Sunday, July 26, 2009
Does Crying ever Solve anything?
" Crying is cathartic but it doesn't erase the cause of the tears. Better to just accept the realities of life and move on."
How true is this? Very true, to me. When i cry( during those terrible instances), i look like hell on a plate - my eyelids become so puffy no amount of cold teabags later can reduce them to the original; my nose turns so obviously pink or red against my fair face complexion, sometimes so stuffed up i can barely breathe. It could have been a frightening sight and so i rarely cry before people.
At the end of it, i still cry. Though only in the untolerable instances.
You would think that when a person reaches a certain maturity age, she would have put all that childhood crying behind her. And that if she encounters setbacks that are cry-worthy, she would have enough self-control not to hit the waterworks. For isn't crying the show of weakness and the lack of maturity?
My classmate, K can't remember having cried since he was a child.
It is a fact, though, that women cry more than men.
According to research done by biochemist William Frey in the US, girls and boys cry out about the same amount of times until they reach the age of 12. By the time they are 18, women cry on average four times more than men. WOW!
Blame it on social conditioning, it is deemed okay for women to express their emotions but males are culturally pressured to control their feelings.
Hormones play a role, too! In particular, the hormone Prolactin that is related with the production of tears as well as breast milk. Boys and girls have the same amount of Prolactin till the age of 12. The amount in girls then rises such that when they are 18, they have about 60 percent more Prolectin than boys.
Talk about differences, the tear glands in men and women are also anatmically different. According to Dr Frey's research, when men cry, 73 percent of the time their tears do not fall down their cheeks but stay within their eyelids and getting misty over it. They do not gush out like women's. When women cry, it's like a tap has been turned on and tears form rivulets down their face.
Crying is therapeutic. It's been found that crying relieves stress. When you shed "emotional" tears as opposed to "onion tears", those tears excrete toxins that had built inside your body due to stress. The act of crying also reduces the body's level of manganese, a mood affecting mineral.
Since not everyone is convinced of the crying therapy, some researchers believed that it is the effect of your crying, on people reciprocated with sympathy and support around you that comforts you.
Whatever the case, it is duly clear that crying does lessens the depth of grief whether as a result of lowering the stress levels in your body or the sympathy that gets to you.
That, would be the good news.
The bad news remains, that Crying does not solve anything.
You cannot cry a problem away as much as you going on a holiday to 'cure' a heartache, no matter how many hours you clock in gazing at the oceans or stars, tracing the name of your beloved on the sandy beaches. A loss is a loss is a loss is a loss.
Acute sadness debilitates the mind and body, but there are ways to fight it.One of the best advices i have come across is this: You can accept the loss and reconcile yourself into it's reality. In layman's term, give yourself a good cry because it is human and okay to be sad (though a shoulder to lean on is optional), then pick yourself up and get a move on.
I guess it is true there is no other way, really, if one wants to preserve one's own sanity, dignity and well-being alongside reality's play.
Talk in my flooble chatterbox! ( if your can\'t tag on the screen!(: )
