3 Reasons Why Crying Is Necessary for Healing and Personal Growth

Do you cry out loud when you are in pain? or try to suppress because people would laugh out loud? Crying is necessary for healing and personal growth. You don’t believe me? Then read to know what science says.

Did you know that human beings aren’t the only animals that feel sadness? Almost all animals express sadness, depression, and loneliness in their own way.  In fact, almost all mammals mourn the loss of their offspring. But human beings are the only type of animal that is taught self-expression should be tamed or suppressed. Girls are told to stop being so “sensitive”, and boys are told to “be a man” and toughen up. Boys are taught that crying too much means they are a sissy, and girls are told crying too much makes them crazy.

We aren’t told that crying is actually essential and is something we should do more of if we feel it’s what we need to do to express ourselves. We develop resistance to crying, which causes emotional suppression and psychological and physical complications.  We bottle up our emotions and expect them to take care of themselves when the cure to our problems is sometimes as simple as allowing ourselves to actually feel deeply for a moment.

Contrary to what we are told by society, crying is actually health and should come as naturally to us as smiling if it’s what we feel in a moment.  

Here are some key reasons why crying is necessary for healing and personal growth:

1) It clears your energy field

Crying is for your energy field like showering is for your body.  It releases built up emotions and feelings and gets energy moving through your chakras in the way that nature intended.  

Your body is not stupid.  It knows what it needs to feel and when.  It’s just a matter of giving yourself permission to feel what you feel and look passed any social programming or conditioning that is preventing you from opening up to your own emotions.

If you feel the tension in your energy field, it is usually because of suppressed emotions and you are holding on to something. To fully let go, you can’t just let go in your mind. You have to also let go in your energy field, and you do this by stopping the habit of resisting vulnerability and holding back tears.

Related: 6 Ways Being An Emotional Person Is A Blessing In Disguise

2) It allows more to come up

Every time I cry, more and more bubbles up that I didn’t even realize was there.  For example, anger is a typical defense mechanism to cover up pain and fear. When you allow yourself to see past your anger and into your pain, you will realize that you are only angry because you are in pain or are scared of being in pain again. When you realize you are in pain, you will begin to cry and start to discover why.

What starts off as you crying overseeing your boyfriend talking to another girl ends up in being you crying over feeling rejected by all-male figures in your life and how you are afraid of non-acceptance by males.

And crying over this makes you realize that you really wish your father would reach out to you, and makes you realize that you wouldn’t feel so insecure in your relationship if you repaired your relationship with your dad.   The more you cry, the more things comes up from your subconscious mind. So, crying is necessary for healing.

Related: 7 Science-Backed Reasons Why Spending Time Alone Makes You More Successful

3) It prevents serious health issues

Suppression of emotion can lead to serious health issues. Bioenergetics is the science of home emotions and psychological issues translate into the body and get stored in the forms of diseases and pain.  

For example, if you have a defence system that turns pain into anger and gets stored in you as anger, you are literally poisoning your body with the amount of stress hormones that are released from the body.  90% of all diseases are either caused or worsened by stress in the body, and burying emotions causes hormones like stress, adrenaline, and cortisol to be produced in the body.

Crying is a form of physiological release.  It is the way the body is designed to handle and process emotions, and when we force our bodies against their natural reactions, it will always cause complications somewhere else within the body.  It’s almost like trying to force yourself not to sweat because you have been told that sweating is for “wussies”.  Sweating is your bodies way of cooling itself down, and if you were able to hold in the sweat to try to seem more manly or less crazy, you would cause yourself to overheat.  The same can be said with tears.

Related: 7 Things You Need To Do To Heal Emotionally

I’ve had to cry recently over various things, sometimes in public and sometimes in front of family members who haven’t seen me cry before.  The part of me that is socially programmed wanted to hide it from them, but if we can’t even feel comfortable being honest in our words and form of expression with how we truly feel, society is not worth living in.  

It’s backed by science why crying is necessary for healing. Don’t ever feel embarrassed, crazy, or ashamed for crying for any reason.  The reasons for your tears are always going to be more valid than reasons to hold them back.

References:

• Fooladi, M.M., 2005. The healing effects of crying. Holistic Nursing Practice, 19(6), pp.248-255.
• Griffith, M.B., Hall, J.M. and Fields, B., 2011. Crying that heals: Concept evaluation. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 29(3), pp.167-179.
• Nelson, J.K., 2008. Crying in psychotherapy: Its meaning, assessment, and management based on attachment theory. In Emotion Regulation (pp. 202-214). Springer, Boston, MA.
• Gračanin, A., Bylsma, L.M. and Vingerhoets, A.J., 2014. Is crying a self-soothing behavior?. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, p.502.

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