Why Do People Cry?
This question has kept me up all night.
Lately, I have been trying to find a suitable answer. So, I just went on to Google to see why people cry.
And when I typed that the first response I got was– People cry to communicate their emotions to others. Emotional tears make you feel more vulnerable, which could improve your relationships. Crying often connects people out of grief, love, passion, or another strong emotion.
It is so weird that people can have different ways of seeing emotions.
For some people expressing emotions is a sign of strength. For some, it is hard to communicate emotions with them.
We can draw many analogies to make someone understand our point of view. But if someone is hell-bent on making you feel inferior in some way there’s nothing you can do to undo that.
It’s so weird that people do not encourage opening up with emotion. This has initiated an internal fight in my head that keeps me up at night.
With the little experiences…
I have noticed one thing in my life. People have more awareness of emotions in Western countries. I don’t know whether it is a new thing. Probably I am not the best person to judge. While I was in the UK, I could communicate how I was feeling. I was encouraged to open up and share my emotions and cry if I wanted to.
But then I came back to my country. I feel that this is a huge Asian thing when people don’t appreciate if you express your emotions. Sitting with this thought in mind has encouraged me to reflect on my life.
For a long time in my entire life, I had no idea that mental health was a thing. I am a millennial which means I was not born with a mobile phone or an Internet connection. I just gradually grew up into it and this trend of people sharing and over-sharing life was not common in my early 20s.
When I talk about this I just feel that I am very old and alienated but this is the reality that I have been born in.
My reality was a situation where people were scared to open up to others. We didn’t know how to express our anger or grief or passion or love or excitement or anything at all. I remember having some dark nights and then waking up and going to work as a nothing happened.
Not talking about it to anyone. Not sharing it with anyone. Nothing is more sabotaging to a girl than her opening up and expressing her emotions. Well, this is what I believed in my early 20s. As a result of this, people saw me as someone who didn’t really care and who didn’t think twice before hurting others.
But only I knew that…
If I was consciously hurting someone I was hurting myself 10 times more. This is not to say that whatever I did was justified. It wasn’t in a lot of sense. I don’t think I will be opening those doors today but now that I think about it I just sat in a fog for a long time.
I didn’t know what I was doing and even if I knew I was not very mindful of it. I had no idea of the broader picture which made me a horrible person. Now that I think of it, I know I was not able to sustain a lot of friendships because of that.
It all boils down to the fact that I was never sitting with my emotions and I was never addressing them. So I didn’t know how to talk to anyone else about it.
I would cry in a dark room if I needed to. I would stay awake the entire night if I needed to. I would go to work and overcome myself by making fun of others.
All in a vague attempt so I could never hear the voice inside my head.
And then one day, it all changed…
Covid happened and it hit me hard. As someone who has always run away from problems, I couldn’t figure out what to do in that little room of mine.
It was suffocating me. I had no meaning no purpose. If we humans are an Ocean I felt all the hurricanes of the emotion kept arising in me I did not know how to stop them.
This was the time in my life when I finally realized how important it is to address your issues with people and talk them through them. After a year and a half of struggling alone in my room, I finally opened up to a person seeking help.
I was diagnosed with PTSD during this time. Back-to-back therapy sessions encouraged my crying. I understood that for humans to function properly they need to communicate what they are going through. At least to their loved ones. They should know that they are comforted and sheltered and taken care of at least emotionally if not in any other dynamics.
For me, that was also the time that I was moving out and I knew that I had to fix myself. A huge contributor to my improved mental health was fewer people and a new environment of natural sunlight.
Even though people call England depressing…
It was well suited to my aesthetic and how I wanted to live.
I enjoyed having a cup of coffee or a hot chocolate and my hand while I was just watching the rain pouring down the window. Even when days were harsh and I was mad I was just there. I knew that I can always always cry and I can always clean and I can always laugh and I can always express myself. That environment has shown me something that I never thought that I would be.
My time there showed me that it is okay to open up to people and it is okay to feel. And when I learned this new healing process I also unlearned how I was running away from my issues and how I was coping with them. I had unlearned that there is not one but a lot of factors that impact somebody’s mental health.
One of the biggest factors is the people in your surroundings. and I feel when people are not allowed to communicate, it becomes a mess. See, not everybody can communicate in the same manner. Not everyone can be logical and practical while communicating their feelings. and not everybody Can control if tears are rolling down their cheeks. I think I am that person if I truly feel something I will be speaking about it from my heart and there is this reaction of the tears coming down. I think a lot of times in my life I am not heard. This makes me scream a little louder than necessary I am not too proud of this but I am just sharing it to be vulnerable here maybe. I have the awareness and I work towards it in my whole capacity.
But the fact that…
I thought and learned that it is beautiful to be emotional is killing me!
It is beautiful to be vulnerable. To have that courage to show people your scars and your flaws and make them feel comfortable to share theirs. Something I was learning and I was good at. But then when the physical dynamics changed I was constantly reminded why crying is a bad expression.
The worst thing that I feel that you can do to a person is judge them when they are emotional. Humans and we are all meant to be emotional. Judging someone for expressing their emotions is the worst thing you can do to them.
I feel that it is not courageous to put up a show. We all do that sometimes or most of us all of the time. We are putting up a show. We are masking our real faces and our real emotions because we don’t want to share them with a lot of people. We are not cry babies we understand that it is not ok to cry in front of anyone and everyone.
Just like when grey clouds burst and…
The sky cries, there are droplets and rain and water everywhere. There is a lot of inconvenience to humans. Some humans enjoy it but some find it annoying when it’s raining.
People who don’t like the sky crying will try to stop the sky. Somehow resisting its natural occurrence. What would happen then? Would it not always be grey and cloudy and depressing and emotionless as grey and cloudy clouds weren’t allowed to be free of themselves?
I feel the same happens When humans cry. It should be seen as an activity of self-soothing. Emotional tears release happy hormones like Oxytocin and endorphins making you feel better. The impact of something on you gets to decide how much you are going to feel bad about it. You are not in control of that.
But then if you are not given the Liberty to come back home when Everything is falling apart when you are overwhelmed and you did not speak to anyone in the entire day and you just want someone who can talk to you and you cry just to let that bubble out of you to let that emotion flow out of you but you are not allowed to do so I don’t know if you if the four walls you call your home is.
Hi, I am Twinkle, and here are three topics I write about — solopreneurship, work-life balance, and my perspectives. If they interest you, please hit follow and add some claps to motivate the writer in me. Thanks, I appreciate you here.
