The Benefits Of Tears: Crying Is Good For Your Health
In 2013, a new therapy was started in Japan that has been gaining followers after observing its beneficial results. We talk about Riu-Katsu a group therapy, in which participants get together to watch sad movies and cry.
But why cry in a group? According to an adherent of this therapy, “Riu-Katsu is not like crying alone in my room. “I don’t exactly feel depressed or sad when I cry here, accompanied by other people.”
We can give several answers to this statement. On the one hand, in a culture as rigid as the Japanese, where the expression of feelings is not socially accepted, Being able to cry in a group is a positive reinforcement and social acceptance of the expression of those feelings And, on the other hand, according to experts, crying in a group removes the depressive component that people consider crying alone to have. But, in addition, there is another factor to take into account, and it is the fact that most people do not know how to react to someone who cries and we tend to console and ask them to stop crying, since, socially and culturally, we feel uncomfortable with certain emotional manifestations.
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Riu-Katsu: therapies in which crying is positive
Perhaps it may surprise us that there is a therapy based on crying, but There are scientific studies that confirm the benefits of tears for a person’s emotional well-being
Crying is not always an expression of negative feelings. It is a reality that we cry to express sadness, sorrow and nostalgia, but we can also cry out of anger, pain and, in other cases, we cry to express happiness and joy.
Some benefits (physical and psychological) of tears
Tears prevent dry eyes, help fight the bacteria that accumulate in them and clean the visual canal, but, at the same time, crying helps release negative emotions, eliminates tension and relieves stress. Also, it allows you to know yourself better, through crying you recognize your own weaknesses, needs and qualities. According to William Frey II, after crying the person sees more clearly because “the sorrows that obstruct the intellect are no longer there.”
Crying also produces physiological changes in the body; the tears themselves change their composition depending on whether they respond to one function or another. According to researcher William Frey II, emotional tears contain more prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormones and leucine-enkephalin, which They are neuromodulatory elements that act as a natural analgesic and help calm relax and release stress.
Crying has the ability to reduce the levels of manganese in the body, which is related to states of anxiety, nervousness and aggressiveness and, as if all of the above were not enough, crying also allows the elimination of adrenaline and norepinephrine, which are secreted in excess when stressful or dangerous situations and can be harmful.
Crying, important for homeostasis
Lauren Bylsma, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, for her part, states thatCrying helps the body return to a state of homeostasis after being disturbed , that is, tears fulfill the function of returning the body to its basal level of functioning. It is for this reason that after crying, one usually feels a sense of relief and relief, which improves the person’s general well-being.
Just as we socially accept laughter as an expression of feelings of joy or nervousness and value the sensations of subsequent well-being, We must learn to accept crying, which is another manifestation of our emotions To do this, we have to educate from a young age in the recognition and expression of feelings and not censor those who express them freely, due to the discomfort that such manifestation generates and, above all, leave behind the myths associated with tears and assume that “crying does not make us weaker”, but on the contrary, crying strengthens us by helping us get rid of the negative emotions we feel and restore our calm.
And that “men do cry,” because as human beings with feelings they have the right to express them.
