Positive tears: what are they, and why crying can be a good thing

We generally associate crying with negative events and feelings of sadness or melancholy, but this is not always the case.

The tears we shed are sometimes caused by positive emotions and even when they are not, they can also have a beneficial effect. We are going to review all these questions to discover the importance of positive tears.

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What are positive tears?

The concept of positive tears has to do with the types of crying that are generated by pleasant emotions or by situations in which tears, despite coming from unpleasant events, have a positive effect on the person who is in tears. Let's not forget that crying has an evolutionary function in human beings, because it is an event that only occurs in our species.

Why we cry has been the subject of long-standing research. Scientists discovered three basic forms of crying. The first is the basal one, the one that occurs automatically as a means of keeping the eye lubricated and eliminating any foreign body that may have come into contact with it. The second is the reflex and takes place when we are exposed to certain gases or substances released by the onion, for example.

The third is the most important of all, it is the one that refers to psychic crying. This type of crying is produced by a variety of emotions. We usually associate it with negative emotions such as sadness, pain, melancholy, anger, frustration, fear, etc. But keep in mind that it is perfectly possible to have a psychic cry caused by much more pleasant emotions, such as joy, laughter, love or gratitude, among others.

Positive tears would be all the latter, but also those that come from negative emotions if this cry contributes to the person feeling better, as it is a form of emotional catharsis that contributes to causing an improvement in the person's mood, self-regulating in the face of an experience that is causing very emotions intense.

What are the benefits of positive tears

We have already formed a general idea of ​​what positive tears represent. Now we must continue to dig deeper to know what are the main benefits that we can obtain from them.

1. Emotional regulation

Surely the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of positive tears are those coming from a very happy situation, in which emotion overwhelms us, and there is the key to the first benefit. And it is that positive tears they would be acting as an escape valve to regulate said emotion and help us digest what we are experiencing, because even if it is a pleasant event, it can be too intense.

This intensity can cause a saturation of our emotional assimilation systems and that is where the mechanism of tears comes in. positive, which help us to lower this intensity and thus be able to assimilate what we are living in a simpler way for our organism.

But the most important thing about this phenomenon is that It does not have to do with the direction of the emotion, that is, if it is positive or negative, but with the intensity of it. For this reason, positive tears also occur when we experience an unpleasant emotion like the ones we have mentioned above, since also in these cases they will be acting as a form of regulation before the intensity.

Thanks to crying we are able to assimilate more quickly intense situations that would otherwise overwhelm us. Hence, emotional regulation is the first of the benefits of positive tears and surely the most important of them all.

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2. A form of communication

Positive tears have other uses. One of them is communicate and convey to others what our emotional state is. Sometimes words are not enough and must be complemented by non-verbal language. This is where crying would come in, which would act as a form of body language to make our interlocutor see what our current state is and what we need about it.

This communication brings with it empathy, since the simple fact of seeing someone cry already provokes in the like a reaction to try to calm and comfort the one who is suffering that overflow emotional. In that sense, positive tears would be a way of communicating to others that we are living a situation that surpasses us and that we need help or attention to be able to feel better when respect.

3. Overcome pain and stress

We talked in the first point about the capacity of positive tears of reestablish a balance in our emotional state. This, in certain situations, is coupled with another effect, which is the reduction of stress and pain that we may be suffering. This is due to a series of substances that our body releases during crying. Some of them are leucine-enkephalin, ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone), potassium or prolactin.

These elements modulate our state, acting as if they were an analgesic. Consequently, the pain we feel, which can be physical or emotional, will decrease, thus providing us with the calm we need. This mechanism works equally in stressful situations that have managed to overwhelm us.

According to some studies carried out in this regard, crying generates a more pleasant sensation than what we had previously. The data indicate that 73% of men and 85% of women perceive this effect in this way, which supports the hypothesis of the power of tears positive as a determining factor to reduce our discomfort and reduce in this way the possible stress or pain that we were suffering.

4. Sleep improvement

Among the benefits of positive tears we find another not inconsiderable. And it is that this type of crying has an influence on the quality of our sleep, making this one better. It is a chain effect, because by regulating our emotions and softening the state of stress in which we find ourselves, we also free our mind from a series of thoughts disturbing.

By having a clearer head in this regard, it will be easier to fall asleep and complete cycles, thus getting a better rest. We cannot forget how important it is for our health to enjoy quality sleep. When we lack this element, we suffer an impact at all levels of our life, thus that being able to count on a tool such as positive tears represents a whole advantage.

5. Self-knowledge

Self-awareness is another of the rewards that positive tears make so helpful. It may seem strange, but the simple fact of being able to observe us cry in a certain situation can provide us with a lot of information and help us to know ourselves more in depth. Because however many years we have, we can always get to know each other better.

If a certain event causes us such intense joy or sadness that we begin to shed tears, we can go one step further and analyze the situation, investigating about the components of this event that have managed to shake us emotionally in such a way that our body has had to resort to crying to reestablish its Balance.

Obviously there are situations that are very negative or very positive by themselves and it is tremendously logical that they trigger a certain response in us, but other times we We face much more subtle events, such as a certain scene in a movie, a conversation with someone or witnessing a daily act, which manages to move us.

It is those scenes that will open a door of exploration towards ourselves, giving us some clues about what we keep in the depths of our being, like those experiences or people that marked us at some point, although we have never stopped to think about it.

6. Better mood

Finally, another of the contributions that positive tears have for us is the improvement they bring to our mood. We have made a tour of different benefits of this mechanism and they all have something in common, that they generate well-being and regulation in our state. All this redounds, as it cannot be otherwise, in our humor or our spirit.

Thanks to the escape valve that crying supposes, once normality is restored, we will find ourselves better, more relaxed and with more resources to face the situations of our day to day, having left behind an emotional overflow that was blocking us temporarily.

Once all these advantages are known, we will be aware of the importance of positive tears in our daily lives.

Bibliographic references:

• Arias, M. (2011). Neurology of laughter and humor: pathological laughter and crying. Journal of Neurology.
• Levav, M. (2005). Neuropsychology of emotion. Particularities in childhood. Argentine Journal of Neuropsychology.
• Together we cry: Social motives and preferences for group-based sadness
• Porat, R., Halperin, E., Mannheim, I., Tamir, M. (2016). Together we cry: Social motives and preferences for group-based sadness. Cognition and Emotion. Taylor & Francis.
• Walter, C. (2006). Why do we cry? Scientific American Mind.