Why did you cry so little during the pandemic?

The covid pandemic shook the world like a snowball in March 2020. From one day to the next, we were locked up at home, we stopped seeing family members and we counted deaths by the hundreds. Medical check-ups also stopped and people pushed forward with the children as best they could. Uncertainty was mixed with fear, pain and financial problems in many cases.

With this situation, the Sociological Research Center (CIS) wanted to know what percentage of the population had cried. The result is that ‘only’ 35% had shed tears: the rest nothing.

While some people just wear the discography of Chavela Vargas or the movie ‘Life is beautiful’ to be a bath of tears, others say they are unable to cry even if they separate from their partners, suffer the loss of a relative Or watch your life go straight to the hole.

The “weakness” of tears

Here we are not talking about the tears that arise when peeling an onion or undergoing the ‘torture’ of laser hair removal, but the emotional crying: the one described as the shedding of the lacrimal apparatus in the absence of any eye irritation. That which is sometimes accompanied by alterations in certain muscles of the face (the so-called pouting) and by sobs.

Noelia Moran, a professor at the Complutense Faculty of Psychology and president of the Spanish Society for the Advancement of Clinical and Health Psychology (SEPCyS), raises several hypotheses that may explain why people do not cry. Do it, says the expert, it is a way of communicating. But not everyone has the same ability to show the world how they feele. Some may feel that tears “indicate weakness & rdquor;, that crying show the world that they are not strong or feel that they will not respect them the same because of the vulnerability they project.

So what it is normal for tears to generate a response of empathy. “It has a cognitive and social component. If you have the idea that expressing your emotions is useful, it will be beneficial to you and others will welcome you & rdquor ;, he emphasizes.

Crying helps you feel better

Another option that the psychologist raises is that they be people who are “blocked”. They may have been through a rough experience that caused them to disconnect from their emotions at one point. In that case, the mere fact of crying can mean a lack of control. There is a fear of starting and not knowing how far you can go.

Of course, crying is not the only way to show emotions. You can be perfectly happy with little memory of what it was like to sob. “There are people for whom it is easier to cry than for others. Among the latter, they may have developed other expression mechanisms & rdquor ;, explains the also collaborator of the General Council of Psychology of Spain. For example, with facial expressions. Or speaking of what happens to them.

The problem is when there is no type of expression because it can affect emotional health. “People who go through a bad time and do not express how they feel, but are left with a negative emotional world inside without being able to seek help or recognize what is happening to them, can suffer more & rdquor;” he explains.

Response to emotional stress

Ad Vingerhoets, a professor at the University of Tilburg and one of the world’s leading experts on crying, conducted an experiment in which some volunteers were questioned about their state of mind before watching two films: ‘La vita è bella’ and ‘Hachiko’. The question was repeated after viewing. Those who had cried seeing them reported feeling significantly better; those who did not have the same humor as before.

“The ability to excrete emotional tears is one of the few psychological functions that distinguishes humans from other animals,” said researcher William H. Fre, who theorized that these tears developed as an adaptive response to emotional stress. The reason for feeling better after crying is that “we have been able to expel certain toxic chemicals & rdquor ;.

Still, there is very little research surrounding emotional tears. In a study called “The Human Emotional Crying Riddle: A Challenge for Emotion Researchers,” Vengerhoets notes that “helplessness and loss (such as grief, romantic breakup, illness) appear to be the prototypical tearing-inducing situations.

It is also a question of gender

Crying is babies’ way of expressing their needs to survive. To say: adult, something’s wrong with me. From 20-25 years of age, we reduce the intensity. Another aspect that we know is that in general they cry more. Among men, 16.9% had cried over the situation of the pandemic compared to 52.8% of women. The youngest people, 18 to 24 years old, were the ones who most recognized having done it. “Faced with a frustrating situation, such as a pandemic, the immediate result is usually rage, anger or violence,” explains sociologist and sexologist Erick Pescador Albiach, who recalls how the number of calls to 016 increased.

The normal thing is that we all cry the same until we are 13 years old. Then it changes. The results of a study published in the specialized journal ‘Der Ophthalmologe’ in 2009 showed that women cry every year 30 to 64 times, four times more than men, who usually cry between 6 and 17 times. They also do it for longer and sob a lot more.

Men who only cry with football

Fisherman indicates that “there are no superheroes who cry& rdquor ;, while we have many, many examples of them doing it “to snot out & rdquor; in fiction. “If there is a situation of stress and problems, such as the pandemic itself, men stick out their breasts. And they do it by holding on, gritting their teeth and without crying & rdquor;, he continues. “It’s a control system of male emotions and as a differentiation from the female& rdquor ;. He asks the boys in schools and institutes if they cry. Those who say yes recognize that never in front of their colleagues, they are not going to joke.

Related news

The myth of ‘men don’t cry’ haunts them, though not always. When Messi left Barça this summer and culés from all over the world cried their eyes out for him, many people ironic on Twitter about how they had gone from laughing at teenage girls for crying over Justin Bieber to doing it for the change of a player’s team . Sport is one of the few spaces in which we often see men crying or kissing. “It is usually in victory or in extreme situations of emotion. It is allowed when you score a goal, but not when you are touched in front of your son. Maybe now there is a little bit of all this & rdquor ;, explains Pescador.

Morán explains that hThere are hormonal aspects and also many social explanations for these differences. Frey argued years ago that male testosterone inhibits crying, while prolactin causes the opposite effect. “Today it is still expected that women have a greater sensitivity and cry more than men, hence we do it in a different way. Hopefully we get to the time when we all cry the same & rdquor ;, concludes the psychologist.