Michelle Vaught says she isn’t a big crier, but the day she ran the Chicago marathon was a weepy one.
Vaught had reached Mile 22 that sweltering October day when she was told the race was canceled because of the heat.
Exhausted, knee aching and frustrated that she couldn’t finish, Vaught said she started to cry. And cry. And cry.
“I cried for two hours straight,” said Vaught, a 27-year-old from Portage, Ind., who holed up in a portable toilet to weep. The tears stopped only because, she said, “I was too tired to cry anymore.”
Crying is expected in moments of intense grief, but unleashing torrents of tears during more benign times can be confounding to the crier and those who witness the waterworks.
When Ellen DeGeneres sobbed on her show last month, pleading for a rescue group to return a dog she’d given to her hairdresser in an adoption gone awry, the discussion that followed centered more on her public hysterics than pet politics.
Explaining her tears the next day, DeGeneres said: “I’ve always cried, since I was a little kid. … I cry at commercials, I cry at stories, I cry at anything sweet, I cry at babies. I feel better after a good cry, you know?”
Inveterate weepers might know what she means, but the question still remains: Why cry?
While there’s no established physiological reason for crying, researchers believe tears are the body’s way of calming itself after overwhelming emotions — of sadness, pain or joy — have revved up the sympathetic nervous system.
“Crying may be a release of sorts that takes you back down to a baseline,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, associate professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian hospital, who wrote a column about crying for iVillage, an online community for women.
One oft-quoted though controversial theory proposed by researcher William Frey, author of “Crying: The Mystery of Tears,” is that tears brought on by emotion (as opposed to irritants like onions) remove toxins from the body much like sweat and urine. Other studies have shown that, after crying, adults have lower blood pressure, pulse rates and body temperature.
“Tears are stress reducers,” said Daniel Bagby, professor of pastoral counseling and crisis care at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, in Virginia, and author of “Seeing Through Our Tears.”
But the conventional wisdom of crying as catharsis gets tricky with research that shows tears start to flow when the body already is on the downswing from its heightened emotional state, suggesting they don’t cause the release, said Tom Lutz, a writing professor at University of California-Riverside and author of “Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears.”
There’s more agreement on the sociological reasons for crying, which researchers say evolved as a way to communicate distress.
“Tears are a demand, like ‘Please don’t yell at me anymore,’ or, ‘Please come comfort me,’ ” Lutz said. “It makes the person receiving the messages distressed as well, so it’s a fairly serious demand when we do cry.”
Heather Mangum, a 32-year-old attorney from Lincoln Park, remembers bursting into tears in front of her boss this summer when he told her she was “professionally immature.” She had a couple of family health issues on her mind at the time, and her boss’ lecture pushed her over the edge.
“I felt that he kicked me while I was down, and I just let it out,” Mangum said. “I could tell he felt bad.”
On-the-job crying raises the question of why some people are able to stay dry-eyed during inopportune moments while others, try as they might, can’t hold back their tears.
Though boys and girls cry at the same rate until they reach puberty, once adults, American women cry almost twice as frequently as men (3.5 times per month versus 1.9 times), according to the International Study on Adult Crying, which was based on research from the mid-90s.
Some researchers theorize that the female hormone prolactin, an ingredient in tear production that also is released after orgasm and when women nurse, might
be part of the reason women cry more than men (and could account for after-sex tears), Saltz said.
But Lutz points out that the male hormone testosterone also is part of tear production. Cultural factors that suggest men aren’t supposed to show vulnerability, while women can, play a greater role in who is weepiest, he believes.
Himanshu Patel, a 31-year-old who lives in Ukrainian Village, said there is social pressure for men to keep their tears private.
“If a guy cries over the loss of his sports team, or at the end of a good sports movie, I think that’s OK, but if a guy cries over a relationship, no one wants to see that,” Patel said.
Mike Evans, 29, of Logan Square admits he cries at certain movies — “Big Fish” is the last that comes to mind — and feels a stigma against it.
“I try not to advertise it,” Evans said.
Crying capacity isn’t defined strictly along gender lines, though.
Saltz said individuals have different thresholds — emotional and neurological — for managing their feelings, and follow examples observed while growing up.
“Your family background has a lot to do with this,” Saltz said. “How much you saw your relatives crying may determine how much permission you give yourself to cry.”
While self-described “big crier” Nancy Corral, 28, of the South Side said she need be only a little blue to get weepy — and has done so on the train and in her boss’ office — her cousin, 25-year-old Edith Saunders, said she never cries in public.
“I don’t like to let people see me cry because I think it shows weakness,” said Saunders, also of the South Side. “If I’m going to cry, I’m going to do it in my room where no one can see me.”
Others bring on the tears purposefully. In Japan and in England, for example, people can attend “crying clubs,” where dramatic music and tragic films aim to provoke a good weep, according to a report in The Times of London.
Americans haven’t taken to crying clubs yet, but they often reach for tearjerkers.
Thirty-year-old Nicole Vaughn of Uptown said that sometimes when her fiance isn’t home, she’ll steal away to her bedroom, pop in a Meg Ryan flick and let the tears flow.
“I love the way crying makes me feel,” Vaughn said. “I’m not crying because I’m miserable. It’s just a release from the stress of everyday life.”
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Feeling weepy?
When it comes to climbing the corporate ladder, employees often are advised that workplace weeping is a big no-no.
Women, who tend to express frustration through tears, are particularly at risk of crying on the job, experts say. Men are more prone to slamming doors or pounding tables when they go over the edge.
If you cry, “people will think you can’t handle stress and won’t take you seriously,” said Chicago-based career consultant Alexandra Levit, author of “They Don’t Teach Corporate in College.”
Levit said she speaks from experience, having been driven to tears early in her career by an insulting boss at a New York public relations firm. The crying gave her boss more ammunition to suggest that she couldn’t handle the corporate world, she said.
“It really affected people’s perception of me,” Levit said, noting that it’s also unacceptable for men to stomp around in anger. “It was very immature and unprofessional.”
While there are exceptions for personal crises, and different work environments vary in their tolerance of tears, Levit said co-workers’ sympathy will wear off if there are repeat waterworks.
But other career advisers say women shouldn’t be ashamed of what comes naturally. “It’s this baby boomer myth that if you play like guys, you’ll succeed,” said Penelope Trunk, a Wilmette native who runs a blog called the Brazen Careerist, which gives career-life advice. “But it’s been proven that women are more successful if they lead like women,” said Trunk, now based in Madison, Wis.
Trunk, a former software executive, remembers sobbing in front of her company’s CEO when he laid into her the day after her boyfriend dumped her. But when she explained the situation, the boss apologized and asked her to return when she was feeling better. He ended up funding her first start-up, she said.
“Crying is normal, it’s what women do, and it’s OK.”
When the tears come
How to beat back the tears
Sure, crying happens, and usually for good reason. But there are times — such as in front of your boss, or when the auto mechanic has just handed you a bill — that you want to keep the tears at bay.
Here are some strategies to beat the blubbering, according to career counselor Alexandra Levit:
* Anticipate situations that might make you cry, and rehearse beforehand what you might say or do in response.
* If you can tell that the tears are about to spill, tell the person you’re with that you need to take a break, perhaps to go to the restroom. Return after you’ve calmed down.
* Avoid taking criticism personally. Instead, realize you can learn from the lecture.
* Manage your stress by spending time with friends and doing hobbies. Blow off steam with friends at work.
* If you do have a meltdown at work, return to your boss later and apologize, and promise it won’t happen again.
How to be the shoulder
Sometimes, just as mortifying as bursting into tears in public is witnessing a sobfest, and not knowing what to do about it.
Here’s some advice for how to handle someone else’s tears, according to Levit, psychiatrist Gail Saltz and pastoral counseling professor Daniel Bagby:
* Don’t feel that you need to fix the crying.
* Crying is a way of communicating distress, so acknowledge that you understand he or she is upset.
* If the person apologizes for crying, say they need not be embarrassed, and thank them for sharing their tears with you.
* Ask the crier if they want to talk about whatever is going on with them.
* If a co-worker is crying, take him or her to the bathroom or outside to help him or her calm down. If you’re the boss and an employee starts to cry, offer to resume your discussion later, after the tears have stopped.
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Onion vs. emotion
Cutting an onion causes crying because it releases a chemical that irritates the cornea, and eyes tear as a reflex to dilute the chemical, according to Bruce Gaynes, an assistant professor of ophthalmology and pharmacology at Rush University College of Medicine.
Tears from emotions, on the other hand, are triggered by our brains. The hypothalamus, responsible for the expression of emotions, controls the wiring of the lacrimal gland, which secretes tears, Gaynes said.
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aelejalderuiz@tribune.com
