How Does Crying Help With Depression?

A bad day in the office, a tragic movie, bereavement in the family or a friend relocating can all be reasons as to what makes an individual cry. Crying is a form of emotional outburst many reasons which may make you to want to cry. Even extreme excitement, laughter, or an overwhelming sense of joy can also bring you to tears like passing a tough examination or winning a shield. The question is should you let yourself loose and cry as much as you want or hold back your tears.

As we grow in age, we get emotionally strong enough to hold back our tears but studies have shown that crying actually helps with sadness and depression and plays a crucial part in venting out your emotions. An individual battling depression will have frequent crying spells. If the individual holds back the tears tends to increase the sense of depression and crying eases the sense of sadness. How does crying help with depression is what has been delineated below in brief.

Crying makes you vent your emotions. Once you have cried you tend to feel positive and any negativity that may have crept in seems to have faded away. There are several psychological factors which are responsible for this emotional freshness that you get after crying. It helps in production and release of endorphins which are chemicals released by the brain that blocks any pain signals and gives an individual a sense of feeling good out himself or herself.

Crying is an emotional reaction to pain and depression. Depression is caused by increase in serotonin levels in the brain. When we cry, the production of serotonin is blocked and instead endorphins are released giving a sense of contentment and help with depression.

Crying also stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and thus triggers a state of a feeling of relaxation and calmness. Thus it is natural for you to feel sleepy after crying and once you wake up you will feel refreshed and in a good mood. This is why crying is believed to help with depression.

Crying also acts as a stress buster. Stress is a major contributing factor of depression. An excessively stressed individual will find it very easy to cry but it is very seldom that he or she does resort to crying. Studies have proved that crying reduces the level of stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline and lower the levels of these stress hormones the more relaxed you feel. This is yet another way that crying helps you fight off depression.

Crying also improves your mood immensely. Studies have shown that if a depressed individual cries for about 90 minutes it will help his or her mood immensely and bring down the levels of depression immensely.

In summary, how an individual benefits from crying when in a depressed mood depends on how much the individual believes that crying helps. Some people think that crying is a sign that someone is weak emotionally and may make him or her feel embarrassed and thus they may remain depressed for a longer period of time than those people who do not shy away from leaning on to a shoulder and cry just to relieve the sense of stress and depression that may have engulfed them for any reason.

Crying is a good tool to help you deal with depression and thus it can be said that crying is not only a natural response of the body to emotional stressors but also is quite healthy to stay away from being emotionally labile and depressed. Hence, the next time when you feel like crying, just do not hold your tears back but cry your heart out and feel happy. This way you can stay away from any sense of depression for a long period of time.

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How Does Crying Help With Depression?