Tears at work are not always bad: crying is good for your career and health

I can’t calm down: what should I do?

You are in a very stressful situation , you feel nervous, nervous, and find it difficult to sit still.

It is possible that unpleasant sensations have appeared in the solar plexus area and the heart rate is increasing.

These are all signs that you are in a state of nervous tension .

If you are very worried, then try not to scroll through your thoughts about a negative plot and a bad scenario for the development of the situation.

You worry, start thinking about bad things, and as a result, stress and anxiety intensify even more .

Therefore, first of all, you should get rid of thoughts that provoke negative emotions.

Reaction of the environment

Is it acceptable to cry in front of colleagues and superiors? It largely depends on what kind of people they are. You need to take a closer look at your surroundings before allowing yourself to openly display emotions.

Is your boss or colleague an empath? Does he have a tendency towards sympathy and empathy? In this case, tears will not harm your career. However, people who are not empaths are more likely to judge crying rather than welcome it. To avoid ruining your reputation, it is better to find a private place where you can cry and let negative emotions come out. For example, this can be done while walking or in the toilet.

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How to learn to calm yourself?

To learn how to quickly calm yourself down, you should master self-control skills . If you have a strong nervous system, you are excellent at maintaining composure in a variety of situations, then it is easier to calm down.

However, residents of megacities are exposed to a huge number of stress factors every day. As a result, the nervous system becomes increasingly unstable , and each time it becomes more and more difficult to calm down.

Methods of coping with your nervous system:

• Do yoga. Strange as this advice may sound, yoga and meditation practice teach self-control. By performing asanas and breathing exercises, you bring the nervous system into balance. Meditation requires the ability to relax, stop thoughts, and disconnect from reality.
• Tell yourself: a lot of things happening around me are not worth paying attention to. Indeed, if someone stepped on your foot in transport, did something critical happen that required increased stimulation of the nervous system? If your neighbor is rude, it means she’s in a bad mood. Is it really worth paying attention to the negativity of people who are trying to ruin your mood and feed off your energy?
• Create a favorable environment around yourself. The interior is unnerving - rearrange it, re-glue the wallpaper, change the furniture. If you don’t like your job, who’s stopping you from finding another one?

It's natural to cry

In addition to an emotional reaction, tears are a way to remove dust or debris from the eyes. It is absolutely natural to let tears flow, this is a healthy reaction of a living organism. No matter how weak tears may seem to you and no matter how awkward you may feel at the moment (especially if you burst into tears in public), it only shows that you are emotionally involved in the situation.

In fact, it takes a lot of inner strength to express your feelings in this way. No one likes to cry or see their loved ones in tears, especially if those tears are caused by a painful or sad event. But letting go of our tears gives us emotional relief, and we often feel much better after we cry.

Methods without drugs

When we are nervous, we try to resort to sedatives. The problem is that they can have the opposite effect.

If a person is depressed, then some sedatives, even harmless ones like valerian , can worsen the condition. This is why it is so important to learn how to calm yourself without medication.

Develop the skill of maintaining composure in any situation.

Arguments for"

Is all of the above still relevant? Can showing emotions really ruin your career and reputation? Many psychologists strongly disagree with this. Experts provide arguments in favor of crying.

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• Tears make it easier to overcome disappointment and move on. After a person allows himself to cry, it is easier for him to come to terms with an unpleasant situation and look for ways out of it. He gets to work, rather than wasting his time and energy on internal experiences.
• Tears help you connect with other people. They are perceived as an act of empathy for the condition of another person. You should not hide your tears if they express sympathy, joy or tenderness.
• Crying releases stress hormones. The mood returns to normal faster, and a person does not have to worry about developing depression. All this helps to establish a healthy environment in the team.

Advice from psychologists: how to calm down

Psychologists have well studied the problem of anxiety and the effects of stress on humans.

And stop crying

Tears are a natural reaction to stress.

You experience resentment, anger, a sense of injustice - why they did this to you.

Together with tears, the body gets rid of stress hormones , but when there are a lot of tears, they are repeated often, day after day, then this is also a kind of stress for the body.

Take a few deep breaths. Allow yourself to cry, but not sobbing, let the tears flow naturally.

Try not to think about the problem that caused the crying, as this provokes a second wave of emotions. Wash your face with cold water.

Get ready before the exam

An exam is stressful in any case, but you can minimize its impact.

1. Avoid overload, take breaks , alternate studying with other activities. Walking and light physical activity without overwork are required.
2. Eat right . Eat more fruits, protein foods, vitamins, drink juices.
3. Treat the exam as just another stage in life that is worth going through.
4. Set yourself up so that even if you don't get the maximum grade, there's no reason to worry .
5. Stop overthinking , stop thinking about the bad, remember: our thoughts are material, so we cultivate a positive and optimistic attitude towards what is happening.

If possible, do not sit at night, study the material in advance so that you can have a good rest the night before the exam.

Pull yourself together in a stressful situation

How to calm down after severe stress? What is recommended :

Frequent crying: lies and truth about the benefits and harms of tears

Alas, if doctors cannot cure some anomaly in the human body, they try to explain it by looking at the problem from the other side. A typical story of this type is about frequent crying. Essentially, crafty doctors are trying to convince crybabies that frequent tears in the eyes are not harmful, but on the contrary, very useful.

• The liquid released when crying moistens the eyes and protects them from drying out. Who would argue if we were not talking about a reflex reaction to garbage, wind, chemical irritants? This is not crying at all, but the result of eye irritation. Why then do people who cry very often have eyes that do not shine (in theory, this should be so), but are dull, as if they have lost color?

• “Stress hormones” produced during severe grief must be “quenched” with tears. Supposedly, the more you cry when something irreparable has happened, the easier it will become. Grief is, excuse me, not a fire that needs to be extinguished, but a black hole into which a person sinks deeper and deeper if he is not helped to get out of there. Yes, if your soul asks, you need to cry, but sadness is cured not by despondency and groans, but by joy and laughter.
• Women cry longer and more often, which is why they live longer. I wonder which psychologist was the first to say such nonsense? Women live longer for completely different reasons: their bodies are more adapted to sudden climate changes, they tolerate severe illnesses and blood loss more easily, and the recovery period after illness is shorter. This is because the first purpose of a woman is to give birth to a child, and pregnancy and childbirth are a hell of a burden on the body. The female body is initially more resilient, and this is not a matter of banal tearfulness.

• During crying, harmful substances are “washed out” from the body. Crying is especially useful for young children and nursing mothers. Yeah, and our great-grandmothers, who came up with the saying: “Whatever a child enjoys, as long as it doesn’t cry!” - were they wrong? Infant incessant crying is the cause of umbilical hernia and persistent lifelong neuroses at a minimum. And a nursing, whiny mother is the baby’s first enemy; stomach problems and sleepless nights are guaranteed for him, any pediatrician will confirm this.
• After tears (the reason for them is unimportant), relief comes, even a kind of pleasant euphoria. This is the case if the reason was positive emotions. For example, after watching a touching film or when very pleasant memories come flooding back.

In grief, long and frequent crying brings only temporary relief, then depression sets in more strongly.

• Crying normalizes all processes in the body. In fact, American scientists, in collaboration with Dutch ones, conducted a global experiment during which they recorded changes in volunteers, and the results were disappointing. Jumps in blood pressure, a drop or sharp increase in blood sugar levels, increased intraocular and intracranial pressure are not a complete list of troubles that have been recorded in people who have cried.

What to do if tears appear in your eyes every now and then? How can we learn to restrain them at least sometimes? Frequent and prolonged crying is harmful to health, which means we need to fight it, but how?

Is crying good or bad?

Yes, crying is natural, but is it good? Let's try to figure out why we cry and whether there are benefits to a prolonged tearful state.

Why do we usually cry?

I think no one will be surprised to learn that women cry five times more than men. And this is not a criticism, but scientific statistics.

Of course, the fair sex is different. Among them there are real crybabies for whom shedding a tear is like putting on lipstick before leaving the house, that is, it is a standard procedure. There are ladies who really cry for a serious reason.

The most common causes of crying:

A sad event in life, such as the illness or death of a loved one.

When our health deteriorates, we become sensitive and vulnerable and are able to cry without reason.

Catalysts that cause sadness.

For example, you watched a sad film, like “Schindler’s List” or “The Green Mile”. Or they saw a wounded dog on the street. Or read an article about a victim of domestic violence. Such events can make not only an emotional person feel emotional, but also someone who considers himself strong.

Yes, happy events often make us cry - that's why we cry so often at weddings or at the birth of a child. This type of tears is beautiful and definitely beneficial.

Important! Crying can be a serious symptom of a mental health condition, such as depression or anxiety. This is why it is so important to find the cause of your tears. If you are crying and cannot stop because of such nonsense as a crease in your tights or a broken cup, this is a good reason to consult a psychotherapist. There is something wrong with your mental state.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Crying

In childhood, children who were too whiny were teased, “Cow roar, give me some milk.” Moreover, some were teased to such an extent that they were afraid to shed even a tear.

But sometimes crying can be very useful. Naturally, provided that tears flow from you in moderate doses.

But how much do you need to cry for it to be beneficial and not harmful to your health? Alas, pundits have no answer to this question.

None of the researchers described the norms of tears shed per week or month. You will have to rely on your own feelings.

If you feel tired of crying, it's time to look for ways to stop doing it.

Should you cry in public?

Many people believe that crying in public places is not a good idea. People who allow themselves such displays of emotion risk losing the respect of others. They give the impression of weak, dramatic personalities. It may also seem that those who cry deliberately attract attention to themselves, pursuing certain hidden goals.

Tears at work are not at all encouraged. A person who allows himself to cry in front of his colleagues or superiors gains a bad reputation. He is not considered a serious specialist, and they do not see him as a candidate for promotion.

How to stop crying so often?

a) An instructive story of how Nastya managed to stop crying

Nastya was a crybaby from an early age. At first she cried, like all babies, senselessly. Then I realized that tears are a great way to get what you want from parents, teachers, and boyfriends.

Thus, the habit of crying at the slightest reason gradually formed, and Nastya acquired a reputation as a mentally unbalanced woman, from whom everyone - acquaintances, colleagues, relatives - shied away. Well, really, who wants to deal with a time bomb that can burst into tears in public over nonsense?

The last straw was the photos from the New Year's corporate party. Everyone is joyful, beautiful, and only Nastenka, with a distorted face, smears her makeup and whines because she didn’t have time to try vol-au-vents with caviar.

By the way, looking at photos while crying and after is a great motivation to stop crying:

Look how repulsive the girl looks in the first photo with her mouth agape and smudged mascara, and what a calm, smiling beauty is depicted in the second. Who do you want to be like?

What helped Nastya? Contact a psychologist. No, she tried herself to stop shedding tears over trifles, but the habit was too deeply rooted.

But six months of psychotherapy sessions helped remarkably. Acquaintances who had not seen the girl for a long time simply did not recognize in this confident, smiling beauty the roaring cow they remembered.

b) 10 effective ways to stop crying

You can start getting rid of tearfulness using the following methods:

Psychologists also advise not to perceive tearfulness as a highlight of your character. This is a vice that needs to be gotten rid of. Here's a video that gives a good message to crybabies:

And some more reasons why crying is good

1. Tears help you understand your emotions. There is no need to bottle up difficult feelings or pretend that everything is fine. If you cry properly, unpleasant emotions will go away, and many things will immediately become clearer. It's a good way to work through your thoughts and feelings and let go of what's upsetting you.

2. The body relieves tension. If you feel overwhelmed and want to cry, cry. This way you will get rid of tension, calm your nerves and feel a state of relaxation. This is very similar to how air comes out of a balloon.

3. The body maintains emotional balance. If you don't give free rein to your feelings, they accumulate and tension increases, giving rise to feelings, reactions and behaviors that can greatly offend others and harm you.

4. Tears are calming. When you feel like you're at your limit, roar and your problems won't seem so bad.

5. Tears are a sign that you care. If you cry because you are very worried about others or when you watch the news, it means that you sympathize with people and you are very worried about what is happening. Look at this reaction as a positive quality.

6. Tears are our concern for our health. When you cry, tears cleanse your eyes of all dirt - debris and dust particles - and even wash away bacteria.

Based on materials from the book “Breathe. How to become kinder."

Illustrations in the article: from the book “Breathe. How to become kinder."

Source: deti.mann-ivanov-ferber.ru

Possible reasons

If a person constantly wants to cry, it means that this is preceded by some events in life. The fact is that some people are more restrained and allow themselves to shed tears only a few times in their entire lives. Others are more emotional, impressionable, and can cry over little things. It also depends on the person's temperament. Don’t forget that tears are a way to vent your negative emotions and get rid of stress.

1. Tears from a strong feeling of jealousy. A girl is in despair when she thinks that her man is looking at other women. The whole problem is the lack of trusting relationships and low self-esteem. If a young man really cheats, then it is better to end such a relationship.
2. Responding to shouting or criticism. These reasons significantly reduce self-confidence. In such a situation, you need to learn to relate to such manifestations more simply, to mentally build a shield that will repel all negativity. Regarding criticism, if it is justified, then you should not be upset, but listen and take note.
3. Separation or death of a loved one. In such a situation, time is the best help, because everything reminds you of the lost person. It’s important to stop replaying memories in your head and stop feeling guilty.
4. Consequences of severe stress. I often want to cry because of problems at work, troubles in my personal life, a protracted conflict, that is, because of emotional stress. With the help of tears, a person relieves tension and relaxes. In such a situation, it is better to enlist the support of a loved one and, if necessary, consult a psychologist. As soon as the situation causing tension is resolved, the tears will stop.
5. Frequent tears for no reason are most often a consequence of hormonal imbalance. Women are predominantly affected. In addition to the actual tears, changes in weight, problems with sleep and appetite will be observed. In addition, tearfulness may occur as a symptom of a medical condition, such as eye problems or allergies.
6. A person cries when he needs to get rid of a heavy load, to relieve himself of some burden, to talk it out on the shoulder of a close friend.
7. A way of expressing feelings. Cry when you are unhappy or when watching a melodrama.
8. Crying at a moment of hopelessness, complete despair.

Useful tears: why do we cry?

Today, the world no longer shrugs off negative emotions. Celebrities admit to anxiety and depressive disorders: close-up of Tim Roth shedding tears on the cover, Obama crying during a public speech.

Today, it is normal to be sensitive, even if you are a man. Along with feminism, a movement is gaining momentum in Western countries, whose participants advocate for the emotional emancipation of the “stronger sex.”

Now say: “Boys don’t cry!” - bad manners.

A UK survey found that modern men cry in public almost three times more often than their fathers, and four in 10 admit to tearing up in public in the past year.

And at the beginning of the 20th century, science claimed that civilization is a powerful cure for tears. First, the better you live, the less reason you have to cry. Secondly, unbridled impulses have a place in wild cultures, and in a developed society, cold reason rules the roost.

It's a long time since there were medieval carnivals, when everyone could safely express their feelings in the square without fear of sidelong glances in their direction. In our country, the lamentable culture with its funeral, wedding, and recruitment rituals was washed away by the wave of industrialization.

The Europeans who colonized the world not only “ordered” the chaotic, as it was then believed, life of the indigenous population of the new lands, but also taught the aborigines “progressive”, that is, dry, unemotional ways of self-expression.

Today, the concept of "reason versus feelings" does not stand up to criticism.

In 2011, Dutch psychologists calculated the “tearfulness index” of 37 countries. It turned out that in rich, democratic countries with an extroverted culture, where there is a cult of individualism, people cry more often than in less prosperous regions.

Perhaps guys from Nigeria, Bulgaria and Malaysia are more susceptible to depression - but they will endure it without a single tear. American and Australian men turned out to be the most tearful.

Women in Sweden cry much more than women in Ghana and Nepal. In general, the less gender inequality there is in your country, the more likely you are to constantly wipe away tears.

And the point is not that people with equal rights live worse - quite the opposite.

Tears are a luxury, a privilege and freedom of expression, and not at all an indicator of disaster and suffering.

If you are shocked, seriously injured, and generally at war, you most likely will not cry. A world in which politicians sob and ordinary people sit down to watch pitiful TV series in the evenings is a good, livable environment.

Salt water: the physiology of tears

Humans are the only creatures in the world who can release fluid from their eyes during intense experiences. Scientifically speaking, crying is the production of tears solely in response to emotions. Yes, you can spill them when chopping onions for a salad or if you unsuccessfully glued false eyelashes on and then stood against the wind - but this will not be crying.

Experts distinguish three types of tears: basal, reflex and emotional. The former protect, nourish and moisten the cornea; they are constantly formed in the body in an amount of about 2 ml per day.

Reflex tears contain the antimicrobial substance lysozyme, they help wash away particles that cause eye irritation, for example, when you stand near a source of acrid smoke or when mascara has fallen off and landed on the mucous membrane.

As long as there is no outburst of feelings, the scientist will say that you “have lacrimation.”

And only when we find out that he went on a date with someone else and the limbic system of the brain transmits a command to the lacrimal glands and the facial nerve, does crying begin in the full, scientific sense of the word.

The lips and nose twitch (facial muscles play out), and streams of tears flow down the cheeks.

Why are tears needed?

Why did humans develop such a complex system, but, say, a cat did not? Your pet will not cry out of resentment. Even if you insidiously sprinkle lemon in his eye, he will secrete a stingy reflexive tear and let him know that you have disappointed him - but you will not get tears of sadness from him that blinded Francis of Assisi.

Modern scientific theory states: the ability to cry is a consequence of our increased sociality. The habit of twisting one's mouth and pitifully smearing tears across one's face has also gone through a long evolutionary path. This is our SOS signal, a cry for help (sometimes silent), which promoted prosocial behavior, strengthened connections, and therefore was beneficial, especially in a group

The point is not only that in the crowd where we decided to burst into tears, there may be compassionate old women or generous patrons of the arts.

The evolutionary functionality of visible suffering is much broader: it is a way to ask for mercy from a victorious opponent from an enemy tribe, to evoke sincere sympathy from a large group - one’s own or others. Tears are a demonstration of grief that can be shared with fellow villagers.

Because crying together at the funeral of a leader - it unites! And the one who does not roar looks suspicious. Crying strengthens our friendships - research shows that it actually helps you bond with your friends and allies.

The face of a person who has just cried is perceived in a special way by others. Experiments confirm that people are more willing to support those whose cheeks are suspiciously shiny.

It is not without reason that discharge from the lacrimal canal has traditionally been associated with matters of the heart. Before scientists got involved with their research, many interesting hypotheses were proposed to explain this phenomenon.

For example, the scientific theory of the early 17th century stated that tears are condensation: love boils the heart, steam rises from it in the head, and the remnants of hot feelings simply come out through the eyes.

If a person cries nearby, he thereby demonstrates his vulnerability, ability to suffer, love and experience affection. True, the sobbing trick is not always appropriate and not with everyone.

Cry will make you feel better: how crying affects us

It is believed that crying helps us calm down. By rocking, hugging ourselves by the shoulders and muttering something, we relieve tension.

True, among the participants in experiments there are always people who, after giving vent to their feelings, declare: “I feel even worse!” That's why you see articles in scientific journals every now and then with titles like "How crying improves (though sometimes doesn't) psychological well-being."

For example, Dutch researchers forced subjects to watch heartbreaking film scenes, cry at what they saw, and then at certain intervals asked about their well-being.

Scientists found that the experiment participants, who shed tears and said that after the film it was not easy for them, after an hour and a half began to feel even better than before watching the tearful picture. And those who stinted on emotions did not experience any takeoff.

However, tears can affect people nearby in completely unexpected ways.

A sensational study by Israeli neuroscientists has shown that women's tears reduce sexual arousal in men.

This is not surprising: if a loved one is crying, tenderness, hugs, and sympathy are appropriate, but sex looks like an unconventional solution, because the level of testosterone and aggression naturally drops.

Evil tongues say that women's tears are a tool of manipulation, otherwise how can one explain the fact that women cry on average 5.3 times a month, and men only 1.3? But scientists know nothing about such insidiousness - handing over a handkerchief, they admit that hormones are to blame. The same testosterone restrains violent manifestations of feelings, but prolactin, which women have in excess, can contribute to emotional outpourings.

Why are we crying

There are many reasons for tears: physical pain, personal loss, sympathy, ritual associated with collective screams, and the sight of one’s own apartment after it was renovated by a suspicious team of workers, and, of course, art.

Films have taken the place of Greek tragedies with their catharsis. The modern viewer more often blows his nose into a handkerchief while sitting in front of the screen than in the theater. German researchers became interested in which moments in movies evoke the strongest response from the viewer.

The students who watched the film had their heart and respiratory activity measured, and at the same time monitored their skin reactions so as not to miss the moment when people began to get goosebumps.

In addition, the participants did not hesitate to cry and, after the film, indicated the level of their experiences in a special questionnaire.

German psychologists have not discovered any America - most of all (in 70% of cases) people are most affected by sad episodes: partings, dying lovers, old people living their last moments. In second place were joyful events - the reunion of heroes after a long separation, the achievement of goals and other fanfare.

It is important that the vast majority of tear-jerking scenes demonstrated social interaction: in 70% of cases - relationships between people, in another 30% - between a person and an animal or anthropomorphic character.

It turned out that the intensity of the audience's passions also depends on the technical execution of the film. Unusual angles, shooting at an angle or from afar do not have any effect on people - the strongest effect is produced by close-ups of the faces of the main characters. These data are easy to interpret: we need crying primarily for social bonding.

In the modern world, a resident of a large city has lost the company to cry together, so he sometimes feels uncomfortable. Yes, culture is changing, interest in the individual is growing, caring for whom is becoming the main value; Yes, we have become more attentive to mental states and even take courses on the development of emotional intelligence.

Tears help clear emotions

Scientists have proven that the benefits of crying are high, as it allows you to clear emotions and restore balance in the body. But every person from childhood grows up with the understanding that crying is a sign of weakness, so such emotions should not be shown. Even our parents taught us to cry less and smile more often.

Currently, many clubs are already being created where laughter or crying is a means of therapy. Usually in such clubs people from different walks of life gather and talk about their emotions, cry and laugh together, relieving stress. Usually there is a psychiatrist among the members or employees of such a club.

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