cry baby

Everyone shows their emotions differently; you scream, jump up and down, become silent, smile or frown and everyone, from time to time, cries. Whether from sadness or joy, why do we cry? When faced with troublesome news, the stress of the day or maybe just lack of sleep, we find ourselves with our faces in our hands and with tears streaming. There are three types of tears. Basal tears keep our eyes moist. Reflex tears cleanse our eyes of irritants, in the case of allergies or when cutting an onion for example. And finally, emotional tears are hormonal induced. The same nerves responsible for reflex tears reach deeper into the brain to the cerebrum which deals with emotional responses. When emotions hit in the cerebrum, hormones are released which trigger glands behind your eyes to produce tears. The emotions are triggered most commonly by stress. The positive or negative stress of good or bad news floods each of our systems differently causing various responses. Those more "sensitive" therefore produce higher levels of hormones to be released causing stronger responses, like crying.

Have you ever been in a situation which you don't really want to cry it out right there and then? Because of the hormones, holding back tears actually produces more stress making it even harder to hold in. The release of tears by crying acts as a physical release of hormones which is why, you really do feel better after letting it out and crying. Next time try focusing on the process rather than the reason to calm yourself down. Now we know, it's proven - cry it out and you'll feel better.