Built to Cry

By Lisa Havelin, LMFT

Our bodies are approximately 70% water. If we hold that truth and allow water to become a metaphor, we might imagine that within the envelope of our skin live tributaries, rivers, oceans, ponds, lakes, waterfalls, and wells.

When we experience grief, our tears well up. There is pressure—water pressure, pounds per square inch—seeking release. Tears offer that release, giving form and movement to emotion and easing the pressure held within us.

“Tears restore flow,” writes Karla McLaren in The Language of Emotions.

Tears often go hand in hand with grief. Over the course of human evolution—approximately 300,000 years—our physical and emotional beings adapted to survive. Grief is a process that evolved to protect us, to help us metabolize loss, and tears are an integral part of that process. Grief and tears are completely trustworthy.

We are often conditioned—explicitly or implicitly—to believe that crying is unsafe or inappropriate. Over time, those messages can make it harder to trust our tears and to feel comfortable allowing ourselves to cry. When we do cry, we often feel the need to apologize, which says a great deal about how our culture tends to view crying as something uncomfortable or unacceptable. When we constrict the impulse to cry, we dam the natural flow of the waters of our being.

Tears are an evolutionary adaptation. They help us release psychological and emotional pain—a vital safety valve that protects us from repressive coping, which has been linked to decreased immune resilience, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stress, anxiety, and depression.

Crying flushes stress hormones and toxins from our system and releases soothing neurochemicals such as oxytocin and endorphins, helping to ease both physical and emotional pain.

When it is possible for you to have a good cry, consider offering yourself these words as you let the tears release:

I cry.
I let my tears flow.
I feel my heart—
broken and beautiful,
strong and tender.
It breaks for reasons
that need no explanation
and no validation.
They are mine.
They connect me to myself
and honor my path.

Sometimes it is hard to cry—because we feel we cannot do it in front of others, because we equate it with weakness, because we don’t have time, or because we fear being overwhelmed by all the tears we have not yet shed.

When you can, find private time and space. Create the conditions that allow tears to come. And even if they do not arrive as full drops of water, allow yourself to connect with the sadness within you. Feel into your body. Sense into your heart. Touch that precious sadness with care.

And perhaps this is why tears matter so much.

In her book The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You, Karla McLaren explains that “many of us, because we’ve had such poor socialization around sadness, think that sadness is only about loss. It’s not. Sadness is also about restoring flow, ease, and relaxation… because when you finally let go of things that just don’t work, you’ll suddenly have room for things that do.”

Lisa Havelin, LMFT, specializes in the human-animal bond, grief and bereavement, trauma, somatic mindfulness, and chronic pain.