Types of Helplessness Tears
College students are constantly exposed to stress and anxiety, two complex emotional and physiological responses to both internal and external factors. Like any other human being, they need to somehow free themselves from these feelings and emotions. As a college student, if I am faced with the possibility of failing a class, I can feel overwhelmed by a cascade of emotions. The conflict of failing is not just about the immediate situation of failing a course; It encompasses a broader range of feelings and emotions.
First, there is the emotional response to the potential failure itself. It’s natural to feel upset, disappointed, and perhaps even scared about what failure could mean for my academic career and future. But beyond the immediate disappointment, there is the internal dialogue that begins to unfold. I may begin to question my own abilities and intelligence, wondering if I am not as smart as I thought I was. This doubt can be incredibly distressing and can question my abilities.
Adding on to this, there’s the weight of my family’s external expectations. If they have high hopes for my academic success, the fear of disappointing them can add an extra layer of pressure and anxiety. The consequences of academic failure can go beyond simple personal disappointment. There may be financial implications, such as loss of scholarships or financial aid, that could affect my ability to continue my education or pursue the career path I desire. Which would make me have to find a fair justification to explain what I was doing instead of finishing the classwork, which would make me feel guilty and maybe even ashamed.
I’m not crying about failing one class. I’m crying because I feel worthless and helpless.
This is the reason why college students are under stress because there is nothing simple about a situation and our reactions are multiple and it is really difficult to reconcile multiple reactions to a single situation. As college students, we are particularly vulnerable to all of these disappointments because we are still trying to forge and develop our personalities independently. This pressure reinforces the intensity with which we deal with the stressors to which we are exposed, that is, we take a circumstance such as having a bad grade and apply it as part of our personality, reinforcing that we are a failure.
When an individual reaches the point of shedding tears, they enter a crucial state that determines the potential therapeutic effect of their emotional release. Therapeutic crying typically involves the shedding of emotional tears, which are often triggered by primary emotions such as anger, guilt, or sadness. However, it’s important to note that these primary emotions alone do not necessarily induce crying; rather, they serve as catalysts for a cascade of other emotions that either contribute to or conflict with the initial emotion. It is this intricate interplay of emotions that ultimately leads to a sense of helplessness, prompting tears that may yield a therapeutic outcome.
To clarify this, we can look at an example of non-therapeutic crying with non-emotional tears, in this case, tears of physical pain. If an individual receives a very hard 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.
For a college student, helplessness tears 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 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.” The feeling of helplessness not only has the function of being a protest against the world, that is, the general question of: Why are things so difficult? But it also serves as a negative self-judgment, why is this so difficult for me? Empathizing, tears can be a type of emotional tool that can be implemented when an individual is feeling this catharsis of emotions that lead to helplessness, and obtain a liberating effect by being able to express a protest or a call for help to resolve the situation that arises.
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 went by and more studies were conducted, they concluded that tears could be used as a means of communication and as a protective mechanism that could then be induced into new types of therapy. That is, instead of being seen solely as a sign of weakness, tears can now be a valuable tool for college students to overcome the pressures and difficulties they encounter during their academic journey. It implies that recognizing and embracing one’s own tears can lead to healthier coping strategies and potentially open avenues for new forms of therapy tailored to the emotional needs of college students.
To explain how emotional tears are a product of a primary emotion, particularly those stemming from anger, it’s essential to recognize the intertwined nature of this primary emotion with a sense of helplessness. Tears elicited by anger may arise from various catalysts, yet they converge on a common outcome: the sensation of being powerless to enact change. According to Miceli and a study in which she conducted informal interviews with college 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 because of the helplessness of not being able to express the full capacity of his anger. This serves as evidence of the relationship between the main feeling (anger) and all the other feelings that derive from the frustration of feeling helpless or not being able to convert that anger into some type of action. Such instances typically occur when someone feels angry about something they consider unfair and finds themselves unable to rectify it, culminating in an outpouring of tears driven by anger.
Similar to anger, emotional tears can also stem from other emotions such as grief and guilt. While not all university students may experience grief during their academic journey, it remains pertinent to explore this type of emotional response given the underlying state of the individual preceding the onset of tears. 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 applies to the emotion of guilt. Individuals who feel guilty tears 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. Emphasizing the idea that tears of helpness serve as a protest that the world is unfair. In this case, the individual who is going through this moment of grief is protesting that he will never be able to get this person back and the negative self-criticism of wondering how I could have allowed this to happen and not be able to move on from this situation.
In summary, being able to identify the emotions and feelings that trigger other more complex emotions that lead to helplessness is crucial to being able to conclude whether the result of those tears can have some type of therapeutic benefit. 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 these tears that derive helplessness, therapeutic crying may result.
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
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
This is fascinating and maddening, ILB, because I want to help you create neat categories, but it’s clear from what you’ve recorded here, and my own vague notion of the many ways we USE tears, that there is considerable overlap in almost every criterion we can apply to types of tears.
The section I like best is the discussion of Grief Tears which, as you brilliantly explain, point both backward to an irretrievable loss and forward to anxiety about the future.
But, even in that double-facing scenario, Grief Tears can be sub-categorized, can’t they? We can mourn the loss of a loved one, and during her eulogy, shed several types of Tears.
1) Loss Tears: I will never see her again
2) Abandonment Tears: I am more alone than ever
3) Regret Tears: I missed so many chances to see her when I could
4) Anger Tears: She hastened her own demise with bad lifestyle choices
5) Guilt Tears: She was better to me than I ever was to her
6) Joy Tears: She had so many wonderful years
7) Gratitude Tears: My life is so much richer for having known her
8) Frustration Tears: I keep thinking she’s going to pop up from that coffin
9) Fear Tears: How much longer do I have?
This is just the start of what I suspect could be a list as long as 2 dozen types of tears that could all be triggered within minutes.
You’ll have a hard time determining which of these are therapeutic, and which are not, but I hope the list gives you a wider understanding of just how big is this topic you’ve already tried to narrow to a manageable size.
But the list, or an anecdote that talks it out like a microfiction, would make a much better introduction than any vague tossing around of terms. Right? It puts your reader’s nose directly into the human cost and benefit of a strange and blessed phenomenon.
You didn’t ask for feedback, but I hope that helps.
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One thing occurs to me as I look back over that list (and start weeping just thinking about my recent loss of a sibling) is that what makes me (and probably everybody) cry is the sudden cascade of SEVERAL reactions simultaneously to the same stimulus. I just get so desperately confused by the conflicting emotions that I can’t respond verbally, and whenever I can’t put my feelings into words, THAT is the Helplessness State that makes me cry.
How’s that for a new idea?
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Most of your revisions were to the first paragraph, so I’ll concentrate on that, ILoveBees. What I DON’T DO is a close comparison of your new draft to your old draft. That old draft is history and of no interest to me. WHAT I DO is treat this current version as if you were about to commit it to your Portfolio. I’ll grade it on that basis and provide the best advice I can about what to do next if you have the time and energy.
—Are stress and anxiety feelings? Are they emotions? Are they both? You seem to say they’re both. This is a Definition argument. You’ll be expected to defend the meanings you give your terms.
—Of the two choices, ALWAYS choose to declare what you ARE doing or dealing with instead of what you’re NOT dealing with or doing, in this case an entire cascade of judgments and consequences that make you question your self-worth.
—That’s a good list. Wrap it up and make it the end of your first paragraph. You’ll already have stated your thesis fairly clearly that tears result from a cascade of emotions. Later you can “nuance” that claim with a further explanation that sometimes the tears come because the emotions AREN’T ALL BAD.
—That’s good, too. And it makes the claim more complex than the first-paragraph list of negative CONSEQUENCES. Your second list is a collection of negative JUDGMENTS. “I wanted to win, but I lost” is a CONSEQUENCE disappointment, a complaint about the world, about a situation. “I lost because I’m a terrible person” is a JUDGMENT disappointment, a complaint about innate nature, our selves.
—It might be helpful here to observe that college students are particularly vulnerable to all of these disappointments because they’re still trying to FORGE their personalities independent of their families AND they’re convinced that every test, every grade, could make or sabotage their futures.
—This is a little mysterious and doesn’t contribute much to your thesis as I understand it. It might be more truthful to say that tears serve the same purpose regardless of what complex set of emotions bring them on (or, as you might say, what TYPE they are), but that’s your call.
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I think from this point, I’ll just make a single comment on each of your remaining paragraphs. Please don’t hesitate to ask me for specific advice in the future if there’s material you doubt.
—I see I was wrong about the categories. Apparently you want to distinguish between therapeutic and non-therapeutic tears as basic categories, in which case it would be silly to say that tears all serve the same purpose. I apologize for misleading you.
—So, now I have a different suggestion. Devote one paragraph, this one, to tears of pain or physical anguish and declare categorically that it’s “the outlier.” All other tears are therapeutic, further categorized by the sorts of stimuli that bring them on.
—If that works, you’ll probably want to break the paragraph after “slap” and before “But what.”
—Thinking back to my earlier observation, I’m wondering if you might agree that the feeling of helplessness is BOTH a protest about the WORLD (Why are things so HARD?) and also a negative SELF-JUDGMENT (Why is this so hard FOR ME?).
—It’s unclear who “they” are.
—Tears can be utilized, maybe, but not “acquired.”
—If what you say about lack of power is true, then the tears of women and children would be protest tears that THE WORLD is unfair. You relate it to college students specifically. What’s the connection?
—This seems like a natural paragraph break.
—You’re having a hard time distinguishing between anger tears and helplessness tears, it seems. The anger here is a result of feeling helpless to combat the violence.
—This section seems to describe a protest against injustice. Is that a type?
—You’ll need a neater transition than “This doesn’t always happen to college students.”
—The more you describe these types, the more they all seem to have helplessness at their core. You might find yourself eventually categorizing all tears as “types of helplessness tears.”
—Tell me if I ring the same bell too often, ILB, but this observation blends the protest that the world is unfair (I’ll never get it/them back) and negative self-judgment (How could I have let this happen?).
—So, besides the slap reaction, IS THERE a type of tears that doesn’t result in emotional relief?
I hope that was all helpful, ILoveBees. It’s the last time I’ll just guess about what sort of help you might want. From now on, you’ll have to guide me to the sort of Feedback you’d find most useful.
As always, Regrades and additional Feedback are always available following significant improvements to your draft.
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I followed your feedback and I revised my introduction paragraph until this section:
The categorization of an individual’s tears occurs according to the initial state, then there is an intermediate cry and eventually an effect that will help identify whether this type of tear was therapeutic or not. An example of a non-therapeutic cry is physical pain tears. 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 tears? Perhaps what if it is a grief tears, helplessness tears, anger tears, guilt tears? This would indicate that different initial states can be affected in different ways by crying.
But I realized I made a huge mistake. In this essay I categorized “types of therapeutic tears” when in reality what I’m trying to say is that the combination of all these “tears” (angry, pain, joy, grief) is what causes therapeutic crying to occur. Because we are having all these emotions that we can’t express verbally so we cry. But I do not know how to fix that and I’m getting really frustrating, could you please, please, please help me.
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Well, of course.
I’m just back from a concert right now and seeing this for the first time, ILoveBees. I’ll get to it soon.
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I will have time for just a brief comment tonight, ILB, but drop me back into Feedback Please to remind me I need to return.
Your problem doesn’t seem so big to me. Nobody will ever know that you started out wanting to neatly categorize types of tears as if they were ice cream flavors. As I said more than once above, your therapeutic tears (all tears except pain tears) all share helplessness. You could say you’re shedding Anger Tears, but they’re really Anger/Helplessness Tears. The same for Grief/Helplessness Tears. Your sources can be quoted just as they are, I think. They all seem to work helplessness into the descriptions themselves.
You might need to nuance your definition of Helplessness Tears to include two “flavors.” 1) I might cry at the helplessness of my situation (the world); 2) I might cry because I am helpless to reconcile my very mixed emotions (self-judgment).
With that you have two categories of tears: Therapeutic and Non-Therapeutic; also two categories of Therapeutic Tears (detailed above).
The essay’s essentially the same. Just a subtle change of angle. OK?
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I’m regrading this because it deserves a significantly better grade following your improvements.
I’ve also made one edit that I hope you’ll appreciate and consider incorporating into any work as complex as this essay. I made a One-Sentence Paragraph out of a claim that deserves its own space.
Much of your essay wavers back and forth from a consideration of whether individual emotions can call forth Therapeutic Tears or whether they result only from a cascade of frustration. So . . . little moments of unalloyed clarity . . . like beads on a chain . . . are really helpful.
Regraded. Feedback still available if you’re a glutton for punishment.
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