It's Natural to Cry

"I cry a lot, whether it is tears of joy or tears of sadness, it happens on a regular basis. Don't be afraid of it. It's natural."
(from my tweets, 2015)

This is one of the more personal things I tweeted. In those years, I was chasing hard goals, and the highs and lows came fast. I cried after victories and I cried after defeats. I also wrote: "I think it takes more courage to cry than not to cry."

A lot of us grew up hearing the opposite. Be tough. Hold it together. Don't let them see you upset. But a growing body of research suggests that how we treat our feelings, especially the painful ones, matters a great deal for how happy we end up being. And it turns out that pushing them away usually backfires.

The cost of holding it in

In 2003, psychologists James Gross and Oliver John compared two common ways people handle their emotions. One is suppression: keeping a straight face and hiding what you feel. The other is reappraisal: looking at the situation in a new way so it affects you differently.

People who habitually suppressed their emotions reported experiencing fewer positive emotions, more negative ones, weaker relationships and lower well-being overall. Hiding feelings didn't make them go away. It mostly made people feel more alone with them.

Accepting the hard feelings

What's the alternative? A 2018 study by Brett Ford, Iris Mauss and colleagues looked at people's tendency to accept their negative emotions instead of judging them as bad or wrong. Across several studies, including one that followed people over six months, those who habitually accepted their difficult feelings had better psychological health, including fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The researchers suggest a reason: when you judge a negative feeling, you add a second layer of distress on top of the first. You're not just sad, you're upset that you're sad. Acceptance removes that second layer, and the original feeling often passes more quickly.

Name it to tame it

There's a simple tool that makes acceptance easier. In 2007, a team led by Matthew Lieberman at UCLA showed people photos of faces with strong emotional expressions while scanning their brains. When participants put the emotion into words, labeling a face as "angry" or "scared," activity in the amygdala, a brain region involved in emotional reactions, went down.

Researchers call this affect labeling. Simply naming what you feel, "I'm disappointed," "I'm overwhelmed," "I'm grieving," seems to take some of the heat out of it.

What about crying itself?

Is crying actually good for you? The honest answer is: sometimes. Research by Lauren Bylsma, Ad Vingerhoets and Jonathan Rottenberg, which surveyed thousands of people about their most recent crying episodes, found that many people reported feeling better afterward, but not everyone. People were most likely to feel better when they received comfort or support from someone while crying, and when the crying helped them understand or resolve what had upset them.

So crying is not a magic reset button. But it is a natural part of how humans process strong feelings, and it often works best when we're not alone. Tears of joy are part of this too: we cry at weddings, reunions and victories, because big emotions of every kind need somewhere to go.

What the philosophers said

The Stoics are often misunderstood as recommending no emotions at all. But Seneca, writing to his friend Lucilius after the death of a friend, said something much gentler: "Let not the eyes be dry when we have lost a friend, nor let them overflow. We may weep, but we must not wail" (Letters, 63). Grief, he believed, was natural. What he warned against was letting it take over our lives.

Aristotle took a similar middle path. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he argued that emotions themselves aren't the problem. The goal is to feel them "at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way" (Book II). For Aristotle, a person who never felt grief or anger would be missing something, not achieving something.

A word of care

Being comfortable with sadness is different from living in it. If you find yourself crying most days, feeling hopeless, or unable to enjoy things you used to love, that may be depression, and it deserves real help. Talking to a doctor or counselor is not a weakness. It's another way of taking your feelings seriously.

How to make room for your feelings

• Name it. When a strong feeling shows up, say it, out loud or in writing: "I'm feeling ___." Be as specific as you can.
• Drop the second layer. Notice if you're judging the feeling. Try telling yourself, "It makes sense that I feel this way."
• Let tears happen. If you need to cry, let yourself. Don't apologize for it.
• Don't do it alone. Reach out to someone you trust when something big hits, whether it's good news or bad.
• Celebrate the happy tears too. Emotional openness isn't only for hard times. Let yourself be moved by the good moments.

Today's reflection

I wrote that tweet years ago, and I still believe it. Feeling deeply is not a flaw in people who are trying hard things. It's evidence that they care.

So today, whatever you're feeling, let it be there for a moment without arguing with it. Name it. Share it if you can. And if the tears come, whether from joy or sadness, remember: it's natural.

Sources

• Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348–362.
• Ford, B. Q., Lam, P., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. (2018). The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(6), 1075–1092.
• Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.
• Bylsma, L. M., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., & Rottenberg, J. (2008). When is crying cathartic? An international study. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 27(10), 1165–1187.
• Seneca. Letters to Lucilius, 63.
• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, Book II.