Why do people cry?

This was a very interesting and insightful article. Very well written. It was educational as well as entertaining. I will be certain to forward this to my friends and colleagues.

Interesting article!

Excellent article. it answers many of the questions I’ve always had. Thank you.

Very insightful. I always thought I felt better after a “good cry” and now I know why!

Great article! Very interesting! I want to see more from this writer!

Very insightful and enjoyable read….are there other places this author can be found?

i like this.

This article brought tears to my eyes… tears of joy that is… because it is so true. Bravo, more from this talented author is a must.

The article is good, but one also may cry because of extreme joy or excitement! I do believe that crying has to have a rational basis (but many therapists disagree with that).
Crying is a response to a trigger and becomes irrational without it, just like laughter and anger are …
A lot of women (and some men) nowadays tend to cry for no visible reason, and when asked why they cry they will often say things like: “I dunno, I cry because it makes me feel better” and when you ask: “feel better about what?” they will respond with: “I don’t know”. It appears to me that many women, and some men have lost their senses and cry for cying sake … what a bunch of cry babies …. don’t cry now you hear lol

OKay, but wait, I dont get one thing now adays. Some people that I know are not simply cry babies but, they cry for a little reason and can seem to stop crying, its like their drowning in depression. And they feel guilty for OTHER peoples problems.

xcellent.. I got a very convincing answer.

Okay, the author covered that you cry for joyful reasons too (ref.There are also culturally acceptable reasons for crying that bring people together, such as at funerals or WEDDINGS.)As for not knowing the reason why some women and men cry is from build up of emotions that they didn’t release over years, and like the author said, stress. I’d say the majority of people don’t like to cry infront of people so when they’re around people and they want to cry and they don’t it builds up and keeps building up until they breakdown. Quote: “breaking down to tears”. This article made me feel like it’s okay to cry, it gave me the reason why I cry and why i feel better after crying. Thank you so much for this article.

Amanda

I’m doing a science project and found this article. Thanks, it really helped me out! I got a bit of really interesting information. I hope it makes my presentation really great! Now I understand that crying actually has a reason. :*-D

Aubrey

i was actually searching what makes people upset and make them shed tears, and i found this article, interesting one, well done, and simple and the best one… cleared too many doubts i had..

What does it mean if you feel like crying and possibly want to cry, but the tears don’t come out?

as for the question above, i think it has to do with the level of emotions. if you feel like crying, but the emotions aren’t strong enough, i think they don’t come out. that’s just my personal opinion.

as for the article, its fantastic. i have always wondered why people cry and now i have the answer.

thank you =]

From my perspective it was great reading about the different types of tears. it was therefore beneficial to me and may be of interest to others that may come about this article.once again, well done.it is there also that people do read these articles

Ur article rocks…..Its a wonderful piece written and balanced perfectly….Thanks

you absolute loosers.

I had read a few years ago that tears were analyzed for their chemical components and it was discovered that chemeicals related to stress and other negative states of wellbeing were found to be shed in the tear, so the tear was actually part of a cleansing process, which I have no problem believing just knowing what I feel when I cry.

There was a time when I stopped crying for a few years, and believe me, not only was I in a horrible state of mind, but my body felt badly too, kind of achey and yet there seemed to be some kind of disconnectedness. It was bad. Later, when I had healed a bit from my emotional trauma, I could cry again and the acheyness stopped and I felt all around better.

I have no doubt that tears are used for communication purposes, but that doesn’t tell us what is going on when a person is crying alone or secretively. No, I believe tears are much more than what this article says they are – it’s too bad that the authors don’t leave the door open to other meanings and interpretations.

I’m a perfectly healthy being I cry all the time, THIS ARTICLE IS SO GOOD I COULD CRY.

ok well it covered the reason why people cry but it did not cover why people cry for no reason or very little reason. People who cry for no reason or very little reason have a emotional disorder and should talk to their doctor, they could have a severe hormonal inbalance. So anyone that knows some one who crys all the time for no reason or very little reason should tell them to go see their doctor and figure things out.

huh

Amber is very rude i luv u aubery we both are on the same page

The article tells us why we cry, but not how we cry, i.e, what the Brain does in reaction of aan action of emotion or sadness. I wanted to know this. I know why i cry, im sad or other, but why do we cry.

Exsample:

Itching is coursed by irritation from fibres and creats a sence if pain to the brain, which in turn makes the itch feel to you.

So i ask again, why do we cry ?

I too would like to know ‘why’- what turns the ‘for no or little reason’ tears on? Amanda says it is an emotional problem – maybe there is a check list for possible ‘disorders’, besides depression. Maybe some insight would be helpful in controlling the ‘no or little reason’ tears – which can be embarassing..

i find that things can trigger tears in me when I dont want to cry or feel like crying. The memory of something that was stressful years ago can trigger tears but i really dont want to cry. Sometimes at work, I find that if we have to discuss something, it makes me tearful. Intellectually I don’t particularly care, but it’s like some people may sweat in certain circumstances, but I cry. It’s really embarrassing as I don’t want to cry. It puts people off meetings with me as they are frightened i will cry. Why does this happen? what can i do to control it? can i change my diet, would that help?

I thought this article was very interesting, and it helped with my french project very much!
Thanks!

I’m trying to find out why my breathing rate is interrupted when I cry, or becomes sort of a pulse of sorts when exhaling — or inhaling for that matter (if that makes sense — somewhat like laughing), and things like that. I wonder if perhaps that’s left over from babyhood when noisy crying may be needed to get somebody’s attention. Or maybe it’s an inadvertent effort to avoid crying. I don’t know, just hoping to find out one day.

nice article.. i havent cried in 3 years!

Greetings From Australia

boring

phew! im 12, and for some reason i cry when i feel very little pain, even if it doesn’t hurt me that much. it’s one of my darkest secrets, and personally i HATE it! at least i know im not a wuss i guess

when i am sad, i cry and it relaxes me,but when i cry for a long time while feeling sad, it doesnt relaxes but gives a pain to my eyes and the pain remains unless i sleep again (seems sleep rejuvenates my eyes :))and why does it happen that sometime we also make noises or even scream while crying? a lot of people do this, i wonder why? and again, sometimes it happens that we feel pain and we want to cry, cry a lot, but the tears dont come. Why does it happen? where do the tears go then?

My Dad is 78. He cried a few times when I was a kid but was and alpha male personality. He crys over bad and joyful memories at anytime or anywhere. He stops crying when you focus your attention on him. Is he lonely and crying to get attention? He is vocal. When I cry it is in private and quite and I always feel ten times better. Back to my Dad I have noticed that he laughs at the wrong time and he only thinks of himself. He never asks about anyone else and always thinks of himself and is trying to sort through things before, mostly.

this article was excellent!!! i am 12 and i just wanted to know why people cry. this website link surely did the job of giving excellent information and facts!!

yep … i like the article especially the last sentence.very relieving. but i need to know why ppl cry when they r happy. anyway keep up the good job. though irrelevent here i my dog cry at night. he behaves like human. makes us believe its a human. he go where our sound is. cry at night. takes any amount of food. not much of barking,friendly with the strangers. all look strange.by the way thanks for the good work

plz elaborate more about ppl who use tears to convince others and get attention

I’ve always been curious about tears…one thing I’ve always wondered about…why do some people’s eyebrows slant with the inner tips rising upward at the bridge of their nose toward the middle of their forehead when they cry while others’ brows do not? It’s an interesting phenominon I’ve seen and have always wondered about. Anyone know by chance or can anyone point me to a site that answers this eyebrow phenominon?

it sucked and I have never cried in my life. It’s all a load of balls and I never wantto see it again!

Charlotte T? You Suck ! I Am Crying Whilst Reading This !

wel i totally disagree
i think you are a complete and utter WUSS
you should get a grip or reality
this site, as i said, is a load of balls
crap
coddlewomp
and everything else shitty
you should just get back into your hole
and suck on cheese
love from Charlotte Thorpe

wel i totally disagree
i think you are a complete and utter WUSS
you should get a grip or reality
this site, as i said, is a load of balls
crap
coddlewomp
and everything else shitty
you should just get back into your hole
and suck on cheese
love from Charlotte Thorpe x

This is an abomination
ABOMINATION

ABOMINATIONNN!!!!

abomination my arse
its diabolical
despicable
unbelievable
just get lost the lot of u
im through with this

I don’t think it really answers the question. We all know the literal reason why people cry, cause of there emotions but whyDoes your body react by, Flooding your face w/ blood (turniing it red) and causing tears, typically used for more practical things like cleaning the eyes, to come in large amounts.

hallo,
hier in deutchland es ist fantastisch
ich bin sehr gross
mein dick freunde ist wunderbar im das schlafzimmer
danke und gut nacht :)

bonjour
je m’appelle greg
j’adore la website
c’est tres tres bien
le people a francais are tres bien a la chambre, a le amoir.
merci

an interesting article.why do some people roll down tears when they vomit?

hmmmmm.
that was terrible french.
and completely irrelevant.
crying is badass.

Thank you Emily Driscoll! In response to some of the comments.. I don’t think there is such thing as crying for no reason. Even if we can’t put a finger on why we are crying, it’s only because the subconscience is keeping this information from us, and this creates imbalance and stress, and requires a lot of energy. Kind of off-topic, but if you don’t know the reason you’re crying, start writing stream-of-consciousness and reread what you’ve written out loud. I’ve found the real reason behind my emotional tears so many times by doing this.

I heard somewhere though, that you cried our of fear frustration and anger, or from being overwhelmed, not really out of sadness?

oh, and pain.

I am a preacher and let me tell you, I am using this in my sermon on sunday night this is a great study of how and why humans cry

Usually when I meet a psychology major on campus, I ask them one question: Why do we cry?

The answers vary to say the least. Most are dumbfounded by the question. It’s interesting to think of emotional tears as a means of communication like yelling out “Pay Attention To ME!”

The more we understand ourselves and the more we neutralize our neuro-network, then perhaps we will dry up our emotional tears and get on with our lives. Who knows?

p.s. Radioflyer was the first movie to make me cry as a kid. My sister’s was All Dogs Go To Heaven. It’s interesting the cultural moments that trigger our need for flushing out the system.

And speaking of vomit and tears from above. I became so upset once after breaking up with my girlfriend that I drove away from the house in tears. As I was crying and barely making myself along the straight road, I just up and puked out the window. Weird.

during grief the body wants to cleanse itself.

excuse e moir
mes francais ce super
je mange une chocalate
yummmmmm
salut
p.s vous all suck

I agree with andrew, i believe that when u feel any emotional stress, ur body automatically tries to cleanse and rehabilitate itself. i mean who doesnt feel better after a warm shower? u know….like a self-comferting thing..

this article was very well written. It was very imformational and it helped me a lot for an anatomy paper i had to write. :)

Animals definitely feel emotion, anyone who has had a pet should know that.

Isn’t the word cries not crys.

it is true that cries do release person from stress..but what is actually the mechanism occured in our eyes when we experienced some emotional situation and sometimes why do people tend to cry non-stop and how did the tears run out and where is the water comes from??any scientific explanation behind this, i really need to know..

wow. i cry a lot. i really i do. this artical was SO deep…. i couldn’t help but cry. i was just devastatedto find out that when you cry it has health benefits,,, especially becasue i’m the kind of person who HATES being healthy…. wow just writing this amazing comment is making me cry..

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!
(the beauty of my tree made me cry!)

i cry for only 2 reasons.
1. i shit myself and lick windows.
2. i shit myself and lick windows.

i cant help it…. and nobody exept Larry the cow understands me. i feel so alone…. but then i go outside and larry is there waiting for me…
one day he was so happy to see me that he tramples my face and broke my glasses…. but i know it was just an accident. LArry was the best thing to ever happen to me. I am crying just thinking about everything Larry has done for me…. in fact i think i’ll go lick a window in memory of this fine cow. (ps. it offends me when people say “bull shit” becasue larry was a bull until my master cut his testacles off and he became gay. so from now on please say “cow shit!” thank you!

why people cry

why the heart is stop

OMD
MY EYE LOOKS LIKE THAT

Yep, sorrow & sadness do it for me. Total strangers on the tube (that I know are acting) get my best tears. Crying, in my opinion, is an emotion all to itself, not just a response to sadness or happiness. I’m often extremely sad and extremely happy, am I beyond shedding tears? When I cry I generally think God is showing himself, he has shown his grace through my tears ~ sadness will lift and be washed away. In return, I’ll work on eliminating the cause of the sorrow.
Peace

I have been told that when a person cries the only reason is because that person is feeling sorry for themselves????? Please help me as I absolutly do not believe this.

I agree that this article, or whatever you want to call it, is well written/typed.

My favorite part in the article was definitely the part about animals and their emotions. I read each and every comment word for word and my favorite comment is #64. :D

I stumbled upon this article, because I was looking up a quote by Crying Wolf from Metal Gear Solid 4, because one of my friends from school told me that I looked like her, so one day I got curious and I looked her up on YouTube. A few lines that interested me (from which she said) were “Cry if you need to … I’ve cried myself dry, so cry as much as you like. I will be there to listen.”

I pasted what she said into the Yahoo search bar and from all of that said, it’s obvious how this article was linked to what I was searching for. :P

Btw, I know this is a long comment, but that French comment was seriously horrible. x] Also, I think I have great grammar for a 15 year old and half of these comments are so improper and misspelled. Thanks God for spell check, right? Lmao!

-Jamie

But, why do people *cry*? If people are stressed and have an overload of those chemicals and hormones, why can’t they just release tears instead of sobbing and having all of the other physical actions that accompany crying?

Very, very good article. I have always wondered this.

luv this article! i was searching for something to do my article (WSNR) in science class for and all of a sudden my sister started crying. i got interested and started googling it and found scienceline! (not a first time user)
love ya all-_-

I love this whole page! It made me laugh. I actually just got done crying cuz my girlfriend.
:( so I was just curious to know why I cry! Although I know.

And really I cry because I’m sad or hurt, sometimes very angry. I believe that crying is healthy but I also believe that it can be un healthy if you’re doing it for attention in a negative way to continue feeling sorry for yourself.

Many times I cry when I really feel sadness and lonelyness deep in my stomach’s little soul. When my girlfriend and I fight I cry, because it’s very painful and it hurts. Or EVEN when she just sounds mean or insensitive in her voice!but because I am so sensitive…I also cry because of dissapointment, or when I feel my brothers and sisters pain.

But I only cry when I feel it! If Its something I think about that I am sensitive to, I tear up. If I feel it, if my body feels my emotions… I just cry so hard and loud depending on what it is. It doesn’t ever feel good to cry, but atleast I know why I am. And I will admit whenever I feel lonely, I cry for myself.

However, I cry hard but quiet when I feel lonely or sad for real personal reasons and I squeeze my pillow. But when I’m angry or upset because of a right then issue I cry loud and VERY hard, but where its still private. Its weird because when I’m crying because of a then issue its usually something I can get over! But honestly I think that the more intense cry is somewhat releasing those other feelings of real deep emotional feelings with my then issues.
And of course I always feel better with a vent cry.

But yes, CRY!!! Its good.

BY THE WAY
I love my girlfriend she’s the best jerkiest tear jerker JERK EVER!and when I cry with her or because of her its because she is soley the most important person to me ever.

But like the old wiseman said…

Crying is like your bowels! If you don’t let the bad stuff out in someway, then you’re constipated with loads of little balls, waiting…….. And waiting………………..until “BOOM!” Your rectum EXPLODES!!!!

Its just natural, so do it!

I was crying for no reason yesterday, decided to investigate….a friend of mine happened to be covering drug withdraw in school yesterday as well. I mentioned that I had been trying to quit pot – hadn’t smoked it since Sunday…she said that was one of the main symptoms of the withdraw – crying for no reason. Usually I have no appetite, don’t hardly eat for days, and cry…which gives me a reason – hunger. This time I have an appetite, but was crying anyways.
It was quite annoying, really.

iam crying a lot here lately because of being sad because my dad yells at me when i am in truble.

This is a very great piece of information.
It has helped me out alot with my Inquiry project.
THANK YOU!!!!

cool

Dats gr8!

So your saying black people can’t cry because their sad?

Wow I havn’t cried in a while…maybe a few tears on the last day of school last week..my tears will turn into a river but I need to build a bridge and get the hell over it

i love lil miss geeky
ztrasbitte
pluchova
nichevo
Pandas are dying out mainly because of one main reason: habitat loss. Their main source
of food is bamboo, which takes a long time to grow. This problem wasn’t present when
pandas were spread throughout the massive south-east of Asia, including China. Hence,
when a forest of bamboo was being consumed by them, they could simply move to an-
other bamboo forest, but the supply grew harder to find or reach.

lollll

okay i just sat there and read the comments and half of u guys are sooo retarted!!!!

first of all, if u hav a nasty comment, keep it to urself. nobody wants to hear it! tht was an amazing article and id like to c u do better…

… which we all know u cant. im only 12 but i can tell u one thing, this author is awesome and he shuld keep writing becuz he just got me an A on my report

i rely liked tht article… it was rely educational :)

I agree with #83, what’s the point of leaving nasty comments, it’s pathetic.

I thought this article was really informative, well written and easy to read. I myself cry quite alot and like many of you when i’m angry or frustrated, when i’ve had to bite my tongue when dealing with fools at work. I hate it because i feel it makes me look weak!

But after reading this i don’t think i really care how it makes me look to people’s who’s opinions are too pointless to concern me. I’m pleased that’s it’s the realise of those troublesome chemicals, i always feel much better after a good cry once i’ve gotten over the embarrassment and this explains why.

Nice to see so many supportive comments too :o)

wow. i’ve never thought much about why i cry or how it makes me feel better after but after reading this magnificent article, it realized that its okay to cry.

the author is very intellectual. thank you for sharing the knowledge :)

it will be nice if we analyse crying vs laughing.

Thanks for solving a teatime discussion!

ahahahahahaha what a joke. dude, animals cry, just because they don’t have tears when they cry means nothing. kittens cry as babies, my dog cries whimpers and howls when lonely. What is this nonsense about animals not feeling. ahahahahaahah what ignorant sob wrote this.

init reet
listen k
cryin iz for fkin ponces
if ur ard like us then
u got nwt to worry about
I SAY I SAY
what is going on here
all this chit chat nonsence
i love you all no need to cry
SEX IS GOOD.
AMEN.

I thought it was a good article, i was searching about weather its only humans that cry and found this an interesting read.

I can’t understand the mentality of some people on here though, obviously “Charlotte Thorpe” has some issues, she or he was obviously looking about crying too, to then dismiss what he/she found because of their background maybe your daddy beat you or something more synster.

but i get the Jist of what is being said on the article, we cry to compensate for the over use of chemicals in our body to release them, thus releaving the “sorrow, pity,stress, anger and laughter (we’ve all found something redicoulsly funny, and have ended up crying while laughing) i’m guessing too much of an emoitional chemical in the body which is released can be a bad thing, so it expells it quickly and easily through the tear ducts, bringing the levels back to a sustainable level, i mean it wouldn’t be fun to live if every emotion you felt was rocketed out of you via your bladder or some other unholy place.

we are a species that relies heavily on our emotions, so a natural way of removing too much chemicals released would be the obvious quickest way.

So i suppose people who cry for no reason have less tollerance to the chemcals so the body dispells them sooner than an average person

I’m a 50 year old male that cries nearly every day now. At least half the time it’s not about me. I cry alot thinking about things in my internet friends’ lives. And I’ve never even had any contact with them off the internet. And I cry for animals. It’s always in private, and I can straighten up fast if I need to attend to something. Lately I have been crying more often for myself as the economy worsens and a return to a better life seems increasingly hopeless. I went years without crying when I was younger, and I cried at appropriate times in other years when I was younger. But it seems I can trace the daily crying back to the time I successfully quit smoking cigarettes 7 years ago. I don’t know if that might indicate some chemical imbalance, or the nicotine steeled my nerves, or if the cigarette habit provided me a distraction.

Great Article, answers all my questions.

This helped me a TON with my Enlgish essay(: Thnx A LOT!! :) Really appreciate it =D

94th!!!!!!

Good article,then which part of the brain is responsible for crying?why some people cry when they are happy?