Whether it's a video of a person stopping traffic to save a kitten or a bad fight with your partner, any kind of everyday events can trigger the urge to shed a few tears. What triggers the urge to cry doesn't have to be a negative experience: people cry out of joy as well as anxiety, sadness and pain . In any case, crying can occur when our brain activates our body's stress response.
There is very little research on the act of not crying, but many of us are familiar with the sensations that accompany holding back tears: tightness in the chest, a lump in the throat, a sudden headache. Still, we know a little about what happens in the body before the tears appear. This is what happens throughout your body in the moments before tears make their presence known.
4 causes of holding back tears
Your brain registers stress
After any potentially tear-inducing event, our stress response begins to function in the amygdala, the gray matter within the brain responsible for the perception of emotions.
The amygdala sends a signal to the hypothalamus, which communicates with the rest of the body to act accordingly. It tells the pituitary gland that there is danger (or stress), causing the gland to release the adrenocorticotropic hormone. This hormone then travels to the adrenal gland, located just above the kidneys, causing them to release cortisol, that infamous stress hormone.
While all this is happening, the hypothalamus has also activated the sympathetic nervous system; This part of your nervous system controls the bodily functions that are activated in a fight or flight response.
Your heart is racing
As the brain reacts to stress, the sympathetic nervous system will speed up both your heart rate and the contractions of your heart muscle.
In addition, the blood vessels that direct blood to the large muscles and the heart dilate, thus increasing the amount of blood pumped to these parts of the body and raising blood pressure.
Breathing can change
When you are affected by a stressful time, you may experience shortness of breath and rapid breathing. This happens when the airways between the nose and the lungs constrict.
People with pre-existing respiratory conditions, such as asthma, may be at increased risk for breathing problems when experiencing stress. A significant stressful experience, such as the death of a close family member, increases the risk of an asthma attack in children with asthma by almost double.
Your muscles react
In response to stress, the rapid release of hormones throughout the body sends extra blood to the muscles. The effect is perhaps easier to imagine when a physical stressor poses a threat: Your body can act quickly to get out of the way of a cyclist even before it feels it has consciously registered the approaching cyclist.
How does crying or not crying affect?
To return to balance in the fight or flight response, your body's parasympathetic nervous system, the part of your nervous system that handles bodily processes during routine and stress-free times, must be activated. There are emotional and physiological ways to activate the parasympathetic nervous system so that the body returns to a certain level of homeostasis.
Research shows that crying can help bring your body back to a steady, steady state after the fight or flight moment. Crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system, helping the body to rest and return to homeostasis.
Suppressing the act of crying, then, can prevent the body from returning to a balanced state.
It may be okay to suppress crying temporarily, but your body will remain in a response to stress. We know that a body that is chronically exposed to stress has long-term negative results. Chronic stress is associated with an increased risk for a number of health problems, including heart disease, anxiety, depression, obesity, digestive problems, and impaired memory and concentration.
How to contain tears safely?
Despite the risks of chronic stress, there are taboos around crying, especially when done in the workplace and other situations where showing emotions is considered inappropriate, will not go away anytime soon. However, there are healthy ways to help the body activate its parasympathetic nervous system and regain balance. These techniques are based on redirecting the version elsewhere.
Try a technique to stop thinking
One way to avoid crying in the moment is to use thought-stopping methods. You could try putting a cognitive stop sign in your mind to signal to the brain that it's time to stop this reaction.
Another cognitive trick is to give in to " feeling acceptance ." You can say to yourself, " I want to cry now, but I can't ," and give yourself permission to do so in a place where you feel most comfortable.
Take some deep breaths
Deep breathing can sometimes activate the parasympathetic nervous system, helping to relax the body without tears.
Tense even more
Instead of trying to counteract the sympathetic nervous system, you can try to strengthen it. Tensing your muscles, clenching your jaw, and clenching your fists can amplify your stress response, which can make you feel more confident and in control (and you're less prone to crying).
