Positive Tears: What They Are, And Why Crying Can Also Be A Good Thing
We generally associate crying with negative events and feelings of sadness or melancholy, but this is not always the case.
The tears we shed are sometimes produced by positive emotions and even when they are not, they can also have a beneficial effect. Let’s review all these questions to discover the importance of positive tears
The concept of positive tears has to do with the types of crying that are generated by pleasant emotions or by situations in which tears, despite coming from unpleasant events, have a positive effect on the person who is crying. Let us not forget that crying has an evolutionary function in human beings since it is an event that only occurs in our species.
Why we cry has been the subject of research for a long time. Scientists discovered three basic forms of crying. The first is basal, which is produced automatically as a means of keeping the eye lubricated and eliminating any foreign body that may have come into contact with it. The second is reflex and occurs when we are exposed to certain gases or substances released by onions, for example.
The third is the most important of all, it is the one that refers to psychic crying. This type of crying is produced by a whole variety of emotions. We usually associate it with negative emotions such as sadness, pain, melancholy, anger, frustration, fear, etc. But it must be taken into account that It is perfectly possible to have a psychic cry caused by much more pleasant emotions such as joy, laughter, love or gratitude, among others.
Positive tears would be all of the latter, but also those that come from negative emotions if this crying contributes to the person feeling better, since it is a form of emotional catharsis that helps cause an improvement in the person’s mood. person, self-regulating in the face of an experience that is causing very intense emotions.
What are the benefits of positive tears
We have already formed a general idea of what positive tears represent. Now we must continue digging deeper to know what are the main benefits that we can obtain from them.
Surely the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about positive tears are those coming from a very happy situation, in which emotion overwhelms us, and that is the key to the first benefit. And the positive tears They would be acting as an escape valve to regulate said emotion and help us digest what we are experiencing because although it is a pleasant event, it can be too intense.
This intensity can cause a saturation of our emotional assimilation systems and that is where the mechanism of positive tears comes in, helping us to lower this intensity and thus be able to assimilate what we are experiencing in a simpler way for our body.
But the most important thing about this phenomenon is that It has nothing to do with the direction of the emotion, that is, whether it is positive or negative, but with its intensity For this reason, positive tears also occur when we experience an unpleasant emotion like the ones we mentioned above, since in these cases they will also be acting as a form of regulation in the face of intensity.
Thanks to crying we are able to more quickly assimilate intense situations that would otherwise overwhelm us. Hence, emotional regulation is the first of the benefits of positive tears and surely the most important of them all.
2. A form of communication
Positive tears have other uses. One of them is that of communicate and transmit to others what our emotional state is Sometimes words are not enough and must be complemented by non-verbal language. This is where crying would come in, which would act as a form of body language to make our interlocutor see what our current state is and what we need about it.
This communication brings with it empathy, since the simple fact of seeing someone cry already provokes a reaction in others to try to calm and console the person who is suffering from this emotional overflow. In that sense, positive tears would be a way of communicating to others that we are experiencing a situation that surpasses us and that we need help or attention to be able to feel better about it.
We talked in the first point about the capacity of positive tears to reestablish a balance in our emotional state This, in certain situations, is accompanied by another effect, which is the reduction of stress and pain that we may be suffering. This is due to a series of substances that our body releases during crying. Some of them are leucine-enkephalin, ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone), potassium or prolactin.
These elements modulate our state, acting as if they were an analgesic. Consequently, the pain we feel, which can be physical or emotional, will decrease, thus providing us with the calm we need. This mechanism also works in stressful situations that have managed to overwhelm us.
According to some studies carried out in this regard, crying generates a more pleasant sensation than the one we had previously The data indicate that 73% of men and 85% of women perceive this effect in this way, which supports the hypothesis of the power of positive tears as a determining factor to reduce our discomfort and thus reduce the possible stress or pain that we were suffering.
4. Improved sleep
Among the benefits that positive tears provide, we find another that is not insignificant. And this type of crying has an influence on the quality of our sleep , making this one better. It is a chain effect, because by regulating our emotions and softening the state of stress in which we find ourselves, we also free our mind from a series of disturbing thoughts.
By having a clearer head in this regard, it will be easier to fall asleep and complete cycles, thus achieving better rest. We cannot forget how important it is for health to enjoy quality sleep. When we lack this element, we suffer an impact at all levels of our lives, so being able to have a tool such as positive tears represents a real advantage.
5. Self-knowledge
Self-knowledge is another of the rewards that make positive tears so useful. It may seem strange, but the simple fact of being able to observe ourselves crying in a certain situation can provide us with a lot of information and help us get to know ourselves more in depth. Because No matter how many years we have, we can always get to know each other better
If a certain event causes us such intense joy or sadness that we begin to shed tears, we can go one step further and analyze the situation, investigating the components of said event that have managed to agitate us emotionally in such a way that our body has had You have to resort to crying to reestablish your balance.
Obviously there are situations that are very negative or very positive in themselves and it is tremendously logical that they trigger a certain response in us, but other times we are faced with much more subtle events, such as a certain scene from a movie, a conversation with someone. person or witness an everyday act, which manages to move us.
It is these scenes that will open a door of exploration towards ourselves, giving us some clues about what we keep in the depths of our being like those experiences or people that marked us at some point, even if we have never stopped to think about it.
6. Better mood
Finally, another contribution that positive tears have for us is the improvement they bring to our mood. We have taken a tour of different benefits of this mechanism and all of them have something in common, that they generate well-being and regulation in our state. All of this results, as it could not be otherwise, in our mood or spirit
Thanks to the escape valve that crying provides, once normality is restored, we will feel better, more relaxed and with more resources to face the situations of our daily life, having left behind an emotional overflow that was temporarily blocking us.
Once we know all these advantages, we will be aware of the importance that positive tears have in our daily lives.
