In the short term, it can cause pesky problems such as irritability, anxiety, and poor sleep. But over time, repressing your tears can lead to cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension — or even cancer.
Not crying can be healthy, but it also might be a sign of an underlying physical or emotional problem. Read on to learn about different reasons why you're not able to cry, the benefits of crying, and how to access your emotions if that's keeping your floodgates locked shut.
The inability to cry can have numerous possible causes. Antidepressants, depression, trauma, personality factors, social stigma, and certain medical conditions can all inhibit us from tearing up. Fortunately, many of the reasons we can't cry can be successfully treated and reversed.
Anxiety. People who deal with social anxiety may not want others to see them cry, so they may repress it for fear of being judged. According to Joye, perfectionistic or codependent people may suppress tears as well to appear to be in control of their emotions, but it is a fragile façade.
It's not an uncommon experience and it's called anhedonia. Simply put, anhedonia is when you lose interest in the social activities and physical sensations that you once enjoyed. It's a symptom of many mental health conditions, including depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
apathetic. / (ˌæpəˈθɛtɪk) / adjective. having or showing little or no emotion; indifferent.
30 to 64. The average number of times a year that women cry emotional tears, as compared with 5 to 17 times per year for men, according to a study of self-reports from more than 7,000 people in 37 countries.
Crying is normal in healthy amounts—but what is a healthy amount? With no hard numbers as to how often we should cry, the American Psychological Association states that, on average, women cry emotional tears several times a month (30 to 64 times a year), while men may cry once every month or two (5 to 17 times a year).
It is perfectly normal not to cry when someone dies. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, and everyone deals with loss in their own way. It doesn't mean that you don't care, that you are cold, or that you are broken in any way. It simply means that you process your emotions in a different way.
Today's psychological thought largely concurs, emphasizing the role of crying as a mechanism that allows us to release stress and emotional pain. Crying is an important safety valve, largely because keeping difficult feelings inside — what psychologists call repressive coping — can be bad for our health.
Bottling up negative emotions like anxiety and anger can disrupt the normal function of your stress hormones called cortisol. This results in lowered immune function and an increased risk of developing a chronic illness. Not expressing your emotions is also a gateway to developing mental health conditions.
Feeling numb can be an indicator that something deeper is going on. It could actually be a symptom of a mental health condition. It's not healthy to feel emotionally numb or despondent. What you're feeling might be a common symptom of anxiety disorder, depression, grief, stress, abuse, or something else.
Someone living with narcissism does cry. They can feel regret, remorse, and sadness. These emotions, however, don't often have roots in empathy. American Psychiatric Association.
Anhedonia
This is known as anhedonia. Similar to melancholia, anhedonia can reduce your ability or inclination to express how you feel — including through crying. Reaching that emotional peak might be difficult or impossible for people with depression.
It's best not to hold in emotions all the time, but sometimes it's important to hold back tears. If you need to control a cry, try to hold back your tears just until you're in a better place for them. This way you won't suppress your emotions altogether.
Women will cry 4,680 times over their adult lifetime – more than twice as much as men, a study has found. Sad TV shows or books, tiredness and arguments with their partner mean the average woman will cry six times a month – or 72 times a year. In comparison, blokes will shed a tear just three times a month.
Gender differences in crying, for example, have been explored for decades and across the world, and all of the studies reached the same conclusion: Women cry more than men.
According to the German Society of Ophthalmology, which has collated different scientific studies on crying, the average woman cries between 30 and 64 times a year, and the average man cries between 6 and 17 times a year. Men tend to cry for between two and four minutes, and women cry for about six minutes.
Stress relief
Dr. Tworek says that after a good cry, your parasympathetic nervous system (the system of nerves in your body that allow you to “rest and digest”) can take over. That allows you to shift out of a “fight or flight” response. That shift can make you feel as if a weight is lifted and things become clearer.
Silent Cry is speaking towards those who cry alone whenever in bed or just alone in general. They don't want to acknowledge that they're suffering or not okay when people are present.
Alexithymia is when a person has difficulty experiencing, identifying, and expressing emotions.