Seeing Through Tears

Crying is part of life from birth onward.. Crying is revealed to be a relationship behavior designed for emotional connection, not simply for emotional release.

Once we view crying as a relationship behavior we have a way to make sense of it. We can then learn how it helps us get closer to each other and in that way heal from pain and grief. We can also come to understand what crying and inhibited crying reveal about the nature and quality of the therapeutic and other relationships. Finally, an attachment perspective on crying offers guidance to parents, teachers and other professionals in handling infants, children, loved ones and others when they cry.

Crying is attachment behavior, but not all crying is the same.“Tears as Body Language” and “transcendent” tears, which are a rare but significant type of crying that goes beyond personal loss to a sense of universal attachment and love.

Our social environment influences our crying behavior from the moment we are born.Men’s voices “crack” with emotion, their eyes “mist;” women “break down,” or “get hysterical” or “lose control.” Cross-cultural views of crying offer a valuable perspective for understanding our own biases and patients from different cultural backgrounds.
“ Why should I cry?” said Nick Nolte’s character to the psychiatrist played by Barbra Streisand in the movie Prince of Tides when she encouraged him to cry for his dead brother, “It won’t bring Luke back.” “No,” the psychiatrist replied, “but it might bring you back.” She was right--because crying is not about “getting rid” of a bad feeling, it is about bringing us into connection with someone who can be there for us and with us. Even solitary weeping, in those with “good-enough” attachments, brings us to remembered, internalized, fantasized or symbolic caregiving and comfort. In case the joy of love is not enough to keep us bound together--parent to child or mate to mate--painful separations up the ante in favor of connection. Crying helps avoid separations in the first place, bring them to an end where possible, or restore faith in the possibility of new connections if the loss is permanent.

Crying is also linked with depression. Some depressed people get stuck in an endless cycle of weeping while others are in a frozen dry-eyed state. Do medications really help?

looks at the spiritual and mystical aspects of weeping. Transcendent tears are not about longing or loss, but rather about belonging and love. These rare instances of crying go beyond personal loss to signify a connection with the whole of humanity, with all of nature, with the symbolic, the supernatural or the universe at large. Tears when astronauts first stepped onto the moon, when Rabin and Arafat met to discuss peace, or upon first seeing the sun shining on the top of Mount Everest or hearing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” are tears that flow for something bigger than ourselves and our own pain. They show that crying can travel full circle from loss to love. Most of the time tears get triggered because we feel pain and grief, but sometimes, if we are fortunate and attuned, we shed tears because we feel deeply, in body and soul, a true sense of love. Then we truly understand tears as connection.

PrettySweetBoy