Types of Crying

College students are constantly exposed to stress and anxiety and like any other human being, they have the need to free themselves from these feelings and emotions in some way. The most predominant factors in a human being, such as but not limited to stress and anxiety, are those that also induce an individual to cry as a source of release of emotions. Crying is a commonly involuntary action that can cause an individual to express happiness and joy or the opposite as pain and sadness. The concrete thing is that crying causes an individual to have a reaction, either positive or negative depending on what type of crying the individual is dealing with.

The categorization of an individual’s crying occurs according to the initial state, then there is an intermediate cry and eventually an effect that will help identify whether this type of cry was therapeutic or not. An example of a non-therapeutic cry is a physical pain cry. If an individual receives a very strong slap that produces tears, that individual may become angry, but it is the pain of the slap that will cause crying to occur, which would leave no other result or effect than crying in response to the slap. But what if there is no physical action that produces this crying? Perhaps what if it is a grief cry, helplessness cry, anger cry, guilt cry? This would indicate that different initial states can be affected in different ways by crying.

For a college student, helplessness cry comes from the initial state of feeling that something is too difficult or impossible to achieve whether related to something academic or interpersonal relationships. In the journal, “Crying: discussion of its basic reasons and uses” Maria Miceli explains that people do not usually cry in situations that are considered frustrating unless they believe that it is impossible to fix or change what is happening. It is the feeling of not being able to do anything about it, even if you really want to. Miceli later explains how “Tears can also serve as weapons, i.e., they can express not only a request for help but also a sort of claim or protest.” Empathize that tears can be a type of emotional tool that can be implemented in the midst of an initial state, in this case of helplessness, and obtain a liberating effect by being able to express a protest or a call for help to resolve the situation being experienced. 

Additionally, in the article, “Crying it out: The Role of Tears in Stress and Coping of College Students” by Davis, Wendy Ellen, explains how for many centuries the idea of crying after stressful or helpless situations was perceived as a reserved activity for people who lack power, specifically women and children. But as the years passed and more studies were carried out, they came to the conclusion that tears could be acquired as a means of communication and as a protection mechanism that could later be induced into new types of therapy.

Like helplessness cry, an angry cry comes tied to a similar concept. An anger cry is usually the result of a fight or aggression, whether physical or verbal, from one individual towards another. In the case of a physical fight, as mentioned above, physical contact is not what causes tears but rather the anger and helplessness of not being able to do anything either for fear that the other individual will react more violently or because it is not socially accepted. According to Miceli and a study in which she conducted informal interviews with university students about the reasons why they cry, she found that many times during an altercation between two individuals, one of them is more likely to cry due to the helplessness of not being able to express the full capacity of their anger. This reaction is also closely related to another feeling of not being able to turn that anger into some type of action against the person who they believe did something wrong. This usually occurs when someone feels angry about something they consider unfair where they often do not have the ability to do something about perceived misconduct which ends in anger crying. 

Two other types of crying that are strongly related to helplessness are grief and guilt cry. In the case of grief crying, not all college students are exposed to this type of crying during their academic career but it is still worth examining due to the state that the individual is subjected to before crying occurs. According to Miceli, the inability to do something goes beyond mere physical limitations but is also related to the inability to move forward after a loss. That is, it is not simply the helplessness of not being able to return to a person you lost (physically), but also the helplessness of not being able to move forward and emotionally let go of this individual that consequently leads to a cry of helplessness due to grief. As evidence, in the study carried out by Miceli, the participants gave two specific results: either they cried because they were aware that they would no longer be able to express their affection or simply talk to the person they lost again or because they did not know how to manage their emotions, making them feel incapable of moving forward on your own.

The same goes for the cry of guilt. Individuals who feel guilty cry from the helplessness of not being able to undo what they did that harmed another individual. They can reward the individual but they cannot completely undo or erase the mistake made. Another aspect that Miceli explains in her journal is how crying out of guilt can also manifest when people feel disappointed by their actions that go against their self-perception, that is, the internal vision they have of themselves, leading to a feeling of not recognizing one’s own identity.

In summary, being able to identify the types of crying of an individual is crucial to being able to conclude whether the result of that crying can increase an individual’s mood to a more positive one. To know this, the initial state of an individual and the factor that is inducing this crying must be analyzed. If there is an emotional justification for this crying, it may result in therapeutic crying.

References:

Crying it out: The role of tears in stress and coping of college students – ProQuest. (n.d.). https://www.proquest.com/openview/abe7e7a883acae12b100cd7753bb6641/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

Miceli, M., & Castelfranchi, C. (2003). Crying: Discussing its basic reasons and uses. New Ideas in Psychology, 21, 247-273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2003.09.001