5 Benefits of Crying

Is crying good for you? It definitely can be. Think about it—the last time you had a good cry, didn’t you feel just a tiny bit better afterward? You might be surprised to learn that there are benefits of crying, and yet—just as surprising—few clinical studies have examined this very common human reaction.

Although we know very little about the answer to the question “Why do we cry?” or what effect crying has on our body, we do know that there’s a difference between irritant reflex tears—the tears that flow when dust gets in your eye or when chopping onions—and psychoemotional tears from watching a sad movie or dealing with real-life grief. Psychoemotional tears contain more prolactin, a hormone stimulated by the “love hormone” oxytocin and associated with breast-feeding and other forms of attachment, as well as leucine-enkephalin, an opioid peptide that occurs naturally in the body and mimics the effect of opioid drugs like morphine. This feel-good chemical makeup may explain some of the benefits of crying. Here are five specific ones, according to grief specialist Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD.

1. Crying helps with the grieving process. Crying is one of the most obvious physiological outcomes of feeling the pain of grief. And crying has its own timetable. We often are shocked by how frequently and intensely we cry, sometimes multiple times a day, when a loved one dies. You might wonder if crying every day for months is “normal.” (It is!) And then we often are just as surprised when we just stop crying as much, and it tapers off almost inexplicably from there. That time spent crying helps each of us understand and find a way through our own internal experience. Important: Not everyone cries after a loss, even if they would like to, and this is common as well.
2. Crying can connect us to those around us. Among the many theories about why we cry is that it is a form of social communication, an action that others can easily recognize and respond to. Crying lets other people know that we need comforting or another type of help.
3. Crying helps regulate our physiology. Think of how deep breathing helps to relax the cardiovascular system. If you’re crying in reaction to an emotional situation, the deep breathing that accompanies crying may help this important system.
4. Crying can make us feel better emotionally…or at least calmer afterward. This likely is because of the pain-relieving neurochemicals, specifically leucine-enkephalin, released when we cry.
5. Crying may help with learning and acceptance. It is common to cry when a situation is even worse than expected, but why do some of us cry at happy events…or when something happens that is much better than expected…or even watching a beautiful sunset? When we cry, our body releases oxytocin. When oxytocin floods the brain, the likelihood of making connections between neurons increases—those connections are how we learn new information. My theory: When we cry and release oxytocin and other hormones, the brain is able to process what just happened more efficiently…to take in that information and deeply understand it…making us better able to learn from the situation we find ourselves in. Examples: When we cry at our child’s wedding, we’re taking in the familial changes that are occurring. When we grieve at the loss of a loved one, we are learning to accept that he/she is no longer with us in the physical world. The idea is that crying may enable our brain to make the connection that this person’s absence is permanent and, although extremely painful, it is a part of accepting our new reality and restoring meaning in our life.