Tears – An Emotional Wee

I was talking with a peer recently & I mentioned the different types or tears & she was fascinated by what I said, suggesting I write about it, so here goes.

A couple came & saw me because their relationship was in crisis.  The wife vilified & emasculated the husband all the time, including in the session, saying he sickened & repulsed her.  The husband was humiliated & mortified by his wife’s comments & started slowly crying (leaking), which only heightened the wife’s vilification.  In the end, the wife stormed out leaving the husband behind, so I quietly talked to him about what was happening in his body both emotionally & psychically.  I started by explaining the different types of tears & by the end he was feel so much better, had stopped crying all together & learnt that tears were a good thing (we women have know this for millennia), like a pressure valve in times of high stress.

When tears are taken out of context they seem useless & may even appear to be a sign of weakness, however when we are overwhelmed & stressed the truth is tears become a safety valve stripping stress hormones such as cortisol & adrenaline out of our systems.  If our body doesn’t shed this over abundance of hormones we can become physically sick & our moods can be all over the place.  I call this type of crying an emotional wee.  It’s like having a full bladder, if it’s full you have to release it, so the same goes for the flooding of our system with hormones.  Having a good cry also releases protein, manganese (which helps regulate our moods) and leucine enkephaline (which is a painkiller) leaving us feeling a sense of relief & more relaxed.  Incidentally, people with chronic depression can have increased manganese levels.

The tears of a stress related emotional wee contain more stress hormones than other types of tears, having a higher concentration of sodium, causing the eyes to sting, also making us rub out eyes.  This is why we end up with swollen & blood shot eyes after a good cry.

Emotional tears contain various ingredients & cause the tears to taste slightly different.  If you are sad tears taste a bit sour because the acidity is higher, while happy tears taste slightly sweeter.  Yet, if you are angry the tears are very salty, this is caused because when we are angry it upsets our nervous system, which produces more sodium & this coupled with the moisture contact decreasing causes a saltier tear.

So, if you want to separate your tears by taste, angry = high salt, sad = less salty & happy = slightly sweeter, so emotional tears taste saltier than physiological tears.

So remember this Christmas when you are shedding those tears of frustration, anger or sadness, you’re actually doing yourself & everyone around you a favour by releasing the pressure value, which stops you from giving someone a sympathetic pat, on the back of the head, with a hammer!!!!

The quote I would like to leave you with this month is:-

Courage is an angel, it makes the difference between a good life & a great life.