Cry Me a River
What Tears Teach Us About the Mind...and the Heart
Crying has a big advocate in me. I cry often, and I welcome it-unless I don’t.
My relationship with crying is complicated. Anyone with access to youngsters has participated in the nap-time dance. The kid is misbehaving, and the parent suggests perhaps it’s nap time. The kid proceeds to rail against the world, shrieking fiercely, “I’m not tired, I’m not tired, I’m not tired” through sobs and fury. This scenario also describes my relationship to crying, at least 50% of the time, and when I resist crying, it’s physical, and it doesn’t always feel like grief; sometimes it feels like a threat I’ll disappear into if I don’t tamp it down.
Psychology understands this well. Crying isn’t just about sadness. It’s also about regulation, relational repair, and sometimes unprocessed trauma surfacing when the body finally feels safe enough. Neuroscience confirms that emotional tears release stress hormones and activate the parasympathetic nervous system — our body’s signal to downshift.1
This week, I will write about crying in the service of encouraging you to lean into your tears, your kids’ (your own or others) tears, and the tears of grown-ups, in general. This week’s post is also a cautionary tale, that for some, particularly those exposed to trauma during childhood, crying can feel like an invitation from the Angel of Death himself.
Why Being a Cryer Takes Courage
Crying, particularly when it arises from grief, overwhelm, or vulnerability, is often misunderstood as a sign of weakness. Yet, from a physiological and neurological standpoint, it reflects a complex interplay between emotional regulation and the stress response. Frey et al. (1981) found that emotional tears differ in chemical composition from reflex tears, containing stress-related hormones such as ACTH and prolactin, which suggests a possible role in mood regulation through the excretion of emotional stress.2
Building on this, more recent neuroscience and trauma research suggest that allowing oneself to cry may require overriding deeply conditioned survival responses, particularly in individuals with histories of emotional suppression or trauma.
Crying often involves a shift into parasympathetic regulation, particularly via the ventral vagal branch of the vagus nerve, which supports calm, rest, and connection. But for those whose systems are chronically locked in sympathetic overdrive due to trauma, even this shift can feel threatening.3
Marusak et al. (2015) conducted a study on 30 children and adolescents; 14 participants were trauma-exposed, and 16 were not. Their analysis revealed that trauma-exposed youth exhibited abnormal regulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and disrupted connectivity between the amygdala and pregenual cingulate (pgACC) during emotional conflict regulation. Further, trauma participants showed increased DLPFC activation and reduced ability to improve behavioral performance during conflict trials compared to comparison youth.4
Childhood trauma exposure fundamentally altered how emotional information is processed and prioritized, making it difficult to regulate emotions. Further, Marusak et al.’s (2015) study revealed that trauma-exposed children reported lower levels of reward responsiveness, which is linked to affective disorders.
Building on Marusak et al. (2015), recent fMRI evidence shows that trauma‑exposed individuals demonstrate reduced dorsolateral prefrontal engagement during explicit emotion regulation, without effective amygdala suppression, supporting the idea that emotional expression (e.g., crying) may require overriding deeply conditioned survival responses.5 Choosing to allow this surrender of control, tension, and protective inhibition is not passive. It is a neurobiological risk, and taking that risk reflects courage at the deepest level.
In sum, crying is not merely an emotional act—it is a neurologically complex event that involves bypassing multiple defensive systems, each designed to preserve safety and control. To cry is to face one's wiring head-on, to permit vulnerability in the presence of threat signals, and to risk the internal consequences of release. That is what makes it courageous.
What I’ve Seen in Practice
Crying often marks the start of honesty, not the end of strength, in my view. So we can stop feeling ashamed of it, apologizing for it - it’s a somatic release, nothing more. We don’t have to get attached to the story that might accompany it. Reclaim crying as an act of observation or witness, not weakness, and consider that not crying may signal dissociation, not resilience.
I recorded a short reflection to accompany this post—an exercise in stillness, joy, and allowing what arises. This week’s audio describes a simple exercise: find a quiet moment, get still, and bring to mind something that brings you real happiness. Not a performance, but a memory, a feeling. Sometimes, joy opens a door. Sometimes, the tears come through. Let them. You don’t need to do anything with what comes up. Just notice. That’s enough.
Have you cried in practice? What did it show you? I’d love to hear.
Music in this track
Song title: Capitola Sunset
Artist: Alan Ellis
Song link: https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/F30b8ep7mW/
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References
Frey, W. H. (1985). Crying: The mystery of tears. Winston Press. https://archive.org/details/cryingmysteryoft00frey
Frey, W. H., DeSota-Johnson, D., Hoffman, C., & McCall, J. T. (1981). Effect of stimulus on the chemical composition of human tears. American Journal of Ophthalmology, 92(4), 559–567. https://doi.org/10.1016/0002-9394(81)90651-6
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Marusak, H. A., Martin, K. R., Etkin, A., & Thomason, M. E. (2015). Childhood trauma exposure disrupts the automatic regulation of emotional processing. Neuropsychopharmacology, 40(6), 1250–1258. https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2014.311
Dolcos, S., García-Blanco, A., López-Periago, M., & Barros-Loscertales, A. (2024). Neural correlates and plasticity of explicit emotion regulation in trauma-exposed individuals: fMRI evidence for reduced prefrontal downregulation. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 17, Article 1523035. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1523035
This was a tender gut punch with a neuroscience footnote. Thank you.
Crying, for some of us, isn’t a release—it’s a jailbreak. A risky jailbreak past a thousand old alarms saying, “Nope, not safe yet.” And yet, when the flood finally comes, it’s not weakness. It’s the sacred ceremony of not pretending anymore.
I love how you framed it: not every tear is a tragedy—some are ancient prayers finally reaching the surface. Some are the nervous system whispering, “I made it. I survived.”