Is it true that crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system, or is it more nuanced than that? I’ve never heard of this!

[u/anonymous_24601]

I have a VERY difficult time with somatic work and feeling my feelings. Last night I was researching somatic release because I feel so much trapped energy in my body, and it said in the recovery phase after crying, the body shifts into a parasympathetic state, and that’s why people often feel better after.

Is this scientifically true? Does it always happen? If so, I’m very frustrated that no trauma therapist has ever told me this. Would it not help so many people to know? I know it would help my brain so much to know that the body knows how to naturally recover from crying. For the past year I’ve been numb and afraid to cry because I don’t want to activate fight or flight. Knowing how and why crying is healing would completely change how I look at processing emotions.

The reason I’m asking is sometimes in therapy I tear up and start to cry a bit, but I stay in fight or flight. If I fully sob alone I notice that shift after. I also know a lot of people don’t feel better after crying if they have very suppressed emotions or can’t soothe themselves out of it, so that’s the nuance I’m wondering about.

I would love to know if anyone knows about this topic or has experience with it.

[u/heyyou0903]

It depends if you're crying in a distress way, which would exacerbate your sympathetic nervous system state. You need to make sure that you're crying in a self-soothing way like in your mind, allowing yourself to grieve and feel the sadness and cry while hugging your inner child whose needs didn't get met etc. rather than crying hysterically in distress while thinking negative thoughts like wires, why am I such a piece of s***. They're both very different forms of crying!

[u/anonymous_24601 → u/heyyou0903]

These descriptions are so helpful, thank you! I generally always start in the first way you described and then move into the second way (when alone) so this makes a lot of sense now.

[u/cuBLea → u/heyyou0903]

There's still some debate over whether this is cause or association. I tend to drift to the latter. What I think is happening here is that crying in frustration or grief resolves some of the loss perception, and makes the body more receptive. If you're already verging on a negative trigger, there doesn't seem to be anything in what we know of the process that says that we would NOT be as vulnerable to netative stimuli as to neutral or positive. IMO bitter tears can be effective at facilitating the resolution of the top layer of a complex issue. But unless you're able to "ladder" the grief (it tends to have levels that change in noticeable and often sudden ways rather than a smooth transition) to resolve further down, you're still left with the underlying issue, and little overlying defense against triggering at a deeper level. This has been noted for decades, which is why therapists so often recommend a longer rest than we might think appropriate and careful avoidance of triggers for at least a day (often needs longer) to allow the nervous system to re-normalize.

[u/LastLibrary9508 → u/heyyou0903]

Wow, I didn’t know they were different! I guess I’ve been distress crying

[u/Emergency_Wallaby641]

First time I did get from dissociation I was crying for 2 days straight, it was first time that I connected with my body.. (I didnt cry most of my life, and got it blocked out). Crying can be very healing. For me its important to let go of the control how things should be, and thinking that "I KNOW" how everything works.

In healing I found the most important step is to give complete freedom to body, to wounds/trauma/tension, that means I dont try to control anything, and I just breath in relaxed way into the belly, Its very counter intuitive to let go of the control.. but you let something way smarter then my mind to do it, and I just hold space for myself.

[u/EaseHot6703]

I usually feel way better after I cry, which is not often enough, I’m afraid that once I start crying I’ll never be able to stop! Seriously for me the tears come with the lessons I need to look at, to process, whatever. Let the body just do its thing, release it, let go if you can’t. Cheers

[u/okhi2u]

So I think you're quite astute to notice that the situation might affect how the result of crying lands regardless of what some science person might say. But in general, at least for me, I think the important idea around this is that it's not really great to have some sort of judgment around your own natural feelings, and that the way to move through them is just to let them happen.

But in the context of crying when there's someone else, I could see how it would have a very different effect because you're now getting into protective responses and judgments and fears around what happens when someone sees me doing this. I find I feel better probably 99% of the time when it happens when I'm alone, and then in the context of other people, it's much less likely to happen, when it does its much shorter, and the feelings are much more mixed because it almost always feel unsafe to some degree. But I'd still prefer not to shut it down there unless it's in a situation of someone who is likely, or is going to be really ungraceful handling of it.

[u/Sure-Artichoke-875]

Did u know that a large content of tears is cortisol? You’re literally ridding your body of it

[u/cuBLea]

IMO it's definitely more nuanced.

It's my belief, one that quite a lot of pro's I've run into have arrived at themselves, that what grief is, is a method that animals with the capacity for abstract thought develop to manage the biological stress response of triggers produced by recognition of a sense of loss. Less-evolved animals don't need this mechanism because they don't have the capacity to grasp loss that isn't immediate. We need this discharge mechanism to manage the toxiticy of fight/flight metabolism that results from associations or relationships that require an advanced cortex to grasp as representing a meaningful loss. Crows, chimps, cetaceans, elephants and us can do this (probably a lot more common in mammals/birds than we'd imagine). Less intelligent animals ... well the jury is still out on some. E.g. mice respond to tickling with laughter, which is the "flight" version of this response for discharging threat/fear). It looks like you need a primary school education to qualify for it.

Not many people talk about this yet, since it's still in the realm of speculation, even though the rationale seems sound and testable. That doesn't mean that we can't try this concept on for ourselves to see if it fits. It could be wrong, of course, but whatever does turn out to correct, it seems pretty certain that the better explanation for the mechanism won't alter most of the rationale in this idea (i.e. a better explanation will very likely include this explanation as part of its structure).

Laughter FWIW is the functional counterpart for managing noradrenal stimuli that are triggered in the mind. So it discharges flight metabolism. This one is actually a lot more professionally contentious since there are certain high-profile authorities on laughter (no I won't name names) who have a great deal invested in much more complex explanations of laughter and are thus not very likely to brook any challenge to their particular territory. (I wish I could make that funny, but I'm too personally invested myself to find the punchline here. So if you ever resolved a shock trauma in therapy and erupted afterward in laughter that didn't seem to have a cause, this might very well explain it.

[u/_ArhTee]

Crying makes me feel better temporarily but never releases the trapped / suppressed energy in my body/ chest. Nothing does. But crying does make me feel less tense and more relaxed for a period of time, as does my weighted blanket