifeel. Sensitivity is the ability to react to a stimulus. This, explains the professional, is what makes us feel, appreciate or perceive things with more or less intensity. “That can happen with or without crying, which would be the last part of the chain, but not the most important or the one that has the most meaning,” he adds.

Uncontrollable tears

Therefore, that we are people who have more facility to cry does not reflect that we are more fragile or sensitive. The psychologist comments that to explain why those who cry more, many different variables must be taken into account, such as whether the issue that made us cry is something very important to us, or whether the emotion in question has been so unexpected that the reaction is very fast and we cannot contain it. “On the other hand, there are particularly labile people, that is, with little capacity to contain such expressions, without implying that they are experiencing a very intense emotion, they simply cannot, or do not make the effort, to hold back tears”, Rafael San Román points out.

Crying many times becomes a mechanism to release stress from our body. Raquel Velasco del Castillo, psychologist at Mente Sana de Sanitas, explains that the research indicates that tears, in addition to having a moisturizing function or protecting against external agents, have the function of regulating the organism. «« Emotional »tears, which are produced when we feel intense emotions, have special characteristics: they contain neuromodulatory elements such as adrenocorticotropin and enkephalin, which seem to promote the release of stress in the body and bring it to a homostatic state when we release the tears, “says the professional. He adds that crying, beyond helping us to externalize how we feel, is an active physiological process that «increases the needs of glucose and oxygen by the cerebral cortex and the limbic system, causing that when the crying ends, the body increases its tiredness, your desire to sleep and cause a “liberating rest” in us. “

Cry what you learned

One of the factors that most influence whether we are people who cry a lot, or not, is our education and experiences. The ifeel psychologist comments that it is closely related to the type of expressiveness that has been developed and learned throughout life. “Our entire emotional world is partially influenced by what we have learned, mainly at home throughout our childhood and adolescence,” he says. Beyond all these nuances — what emotions do we know how to express, which ones we feel are prohibited, in what way we should express them — is what the person does with that learning according to their own individuality. The professional comments that “not everything we learn in life we ​​put into practice, sometimes we do just the opposite.” Thus, our learning can influenceIn this case, whether we cry more or less, but it is not decisive.

This education we are talking about also influences a very perpetrated stereotype, but with part of the truth: that men cry less than women. “In our society women cry more times than men or, at least, that is the impression they give by the fact that they do it in a more public way,” says San Román. He says that generally men cry more privately, and they only make their tears public in very serious or solemn situations. This is intrinsically related to shame.

We often find it a shameful act to cry in public. The psychologist indicates that we have learned to have this reaction because on some occasion that response has been punished or we have become ugly. «That does not mean that we do not repeat it, but we do it with shame, that is, with a feeling of inadequacy, of being out of place or doing something objectionable, “he says.

Crying is usually good when you play. According to Raquel Velasco del Castillo, crying has two important functions for the human being:

— Reduce those stress levels in the body when we expose ourselves to an intense subjective experience. Relieve pain or improve mood and sleep.

— Allow for empathy and communication with the environment. They allow us to establish meaningful relationships with people and recognize the states of others.

Is it good to cry?

It is not good to avoid crying, or to do containment exercises, because our body is asking us to express something. «If we invalidate it or feel it as a weakness, we are eliminating a very important response of the body that causes physical and social benefits that reflect the millions of years of human evolution ”, points out the professional. Finally, explain that you cannot determine how good it is to cry. «In those terms we cannot speak. In the same way that an excess would also indicate a dysfunction, a psychological problem. But at some point you have to cry because it is a natural response, of course, “concludes the psychologist.