A Good Cry Makes You Stronger And Healthier

We like to keep ourselves constantly busy and at times forget to get in touch with our emotions. You are not a robot set on autopilot - wake up, work, gym, dinner, sleep, repeat! So if you need a healthy emotional release to alleviate sadness or express relief, try crying. Don’t be scared to show your emotions and let out a few tears.

Humans are hardwired to cry it is innate. Sorry guys who think that you are stronger for not showing your emotions. Science proves that everyone cries! Tears are a salty fluid chock full of protein, water, mucus and oil is released from the lacrimal gland which come out of the outer region of your eye. And in fact there are three types of tears: basal, reflex and emotional. Basal tears are omnipresent in our eyes and keep our eyes from drying. Reflex tears protect the eye from irritants like smoke and dust. Emotional tears - the ones most associate with crying and what this piece will speak to - start in the cerebrum where sadness is registered and then the endocrine system is then triggered to release hormones which causes tears to form.

Crying can be a very healthy emotional release, particularly if you are experiencing deep pain, sadness, anger or act as a release valve to help you release stress. Dr. Fran Walfish - Beverly Hills relationship psychotherapist, author, The Self-Aware Parent, and co-star, Sex Box, WE tv - believes that a 'good cry' is, "extremely healthy and therapeutic as it releases and expels pent up powerful emotions of pain." Dr. Walfish defines a 'good cry' as when one's feelings are hurt or the person is feeling sad; but that creating a ritual of crying to get in touch with one's feelings similar to meditation is ridiculous. Lesson here is crying is good, but crying excessively, not so much.

So it is important that people know how to regulate their emotions to construct a building block of resilience. “Knowing when to hold your emotions in and when to release them is a skill that takes practice. So when the time is right, have a good cry as you are literally building your resilience and washing away your stress at the same time!" says Paula Davis-Laack, JD, MAPP, is a resilience and burnout prevention expert working with companies and the busy professionals in them to reduce and prevent burnout, build more resilience to stress, and create healthier workplaces.

Stacy Kaiser, Live Happy Editor at Large and licensed psychotherapist, believes that a 'good cry', "makes a room in the emotional storage bin for more positive and happy feelings.” This storage bin can get pretty full on a daily basis due to some common factors in daily life which include: stress at work, trouble with finances and just the sheer exhaustion from trying to juggle it all!

Allowing yourself to get in touch with these deep emotions can be painful and at times uncomfortable. Marilyn Barnicke Belleghem M.Ed, relationship consultant and speaker and author of books on personal growth through travel, notes that "crying tends to bring issues to the surface that were in the subconscious but not in conscious awareness." When these emotions are brought to the front of our conscious, we are forced to feel in the present moment. But allowing yourself to reach deep and live in that painful moment is uncomfortable. Kristen Martinez - M.Ed., Ed.S., LMHCA, NCC Co-Founder, Psychotherapist, & LGBT+ Affirmative Counselor at Pacific NorthWell - mentions that a colleague frames the resistance to feeling emotions as being 'emotionally constipated' which happens when you don't allow yourself to feel emotions as you have them. Instead, “you stuff them all inside, pretty soon you're ‘backed up’ so to speak, and all the while you haven't found a way to acknowledge them and, in doing so, resolve them healthily.”

But in the non-stop fast-moving society we live in where we are always busy, we forget to get in touch with our emotions. Hayley Smith, spokesperson for Drop-in Silence - a brand new pop up that is encouraging people to switch off and discover the benefits of silence, whilst reconnecting with themselves and their emotions - reiterates that, “in the 21st century, in a world dominated by schedules and technology, we can often become 'zombies' and forget to connect to ourselves. Finding peace, tranquility and reflection and reconnecting and focusing on mindfulness is essential.”

Only the weak cry. We are ingrained with this mantra. But this is simply incorrect as in order to reach out to and connect to your emotions, and accept how you feel and openly cry or share what is happening is a sign of true strength.

Tears signal that you have hit upon something significant and Lisa Caroselli - Certified Love Attraction Coach (CLAC) and Licensed CLAC Trainer - concludes that, “as the tears flow out, there's a breakthrough, and people start seeing answers where there used to be only problems.”

Find Jarone Ashkenazi here @JaroneAsh