What Do Our Tears Really Mean Or Say About Us As A Person? It DO NOT Signify Weakness!

  Tears are your body’s release valve for stress, sadness, grief, anxiety, and pain. You also have tears of joy such as when a child is born or tears of relief, as when a difficulty has passed. I am grateful when I can cry. I wish I could do it more. It feels cleansing to purge pent- up emotions so they don’t lodge in my body as stress symptoms such as fatigue or pain. To stay healthy and release stress, I encourage my patients to cry. For both men and women, tears are a sign of courage, strength, and authenticity. Research has shown that tears have many health benefits. Like the ocean, tears are salt water. They lubricate your eyes, remove irritants, and reduce stress hormones and they contain antibodies that fight infection. Our bodies produce three kinds of tears: reflex, continuous, and emotional. Each kind has different healing functions. For instance, reflex tears remove noxious particles from your eyes when they’re irritated. The second kind, continuous tears, keep your eyes and nose lubricated. The third kind, emotional tears, stimulate the production of endorphins, our body’s natural painkillers which help us recover from trauma. Crying also helps the body excrete stress hormones. Interestingly, humans are the only creatures known to shed emotional tears though elephants and gorillas may do so too. Crying makes us feel better, even when a problem persists. Along with physical detoxification, emotional tears heal a broken heart. You don’t want to hold tears back. Patients sometimes say, “Please excuse me for crying. I was trying not to because it makes me feel weak.” I know where that sentiment comes from: parents who were uneasy around tears, a society that tells us we’re weak for crying, and in particular that “real men don’t cry.” Also, we may feel that it’s too painful to cry, that floodgates of anguish might open that can’t be closed. I reject these notions. The new enlightened paradigm of what constitutes a powerful man or woman is someone who has the strength and self- awareness to cry— and if necessary the willingness to seek support to deal with overwhelming feelings. These are the people who impress me, not those who put up some macho front of faux bravado. Try to let go of clichéd conceptions about crying. Crying is necessary to work through grief. When waves of tears come over us after we experience a loss, they are helping us process the loss so that we can keep living with open hearts. Otherwise, we are leaving ourselves open to depression, bitterness, or physical symptoms (emotional pain can morph into disease in our bodies) if we suppress these potent feelings. The point isn’t to get consumed by emotional pain but to resolve it . When a friend apologized for curling up in the fetal position on my floor and weeping over a failing romance, I told her, “Your tears blessed my floor. There is nothing to apologize for.” Thank God our bodies can cry. I hope you too can surrender to your tears. Let them purify suffering and negativity.