Cause and Effect of Tears
No matter how we attempt to rationalize the notion that a singular emotion acts as the primary instigator of tears in situations influenced by various factors such as anger, grief, sadness, and others, it becomes evident that a combination of complex emotions is instrumental in precipitating crying. Consequently, the quest to identify a solitary emotional reaction responsible for tears occurring reveals that it is the interaction of multiple emotions that gives rise to this expressive outcome.
To understand the complexity of this argument, let’s look at the example where we have two children and they both compete in a swimming competition in different age categories. The oldest child always wins. She wins today and we experience joy, but we don’t cry. The youngest child never wins, but today he wins and we cry. We don’t cry for the simple fact that he won a competition, on the contrary, we cry because we know all the effort that the youngest child put in to win that competition. The culmination of years of worry, doubt and anticipation. We cried with relief as we feared his disappointment, hoped for his success, and carried the weight of his struggles on our shoulders. We cried because we were worried that our focus on his sister might have overshadowed his training and we hoped he would find his own path to victory. Our tears are the repressed emotions that have been building up inside us.
When an individual goes through a situation that triggers a complex range of emotions, often these emotions are in conflict with each other, and crying arises as a physical manifestation of these feelings and emotions. Tears are not the exclusive result of a singular emotion; rather, they arise from the complicated interweaving of several emotional threads. For example, if a person only feels angry toward another person, tears may not be the immediate response. However, when this anger coexists with feelings of guilt, perhaps arising from the recognition that the other person has been consistently kind, except for a failure to acknowledge a particular issue, emotional conflict develops. The inability to express oneself without feeling bad for doing so can create a pressing need for a physical outlet, leading to the act of crying as a means of expression.
The same applies to college students who face situations that, such as failing a class, can dominate and completely change their existence and the path of their future. In the journal “Emotional Healing Through Induced Therapeutic Crying: A Mixed Method Approach” Reynold P. Varela, carried out three studies in which theories were explained about the effects that certain individuals have after crying. Varela shows that one of the results of crying is that it “gives one some degree of emotional freedom to release the pain, the burden, the anger, and the emptiness.” They underscore the idea that crying serves as a release of a set of intense emotions rather than a response to a single feeling. The effect of tears, therefore, is not simply a consequence of the situation but a means to achieve resolution and emotional expression. This supports the idea that an individual does not cry as a result of a single emotion but rather a set of intense emotions that results in the feeling of liberation. This release provides a necessary pause for emotional discharge, allowing one to gather the forces necessary for a resilient ascent.
Applying this to the previously mentioned example of college students facing situations such as failing a class, we have the pre-exam situation that includes “test prep anxiety-tears”. In this situation, the student is accumulating the fear of failure. That fear is not the fear of a test. It is the fear that, as a result, their life will surely fail because of the high standard that is imposed on obtaining an education. It’s the panic of not knowing what questions will be on the exam along with the stress of wondering if they will cry during the test. At this moment there is no liberation as everything is helplessness and panic.
After this student fails the exam, “post-failure tears” will take place. This would be due to anger at failing, and guilt for not studying enough. Panic in the face of a diminished future. There is no liberation here either. But when the student miraculously passes the test, the “tears after passing the test” occurs. They get an immense release from the panic and fear of it. They cry because they know how narrowly they escaped disaster. They cry because they are still angry at themselves for being in a situation where they could have easily failed, but they have affirmed their ability to pass even when they did not prepare as well as possible.
The effect of conflicting emotions is to cry but the effect of tears is to feel that the situation has been resolved in some way. The relief that comes from crying comes from the realization that, through this emotional release, you have found a way to express yourself. Not simply the emotions that contributed during the crisis are conveyed, but rather the frustration of dealing with these conflicting feelings without a clear resolution. According to the book “Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears” by Tom Lutz, “Crying often occurs at precisely those times when we are least able to fully verbalize complex, “overwhelming” emotions, least able to fully articulate our manifold, mingled feeling.” If an individual’s capacity to communicate and convey their emotions has been thwarted by the overwhelming array of feelings, the immediate response is often tears.
The natural drive for control is a fundamental aspect of human nature. When we face challenging situations, we can lose this sense of control due to the helplessness of not being able to express the desired feelings vocally, so gaining a sense of control can be empowering and can even help people cope with certain emotions effectively. Crying is the factor that provides a feeling of control since the individual is actively accepting that they have no control over the situation, which counterintuitive provides a feeling of power, at least in the physiological realm. Although crying may not rectify the problems that cause the emotional crisis or stop the different emotions experienced, it serves as a conduit that connects the individual with this sense of control despite the complexities of the situation.
Another factor to take into account is that in addition to the effect of tears, they can provide mood stabilization. The journal, “Meaning and Importance of Weeping” by C.V Bellieni, describes an analysis in which the mood of 28 people who objectively cried and 32 who did not cry was rated, compared before and immediately after watching an emotional film. The researchers concluded that, after the initial deterioration in mood after crying that was observed in laboratory studies, mood quickly became even less negative than before the emotional event. Reiterating that crying could provide a feeling of relief and security that resulted in increasing the mood of the individuals.
In conclusion, attempts to classify tears into singular types are challenging, as the act of crying arises as a physical outcome when individuals experience situations that provoke a complex range of conflicting emotions. This action is evident in various settings, from personal relationships to the academic challenges faced by college students. Conflicting emotions or feelings lead people to cry, but the effect of tears is the idea or feeling that the situation has been resolved in some way. The relief that comes from crying comes from the recognition that through this emotional release, one has found a way to communicate and cope with overwhelming and complex feelings that may have been difficult to articulate verbally. Furthermore, crying offers a semblance of control in difficult situations since crying is a conscious acceptance of the lack of control over a situation, paradoxically empowering individuals since they have done something about the situation, in this case crying. This suggests that crying provides a feeling of relief and security and ultimately contributes to improving overall mood.
References
Becht, M. C., & Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., (1997). Crying and Mood: A Cross Cultural Study Department of Clinical Health Psychology, Tilburg UniversityTilburg, The
Netherlands
Bellieni, C. V. (2017). Meaning and importance of weeping. New Ideas in Psychology, 47, 72-76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2017.06.003
Lutz, T. (2001). Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears. https://books.google.com/books?hl=es&lr=&id=Nb1f9MpgO8IC&oi=fnd&pg=PA13&dq=crying+releases+emotions+&ots=P3NEs2YTwA&sig=xejiuCM9bk7Ky3wBlgU59XpPG2U
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
ILoveBees, you didn’t ask for Feedback Please on this essay, so I’m going to grade it as carefully but quickly as I can and wait for your next move.
MAKE NO CHANGES TO THIS POST. Instead:
1. Copy and paste its contents into your new Causal Rewrite—ILoveBees.
2. If you require no Feedback, that completes your assignment. You will receive no Feedback, but you could still revise your work without feedback and receive a Regrade.
3. Remember, your complete Portfolio MUST CONTAIN evidence of Feedback and Revision for two of your three short arguments, Definition / Causal / Rebuttal. If you receive no feedback for THIS assignment, you’ll need Feedback on the other two.
4. If you DO want feedback following your first draft grade, put your Rewrite in to Feedback Please.
5. THAT’S NOT THE LAST STEP.
6. The last step is to leave a Reply on your Rewrite post instructing me how much time you want me to spend on your Feedback. For every hour I spend, you’ll owe me an hour of Revision Time.
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ILoveBees, this is ridiculously good.
We’ve discussed your topic in Conferrences, to be sure, so I was not surprised to hear your arguments, but what DID surprise me, every time a doubt crept into my mind that you would find evidence for your bold claims, was that you had a quotation from your research at the ready. Those sources really do say exactly what you need them to, right on cue. Your language use is extremely impressive. Witness this sentence:
That one kills me.
My only valuable feedback:
1. Don’t let yourself off the hook.
2. You have a really strong Counterintuitive Thesis here, but . . .
3. Whattabout?
Is it deliberate? Do we, can we, CHOOSE to cry for that needed release? Have you ever? Is there a person who has never? Can we dwell on the unresolved conflicts long enough and consciously summon painful memories FOR THE PURPOSE of achieving that release that feeling ourselves “overcome by emotion”—even if deliberately overcome—will bring?
If we do it on purpose, . . . then no one can deny its therapeutic value.
Take that challenge, please.
Provisionally Graded. See the above Reply for instructions on how to proceed.
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I would like feedback for this assignment. I want to improve my grade (92) and be able to make enough revisions to include this argument on my Portfolio.
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I was confused, but now I think I understand. You haven’t improved your essay since your preliminary grade. But now you want feedback before you make improvements. Got it. Tell me how much time you’re willing to spend on revisions, and I will match you upfront. If you’d prefer rhetorical advice to a grammar copy-edit, tell me that too so we can make the best of our time.
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I would like to spend 45 minutes on revisions and I prefer rhetorical advice.
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It’s Ilovebees, I forgot to log in
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Got it. I’m taking this post out of Regrade Please for the time being, since it doesn’t qualify for a Regrade yet. I’m putting it into Feedback Please to remind me you want to revise. THEN, after feedback and your revisions, we can talk Regrade.
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OK. 45 Minutes of Feedback, Rhetorical emphasis. Starting at 8:00
—This doesn’t really clarify what you’re trying to clarify, ILoveBees.
—”Types of tears” aren’t actually the catalyst for anything. You’re having trouble explaining what they CAUSE because they don’t cause anything. They result from a situation. We name them after the situation that causes them. Grief is the catalyst for Grief Tears, for example.
—What you appear to mean is that the harder we try to find evidence that a single emotion, like Grief, causes tears, the more we recognize that grief alone is insufficient; it has to be mixed.
—Or you could say that thinking of Grief as a single emotion is the problem: it contains elements of loss and anger and hopelessness and often guilt.
—So maybe you could argue that the very idea of calling a crying session an example of Grief Tears is too simplistic. In other words, Grief Tears don’t actually exist.
—That’s clearly the meaning of your paragraph, but these first two sentences don’t say so. The “given situation” and the “certain situations” are meaningless phrases that only confuse us.
—To me, that seems to mean:
——If single emotions could cause tears to flow, we would cry most of the day.
——When we experienced joy, we would cry Joy Tears; when afraid, we would shed Fear Tears.
——But we don’t, because Joy elicits tears only when it’s mixed with other emotions, which is true of most types of crying.
——Classifying tears by the types of emotions that cause them is a losing strategy. But when researchers examine the Emotional Blends that bring on tears, the evidence is compelling.
—I have probably anticipated everything you’re going to say in the following paragraphs, ILB, so I apologize if that was redundant, but I want to convey that getting specific—and by all means avoiding vagueness—in your introduction is crucial.
—A vivid example is always a good way to start (Rhetorical Advice here).
—About Joy Tears:
——We have two children, both of whom are competing in a swim meet in different age categories.
——The older child always wins. She wins today and we experience Joy, but we don’t cry.
——The younger child never wins, but he wins today and we cry. Why? It’s not the joy that makes us cry, not entirely anyway. Yes, we’re joyous, but we also had fear before his heat that he would be crushed; we had hope that today he might overcome all his struggles; we anticipated his anguish; we worried that we might have shortchanged his training by concentrating so much on his sister; we didn’t want him to compare himself to her and come up short again. THAT’s why we cry when he wins. We get emotional release from all those conflicting feelings and can simply rejoice, and experience relief, and etc.
—Can you put all of that together in a few sentences to kick off your Causal Argument? If you can, the rest of the pieces fall into place so much more easily because your readers will be on the lookout for emotional complexity as the trigger.
—And THAT was the perfect segue into your second paragraph, wasn’t it?
—Agreed, but there may be at least two types.
—The Anger Complex you’re about to describe is one type. We are in a storm of conflicting emotions and helpless to reconcile them.
—The Joy Complex I described above is the result of the RELEASE of those conflicts. The swimmer’s win at least for a glorious minute RESOLVES that storm. We can let go of the worry, the remorse, the concern, and give ourselves over to the Joy.
—Which type is that: Emotional Conflict or Emotional Release?
—OK. This is beautiful.
—I’m going to suggest that you break this down into cause/effect examples.
—Before the test. TEST PREP ANXIETY TEARS. We’re afraid we will fail. That fear is not the fear of one test. It’s the fear that our lives will surely fail as a result. It’s the panic of not knowing what questions will be asked. It’s the stress of wondering if we’ll cry DURING the test. And so on. There’s no release here. It’s all helplessness and panic.
—After we fail the test. POST FAILURE TEARS. You’ve detailed this one nicely above. Worthlessness. Anger. Guilt for not studying enough. Panic about a diminished future. There’s no release here either.
—When we miraculously pass the test. POST PASSING TEARS. This is like our son, the loser, winning for once. We get immense release from our panic and fear. We almost laugh with the joy. But we know how narrowly we escaped disaster, so we get that release too. And we’re still angry with ourselves for being in the situation where we could easily have failed. But we have affirmed our ability to pass even when we don’t prepare our best. And so on.
That’s 45 minutes for me.
It may not all have seemed like Rhetorical advice, but it was. Naming your categories is LOGOS, carefully guiding readers to SEE your situations is PATHOS, adding the research where needed is your ETHOS. You’ll be using every trick.
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Lovely work. I’ve very much enjoyed watching this argument take shape, ILoveBees, and it’s been a pleasure to be part of the process.
One note. “Only” Matters:
For example, if a person only feels angry toward another person, tears may not be the immediate response.
Another note. Watch your periods:
we have the pre-exam situation that includes “test prep anxiety-tears”. In this situation,
One more. This is exquisite:
Furthermore, crying offers a semblance of control in difficult situations since crying is a conscious acceptance of the lack of control over a situation, paradoxically empowering individuals since they have done something about the situation, in this case crying.
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