Everybody cries. Unfortunately, many of us were raised in a society that regarded it as a sign of weakness. Boys were told not to cry to look tough, girls were seen as spoilt if they cried often.

We started hiding the way we feel out of fear. We believe it will make us vulnerable, and we will get hurt if we open up, and others will take advantage of us.

However, the truth is that we all need a good cry from time to time, and it is absolutely normal.

Actually, it is critical to be able to face your emotions, as it is a sign of emotional intelligence, or the ability of a person to aware of their feelings and openly express them.

Even if you find it hard to display your emotions, you need to do it, as negativity will build up and cause more problems and stress. You gain nothing by ignoring your feelings, but you can come to a point of no escape.

You will never benefit from bottling up your emotions instead of facing them head-on.

If you keep pretending everything is fine all the time, you need an emotional release. There is nothing bad in crying, it is a great way to release all the buildup tension and stress, to address your problems, and to finally move on.

Crying helps us cope better with emotional distress.

According to Roger Baker, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Bournemouth University and author of Emotional Processing: Healing Through Feeling:

“Crying does help us process faster than if we don’t cry at all, but it’s not the only thing — it’s part of a package of expressing it. If your father died, your natural reaction would be to cry. You wouldn’t be able to get it out of your mind, you’d be discussing it a great deal, and you couldn’t work or do anything initially.

But gradually, the turmoil would subside. You’d reach a point where you could look at photos, and although you’d remember him, there would be no powerful emotional reaction.

At that point, you could say it has been emotionally processed. But it’s not the passing of time that does that — it’s all the things you’ve done in between to help you to process it.”

Crying is the best way to self-sooth, and after a good cry out, everyone feels renewed!

Dr. Judith Orloff  maintains:

“Crying makes us feel better, even when a problem persists. In addition to physical detoxification, emotional tears heal the heart. You don’t want to hold tears back. 

Try to let go of outmoded, untrue, conceptions about crying. It is good to cry. It is healthy to cry. This helps to emotionally clear sadness and stress. Crying is also essential to resolve grief when waves of tears periodically come over us after we experience a loss.

Tears help us process the loss so we can keep living with open hearts. Otherwise, we are set up for depression if we suppress these potent feelings.

When a friend apologized for curling up in the fetal position on my floor, weeping, depressed over a failing romance, I told her, “Your tears blessed my floor. There is nothing to apologize for.”

Sources:
awarenessact.com
optimalpositivity.com
www.dollarshaveclub.com