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Com. Valentine's.

1:20

Day can bring up all sorts

1:22

of emotions. Maybe this is the

1:24

day your relationship finally gets to

1:26

that next level. Or maybe you're

1:28

a deeply cynical person who has

1:30

no join your heart and you

1:32

roll your eyes. Or

1:35

maybe you just need a

1:37

good cry. That. Last Option.

1:39

That's what this week's episode is about.

1:41

Were. Sharing one of our favorite episodes

1:43

with you from our reporter Mending when

1:45

all about the science of crying. Here's

1:48

Mandy. Benjamin. Perry

1:50

was in his first year at Union Theological

1:52

Seminary when he heard a question that shook

1:55

him. I. had a professor who asked

1:57

us to remember the last time that

1:59

we were We were talking about the

2:01

book of lamentations, I think, and he wanted to dig into

2:03

just the experience of weeping. So the professors

2:05

split the class into groups. And

2:07

as people going around to share, I realized

2:10

that I had not cried, let alone wept,

2:12

in more than a decade. The

2:14

last time I could really remember crying was

2:16

like middle school. It was

2:18

unexpected and kind of alienating. I was

2:21

like, that's it. I

2:23

could have, because everybody else is like sharing

2:25

all these beautiful stories about, oh my God,

2:27

my grandmother died and we had this moment

2:29

and we cried together and I felt this

2:31

really... And I'm sitting there with

2:33

nothing. And

2:36

it felt like this huge personal failing.

2:39

Especially for someone who is thinking about becoming a

2:42

minister. Which

2:44

deserves emotional integrity. It

2:48

seemed like something that was going

2:50

to prevent me from being a good

2:53

minister, but also prevent me from being a full

2:55

human. So he came up with a plan. I

2:58

wanted to relearn how to cry. So

3:03

I started this weird experiment

3:05

where I would

3:07

make myself cry every day. He

3:09

started as soon as he got back to his apartment. I

3:12

remember being in my room and just saying, okay, well, this is it.

3:15

Come hell or high water, I'm not leaving this room

3:17

till I cry. Like I haven't

3:19

cried in over a decade, but like that's fine. How

3:22

hard can it be? He

3:25

started by reading parts of books he hoped would move him

3:27

to tears. Nothing. He

3:29

tried watching sad YouTube videos. You

3:31

know, like those videos of like, oh, you know, a

3:33

soldier's coming home from war and like his dog hasn't

3:35

seen him for four years and comes running across the

3:38

lawn. Like all these things that are supposed to make

3:40

you cry. And it just wasn't doing

3:42

it. I was like, oh, that's cute. Or like,

3:44

oh, you know, that's sad. But it was not

3:46

nearly enough to actually make me cry. Then

3:49

after a few hours, he landed on

3:51

something more personal. What

3:53

I ended up thinking about was my

3:56

parents dying. And so I just

3:58

thought about like, what would I say to them? If

4:00

they were dying now, what would I say to them? What

4:03

would be left unsaid? And

4:06

I really sat with that for like a

4:08

while. Benjamin began to feel

4:11

something swell up inside him. You know,

4:13

it is your throat starting to catch or your

4:15

eyes starting to water up. And I just kept

4:17

just hammering that, you know, imaginary trauma again and

4:19

again and again until finally

4:21

it just like burst and I just started

4:23

weeping and I was, I wept so,

4:26

so hard. I can't remember, you know,

4:28

before or since crying that hard. Just

4:31

this like years and years of repression just

4:33

broke. And I was a mess.

4:36

I just wept and wept and wept for a little, no how

4:38

long, I felt like hours. I'm

4:42

Mandy Gwynn and this week on

4:44

Unexplainable, why do we cry? And

4:47

is there something you're missing out on when we

4:49

do? There

5:07

are three types of tears. There

5:09

are the tears your eyes are constantly shedding to

5:11

keep your eyeballs lubricated. There are

5:13

tears caused by irritants like when you cut an onion.

5:17

But the special tears, the mysterious

5:19

ones, are the emotional tears.

5:22

These are the tears that we cry

5:24

when we're moved or overwhelmed and scientists

5:26

believe that these tears are uniquely human.

5:29

I think that the study of

5:31

crying is as important as the

5:33

study of anger or the study

5:35

of envy or whatever you have.

5:38

This is Ad Vingerhootz, one of

5:40

the pioneers of crying research. I

5:43

think that everything that contributes

5:45

to a better understanding of

5:48

who we as humans really

5:50

are and about human

5:52

nature is

5:54

important. Ad's been fixated

5:56

on the question of why we cry emotional

5:59

tears ever since he read Darwin's take,

6:01

that emotional tears don't have a function.

6:04

And that for me as a researcher,

6:06

that was quite a challenge. And from

6:08

that moment on,

6:11

I became very eager

6:13

to study why

6:15

people cry. As suspected,

6:17

Darwin was wrong. So he

6:19

set off to chip away at the mysteries of crying.

6:22

One hypothesis he found came from a

6:24

researcher named William H. Frey. He

6:27

said that we

6:29

should consider our tear

6:31

glands as a kind of kidneys. And

6:34

that actually when

6:36

we produce tears, and

6:39

especially the biochemical content of tears,

6:41

that that's a way to clean

6:43

our blood. The big idea

6:45

is that crying is a sort of detox,

6:47

pushing stress hormones out of our bodies. But

6:50

Ad says this idea is more speculative

6:52

than proven. That doesn't make sense.

6:55

Then the production of

6:57

saliva, so drooling also would

6:59

make us help feel better.

7:02

I don't think that anyone believes that

7:04

that's the case. Another

7:06

popular idea is that crying causes us

7:09

to release endorphins or oxytocin in the

7:11

brain. These are the

7:13

hormones typically associated with love, connection,

7:15

and good feelings. The

7:17

idea here is that crying itself might trigger

7:19

some internal cascade of hormones that make you

7:22

feel better. But if that is

7:24

true, if these substances

7:26

are produced by crying,

7:28

that would

7:30

also have an impact on our

7:33

pain perception. So Ad

7:35

wanted to see if crying made people feel less

7:37

pain. After having made

7:40

people cry by exposing

7:42

them to films, we

7:45

measured their pain perception. And

7:49

contrary to expectations, we did

7:51

not find any effect of

7:54

crying on pain perception.

7:56

But people often share that they feel better

7:58

after crying. So, Ad wondered, are

8:01

we just taking this for granted? Does

8:03

crying really make us feel better? We

8:06

had a cross-cultural international

8:08

study among more

8:10

than 5,000 participants. And

8:14

we asked them, try to

8:16

remember the very details of the

8:18

last time that you cried. Ad

8:21

and his team asked the participants about their

8:23

mental state. And only half of them

8:25

said that they felt better after they cried. The

8:28

other half either felt the same or even

8:30

worse. If it's just

8:32

50% of the time

8:35

that people experience benefits

8:37

from crying, can

8:39

we try to find out for

8:41

whom and in which conditions

8:43

people do benefit from their crying?

8:46

It's hard to make strong conclusions because

8:48

people might be misremembering. And

8:50

there's also so many different reasons that a person

8:53

might cry. But Ad's found that

8:55

how people feel after they cry depends on

8:57

what they're crying about. People

8:59

were more likely to report feeling better after

9:01

crying in situations where the result was still

9:03

up for change, as opposed

9:05

to situations where nothing could be done.

9:08

Like the passing away of a significant

9:10

other, we cannot influence

9:12

that situation, of course,

9:16

versus situations which are

9:18

in principle controllable. So

9:20

we can influence the situation, like,

9:23

for example, a conflict situation. But

9:26

crying isn't just an internal

9:28

personal experience. Crying is

9:30

important for us because it's an

9:33

extremely effective way to

9:35

elicit the support of others. Maybe

9:38

not the crying is important, but it's

9:41

maybe more how others respond

9:43

to your tears that determine

9:45

how you feel after a crying

9:47

episode. Someone who's crying is

9:49

much more likely to get emotional support from

9:52

others than someone who's just sad. We

9:55

notice crying. So it's

9:57

a very strong signal.

9:59

It's healthy. us to learn

10:01

how the other feels. This

10:03

recognition happens on a very deep level.

10:05

So we have in our brains,

10:07

we have what we call mirror

10:09

neurons. Mirror neurons are activated when

10:12

we look at someone and they mimic

10:14

whatever behavior we see. That's why

10:16

we can feel how other

10:18

feel because to some

10:21

extent what's going on in the brain

10:23

is nearly similar and

10:26

well it has

10:28

been hypothesized that that's the basis of

10:30

our empathic capacity.

10:34

Obviously people can still be jerks when they see

10:36

someone cry or they might think

10:38

that someone is being manipulative. It all

10:41

just depends on the situation and the people

10:43

involved. If they start laughing

10:45

at you or become

10:47

mad and you

10:50

are feeling ashamed or embarrassed then

10:52

you will never experience any benefit

10:55

from your tears. On

10:57

the whole emotional tears really seem to be

10:59

about connecting us to others and

11:02

this might be why we evolved these tears in the

11:04

first place. We cry from the

11:06

time we're babies calling to our parents for care

11:09

but Ad thinks we do so with tears

11:11

in our eyes because tears have a unique advantage.

11:13

You can focus them very

11:15

specifically at a

11:18

certain person from whom you

11:20

expect that he or she

11:22

might be willing to provide

11:24

you the necessary support. Human

11:26

babies are vulnerable for a lot longer than

11:29

other animals and fearful crying might

11:31

be a great way to get support

11:33

without attracting predators but

11:35

even when we're adults we still cry

11:37

from emotion. We go

11:39

from crying for our parents to crying

11:41

for a whole bunch of other reasons when

11:43

we're regretful when we look at art

11:46

when we're overwhelmed by gratitude. Our

11:49

emotional world and what can move us to the

11:51

point of tears keeps expanding.

11:54

But what becomes more important when

11:56

we grow older crying

11:58

for empathic reasons? So

12:01

we do not cry over our own

12:03

suffering and misery,

12:06

but especially also over the misery

12:09

and suffering of others. This

12:11

is what Benjamin, the minister who couldn't cry,

12:13

found in his own experiment of trying to

12:15

make himself cry every day. I

12:17

think in the beginning I definitely was focusing

12:19

on pain and trauma, and I was really

12:21

intentional about it. I was like, oh, haven't

12:23

cried yet today. You don't get to go

12:25

out to the bar until you cry. But

12:29

as time went on, he found it easier and

12:31

easier to cry, and not

12:33

just from sadness. After a couple

12:35

months, all of a sudden I would hear a beautiful

12:37

piece of music and I would be drawn to tears,

12:40

and I would see something beautiful and I would experience

12:42

that depth of beauty in a way that I never

12:44

did before. What started as

12:46

just a link between crying and

12:48

pain really sort of blossomed into

12:50

crying as a very multifaceted response

12:53

to all manner of feeling in

12:55

the world. Through

12:57

crying, he felt fuller, more true to

12:59

himself, and more able to be

13:01

the minister he wanted to be. I

13:03

have all kinds of relationships in

13:05

ministry, people who I have cried with, people who I

13:08

have wept with. I've wept

13:11

joyfully with friends as I've married them.

13:13

I've cried with people as they've

13:15

lost loved ones, like all of these

13:18

rich, textured human experiences that mean so

13:20

much to me. I

13:23

try to look back and think about them dry-eyed,

13:26

and it's

13:28

terrible. Benjamin's experiment

13:30

with crying made him feel more connected

13:32

to himself and others, but

13:34

the scientific understanding of emotional tears still has

13:37

a lot of gaps. What

13:39

we know comes from a handful of lab studies

13:41

or surveys. There have

13:43

been almost no neural studies analyzing what

13:45

happens in the brain when we cry,

13:48

almost no long-term studies that trace how

13:50

crying impacts us over time, or

13:53

even experimental studies done on people crying

13:55

in their everyday lives outside a controlled

13:57

lab setting. There's still a

13:59

lot to learn here. But

14:01

even if we don't know exactly when or

14:03

why or how, crying

14:05

seems like a fundamental part of who we are.

14:08

So what does it say about us if we

14:10

don't cry? What are we missing?

14:14

That's after the break. Fox Creative

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This is advertiser content from NetSuite. My

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18:09

I'm not crying. Crying

18:18

is undeniably powerful. How

18:20

it can seize up our bodies or create a

18:22

deep visceral response in others. But

18:25

there's tons of people who aren't really criers. Ed

18:28

Vingerhoutz, the crying researcher, he used

18:30

to get calls from people who were worried that they

18:33

didn't cry enough or at the right times. Several

18:35

years ago, I was called by a

18:37

woman and she said,

18:40

Professor Vingerhoutz, I have not cried

18:42

for over 22 years. Is

18:47

that problematic? This

18:49

is a question lots of people have. And

18:51

Ed's actually done some research on it. We

18:54

did another study in which

18:56

we compared the well-being

18:59

of people who had

19:01

not cried for 15 years with

19:04

the well-being of normal

19:06

criers. Normal in

19:08

the study meant about zero to four times

19:10

a month. The results showed

19:13

that there was no

19:15

difference in well-being between these two

19:17

groups. They did not differ.

19:20

So Ed didn't have a perfect answer for

19:22

the woman who called him. I said, I don't

19:25

know. I better ask you. What

19:28

do you think? And she

19:30

said, well, for me, it's no problem. I feel happy

19:32

and so on. But she did notice

19:34

that her lack of crying seemed to be a

19:36

problem for other people. She said,

19:39

just in those situations

19:42

when in our family there

19:44

is something serious that

19:46

happened and everybody is sad. And

19:49

I do not express any

19:51

emotions and I do not

19:53

cry. Then they consider me

19:55

as a cold person.

20:00

like me because I do

20:02

not express the right emotion at

20:04

that moment in the right way. As

20:06

he said, that's what

20:09

I find very sad. And

20:11

that's exactly what Ad found in his research. It's

20:14

almost like not crying might be more of

20:16

a problem for other people and our relationships

20:18

to them. What we saw

20:20

was that normal cries,

20:22

they were more empathic,

20:25

more connected with others, and

20:28

they received more social support. How

20:31

often and when people cry is influenced by

20:33

a lot of factors in ways that are

20:35

hard to parse. It seems like

20:37

it's up to us to decide if we cry too

20:39

much or too little, depending on

20:41

how crying impacts our lives and relationships.

20:45

But on its own, not crying isn't

20:47

necessarily a problem. I

20:49

don't think that that's an issue that you need

20:52

to worry about. Unless your lack

20:54

of tears has to do with the history

20:56

of suppressing emotions. Ad

20:58

says that might not be so good for you. So

21:00

you do not just express your tears, but

21:03

also suppress your anger

21:05

and your jealousy. And maybe

21:07

even, for example, that

21:09

you do suppress your

21:11

feelings about sexuality and so

21:13

on. So that's

21:16

a complex of, well,

21:19

living with your break on. You

21:21

do not express at

21:23

least to the fullest. And

21:26

this is what Benjamin, the minister, was struggling

21:28

with when he realized that he hadn't cried

21:30

in over a decade. Because

21:32

he used to be pretty different. So

21:35

I was definitely a kid, like a

21:37

younger boy who cried a

21:39

lot. He watched other boys get bullied

21:41

for crying as he grew up. And

21:43

then when he hit middle school, he had another

21:45

thing to worry about. I started

21:47

realizing, like, oh, I'm

21:50

also attracted to boys. That

21:53

became something that I had a lot

21:55

of internalized shame about, something that I

21:57

was very worried about other people finding

21:59

out about. And one of the

22:01

things about crying in particular as you

22:03

know vis-a-vis masculinity is that

22:05

it's very much associated with Queer

22:08

men, you know you you're a

22:10

feminized That that's it's a

22:12

it's a womanly thing to do to cry and so

22:15

if you're you know a man and you're crying that

22:17

means that you're probably gay because Yeah,

22:19

that's that's how that goes. So it

22:22

felt safer to stop crying So really

22:24

started to sprint in the opposite direction and think

22:26

about you know, how can I be you know

22:28

more? Stereotypically masculine. How

22:30

can I really repress and downplay? What

22:33

you know would let the world and also

22:35

myself confront this truth that I was absolutely

22:38

not ready to face But when

22:40

he started to cry again Changed

22:42

him it was like the breaking

22:44

of those neat borders that I had erected around

22:46

my emotional life because it kept You

22:48

know made sure that I wasn't going to venture into

22:50

a place that would bring me to tears I had

22:53

just gone so used to skimming

22:56

over the surface of what

22:58

I experienced That actually, you

23:00

know really fully experienced life again

23:02

was was like coming alive Benjamin

23:05

stopped the experiment after almost half a year

23:07

when he found that he didn't need to

23:09

force himself to cry anymore And it's opened

23:12

so many doors to just be a

23:14

full person I have beautiful queer community

23:16

that I love so deeply and I

23:18

cry with regularly I think

23:20

that crying allowed me to recover who

23:23

I was when I was a child. I Think

23:26

it's offered this opportunity for me

23:28

to to create real relationships with

23:30

people in a way that I simply don't

23:32

think would have been possible if I continued

23:35

Dedening myself to the world. He

23:37

knew that when he started this experiment. He

23:39

would be waiting into uncharted emotional waters

23:42

But he was also surprised by something else

23:45

It's a transformation that crying can elicit in the world

23:47

where all of a sudden you start weeping and

23:49

that space is no longer the same Thinking

23:54

about a like a worship service we had a few

23:56

months ago where one of our choir members During

23:58

the sermon became very very overwhelmed emotionally

24:00

and started crying and weeping and the whole

24:02

service stopped. Because she

24:05

was weeping, weeping, weeping and needed to sing

24:07

a solo or something. We literally

24:09

couldn't move forward because of this. And

24:12

also it provided this opportunity where we just stopped

24:15

and the people around her held her and the

24:17

people who were gathered there all

24:19

had a moment to just stop and say, you know what, everybody

24:21

all around us is carrying so many things that

24:24

we don't see. The very

24:26

thing that makes tears so disruptive, the

24:29

loudness, the messiness, the discomfort of

24:31

it all, it's the very

24:33

thing that gives tears their power. If

24:36

you're in a circumstance where something is deeply

24:38

wrong and everybody is being quiet and all

24:40

of a sudden somebody starts to wail, it

24:44

gives other people permission to name

24:47

that thing that they may have been feeling

24:49

inside themselves but didn't have the courage or

24:52

couldn't fully put their finger on

24:54

what was wrong. When

24:57

we cry or when we see someone

24:59

else cry, we're offered a choice. Do

25:01

we continue to obey the

25:04

social norms of the location or

25:07

do we honor the fullness of the person's

25:09

humanity who is experiencing this thing? I

25:11

think that those kinds of questions of

25:14

disrupting peace to

25:17

honor the suffering that someone's

25:19

experiencing, it invites us

25:21

to do something different. This

25:38

episode was reported and produced by me,

25:40

Manningman. There was editing

25:43

from Brian Resnick, Katherine Wells, Meredith

25:45

Hoddenot, and Noam Hasenfeld. Mixing

25:48

and sound design from Kristin Ayala, music

25:50

from Noam, fact checking from Zoe

25:52

Mullick, and Neil Dineshia is going

25:55

to the moon in his heart. Benjamin

26:00

and what he's learned about crying, he

26:02

has a book coming out called Cry

26:04

Baby. Why our tears matter. And

26:07

there's a comma after the cry, like, cry

26:09

baby. Anyway, special

26:12

thanks to Lauren Vosma for her help on

26:14

this week's episode. And if

26:16

you have any thoughts about this episode or ideas for

26:18

the show, please email us. We're

26:21

at unexplainable at vox.com. Unexplainable

26:24

is part of the Vox Media Podcast

26:26

Network and we'll be back next week.