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Speaker 1: From house to works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. Today,
Speaker 1: I want to start off with a troubling statistic. It's
Speaker 1: troubling to me at least. Okay, the statistic I want
Speaker 1: to bring to your attention is that women cry roughly
Speaker 1: four times as men. According to a biochemist who has
Speaker 1: studied crying. That seems pretty high, Molly, seems high. It
Speaker 1: makes us sound like gigantic cry baby cry babies. Well, um,
Speaker 1: you know, women crying has been sort of a big
Speaker 1: news story in the past six or eight months. One
Speaker 1: famous example that happened earlier this fall during the Democratic primary,
Speaker 1: was when Hillary Clinton now famously cried um on a
Speaker 1: campaign stop before the New Hampshire primary. And there is
Speaker 1: so much media buzz just about the fact that she
Speaker 1: didn't even really cry. There weren't really visible tears, as
Speaker 1: I remember, because of course I watched it along with
Speaker 1: everybody else. I watched over and over again. Um, there
Speaker 1: weren't really visible tears. She wasn't boo hoong. She just
Speaker 1: her voice kind of cracked a little bit and you
Speaker 1: could tell that she was sort of um welling up,
Speaker 1: tearing up. And yet it was the hugest news story
Speaker 1: for that week. Oh of course, just and you know,
Speaker 1: people are analyzing how much this affected her win in
Speaker 1: that primary. Did that bring out women who identified with her?
Speaker 1: It was very newsworthy and Obama supporters were, you know,
Speaker 1: questioning whether or not she was faking the tears, whether
Speaker 1: she was sort of manipulating the votes by painting herself
Speaker 1: as a more approachable, emotional average woman. And here's another
Speaker 1: example before we get into crying in general, but this
Speaker 1: one was really troubling to me. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember. This also happened last year on her television show,
Speaker 1: and this was pretty famous as well. Ellen did generous
Speaker 1: cried because of a dog snap who she'd adopted. This dog.
Speaker 1: It didn't work. She gave it to another family, which
Speaker 1: was against the rules. So the you know, the people
Speaker 1: she'd adopted the dog from, came into the dog away.
Speaker 1: So she just cried and cried on her show about
Speaker 1: about this dog. And this is what UM television host
Speaker 1: Bill Maher said about that on his show. According to
Speaker 1: the Associated Press, he said, Uh, if I was a woman,
Speaker 1: I would be embarrassed right now. I would be embarrassed
Speaker 1: for all womankind. Wow, that was his response to the
Speaker 1: woman crying. So, I think the question we have to
Speaker 1: answer is our women big cry babies? Why do women
Speaker 1: cry more than men four times as much? Because crying,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of a twofold thing because we
Speaker 1: hear about we refer to a good cry as something
Speaker 1: that can be healthy and cathartic. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: especially for women, crying in public can also, like you said,
Speaker 1: make us look like big, wimpy cry babies. So is
Speaker 1: this really some kind of emotional hang up that women
Speaker 1: have more than men or is it biology? And you know, interestingly,
Speaker 1: and the how crying works article that's on our site,
Speaker 1: it actually might have started off as just a psychosocial thing.
Speaker 1: Basically the first time when they started cremating people back
Speaker 1: in the olden days, the ashes would get in people's
Speaker 1: eyes and cause their eyes de wellap And because it
Speaker 1: always happened around death, you know, people started associating crying
Speaker 1: with lots of emotion, lost pain, things of that sort.
Speaker 1: And there are actually three types of tears that um
Speaker 1: that we cry. We don't just cry, you know, it's
Speaker 1: sappy movies and at funerals. We also are Our body
Speaker 1: also naturally produces tears to protect our eyes and keep
Speaker 1: them from drying out. So the first type of tears
Speaker 1: just sees very basic tears are called basil tears, and
Speaker 1: those are the ones that you produce five to ten
Speaker 1: ounces of basil tears every day, and these are the
Speaker 1: tears that keep your eyes from drying out right, But
Speaker 1: they don't they don't have to leave your eyes every day,
Speaker 1: basically drained through the name easil cavity. So if you do,
Speaker 1: if you are crying from your eyes and then you
Speaker 1: get a runny nose, the runny nose is not your
Speaker 1: emotional crying. It's like the basil tears just sort of
Speaker 1: releasing and you have so many tears they just released
Speaker 1: out the nose, right. And then a second type of
Speaker 1: tier are reflex tears, and reflex tears are the ones
Speaker 1: that protect your eye from irritants like when um, if
Speaker 1: you are standing in a bonfire and the wind shifts
Speaker 1: and the smoke blows in your eyes, you start blinking
Speaker 1: a lot and might tear up because your your eyes
Speaker 1: are producing the tears to protect your eyes from the
Speaker 1: irritants in the smoke, right. And what I found interesting
Speaker 1: about these tears is they are connected to the brain.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe this is obvious to everyone but me,
Speaker 1: but basically, it's your brain stem that is sending hormones
Speaker 1: to glance in your eyelets and saying, you know, pain, pain,
Speaker 1: release this pain from the body. And so it's very
Speaker 1: connected to the brain, which brings us into the next
Speaker 1: type of tear, which is the emotional tear that we
Speaker 1: all think of when we think about crying. That's connected
Speaker 1: to the cerebrum in the brain, and so that's where
Speaker 1: you're that's where your brain registers that you're sad basically,
Speaker 1: so it's the sad part of your brain releasing the
Speaker 1: hormones that tell you to cry. And let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about what exactly a tear is. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it looks like just a watery substance. We know that
Speaker 1: they're kind of salty. Um tears are made up of protein, water, mucus,
Speaker 1: and oil, and they're yummy and delicious and they're released
Speaker 1: from the lackmal gland in the upper outer region of
Speaker 1: your eye. But the chemical makeup of these tears is
Speaker 1: gonna change once you experience emotional crying. Right, if you're
Speaker 1: just crying because of you know, the onion or whatever,
Speaker 1: you're just releasing water basically, right the water. But as
Speaker 1: soon as you start crying for an emotional reason. The
Speaker 1: most common cry. Causes of emotional crying are basically just
Speaker 1: low level stress for frustration and watching something sad on television.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're watching something sad on television. Beaches Beaches.
Speaker 1: It's mentioned several times and basically every article about crying
Speaker 1: that I could find, maybe I should watch it if
Speaker 1: I need a good cry. But is there a good cry?
Speaker 1: We'll get back to that. So as soon as you
Speaker 1: start watching something sad or you just have a bad
Speaker 1: day and you just need to cry, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: chemicals are starting again into the to the mix and
Speaker 1: our favorite thing, what is it, Kristen Hormon, Hormons are
Speaker 1: in your tears? Uh. First, is a protein called prolactin, which,
Speaker 1: as you might guess from the name, is also associated
Speaker 1: with breast milk production. So the same breast milk producing
Speaker 1: hormone is also in your tear, also a protein. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to say this right, you can, Molly, thanks,
Speaker 1: Kristen Adrino Corte co tropic. I mean, basically, there's a
Speaker 1: hormone in there, and what this hormone was doing, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's also it's associated with high stress levels. So basically, um,
Speaker 1: you know, watching something sad kind of stresses you out
Speaker 1: because you might be imagining it happening in your own life,
Speaker 1: and so that hormone is going into overdrive. And then
Speaker 1: finally we have an endorphin which, uh it's name has
Speaker 1: a lot of vowels and I'm really just not going
Speaker 1: to attempt to, uh to butcher it. So this endorphin
Speaker 1: reduces pain and works to improve your mood. So tears,
Speaker 1: emotional tears are pretty complex. Yeah. I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot of different sort of emotions that are being fed
Speaker 1: into your tears, and the release of them is either
Speaker 1: releasing stress or reducing pain, which I found really interesting.
Speaker 1: So that's why people do say you can have a
Speaker 1: good cry. You're basically releasing toxins from your body. So
Speaker 1: when in that study that you mentioned first about women
Speaker 1: crying four times more than men. That was referring to
Speaker 1: emotional tears. Correct, Yes, So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about why men and women UM have these gender differences
Speaker 1: with specifically emotional tears. Those very hormonal. But you know, Christen,
Speaker 1: there's not always a huge difference in emotional tears. I
Speaker 1: mean from the time we're born as babies and then
Speaker 1: through rudy, boys and girls are crying at equal rates. Right,
Speaker 1: All babies cry because they need to have their most
Speaker 1: basic needs fulfilled. They obviously cannot talk, they can't communicate
Speaker 1: to their mother in any other way that they need
Speaker 1: be fed or changed or whatever, except by crying. Then
Speaker 1: something interesting happens. At the age of ten months. Babies
Speaker 1: start to exhibit something called manipulative crying. And this is
Speaker 1: when they start crying because they want something more than
Speaker 1: just you know, food and diaper change. They maybe wants
Speaker 1: more attention or toys, toys and molly. This this was
Speaker 1: this was a little astounding to me. Some studies have
Speaker 1: reported women in particular UM carry on that manipulative crying
Speaker 1: behavior throughout life more so than men, just to be
Speaker 1: able to give them what they want. So you have
Speaker 1: the stereotypical girl who gets pulled over for a speeding
Speaker 1: ticket and immediately the waterworks start. And we have an
Speaker 1: example of manipula of crying. So you're saying that from
Speaker 1: ten months I knew that I could cry just to
Speaker 1: get out of an argument if I wanted to. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that, Molly, the research is saying that.
Speaker 1: But what a ten month old genius? I was um
Speaker 1: And then, like you said, boys and girls do cry
Speaker 1: equal amounts until they hit puberty. And then what do
Speaker 1: you know, hormones, hormones come into play, and as the
Speaker 1: level of testosterone and boys rises, their levels of their
Speaker 1: frequency of crying decreases, and the opposite happens to girls
Speaker 1: while um estrogen rises and crying goes up as well. Right,
Speaker 1: And as we mentioned before, one of the main hormones
Speaker 1: that's going on in your tear is pro lactint, which
Speaker 1: is the breastfeeding hormone basically. And so of course, when
Speaker 1: are going to have much more of this in their body,
Speaker 1: even if they're not having babies at the time they
Speaker 1: have I think it. Let's see, they have six secret
Speaker 1: sent more prolactin in their bodies. That's a lot. That's
Speaker 1: that's sort of ridiculous. Of course we cry more, and
Speaker 1: so basically they're just saying that routine is always running
Speaker 1: in our in our systems, and that's why we're gonna cry.
Speaker 1: And do you know how many times, according to one study,
Speaker 1: a woman cried in a year, Christen, give it to
Speaker 1: me sixty four sixty four times. That's basically a sixth
Speaker 1: of your year every day you're crying. I think that's
Speaker 1: over blown. Well, what's interesting is the beginning of that study. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were supposed to estimate how many times they think
Speaker 1: they would cry in here. Everyone undershot it, and then
Speaker 1: it ended up being sixty four compared to men who
Speaker 1: only cried seventeen year, seventeen times each year. That sounds
Speaker 1: about more like it. You know, Well, maybe maybe you
Speaker 1: don't have enough prolactin in your body. Well, going back
Speaker 1: to this whole whole hormonal explanation for why women cry
Speaker 1: more than then, once women and men hit middle age
Speaker 1: and menopause kicks in, the gender difference between crying sort
Speaker 1: of levels off, doesn't it. Yeah, Basically, as soon as
Speaker 1: you know the prolactin isn't running through our bodies, it does.
Speaker 1: It does, even out and men might even cry a
Speaker 1: little bit more. Are But um, one reason why men
Speaker 1: might cry less according to theories, I mean, it's all,
Speaker 1: it's all speculative at this point, is that men may
Speaker 1: sweat more than women on average. So they're sweating out there.
Speaker 1: They're sweating, sad these negative hormones, Yeah, give sweat into
Speaker 1: the oldies a whole new, whole new meaning to me.
Speaker 1: So we have men's sweating more. We're sweating all their tears.
Speaker 1: And also, Molly, men's tear glands, those lacrymal glands are
Speaker 1: smaller in men than women. So it might be also
Speaker 1: that men simply cannot physically produce as many tears as
Speaker 1: we can. Size matters, Yes, it does so basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean with our bigger tear glands, we can produce
Speaker 1: more quantity more all the time. We've just got these
Speaker 1: mega glands working for us, tears, mega hormones. But Molly,
Speaker 1: we might women might have a little bit of a
Speaker 1: health advantage since we tend to cry more than men.
Speaker 1: Some research has shown that really letting those emotional tears
Speaker 1: out can actually lower your risk of heart disease and hypertension,
Speaker 1: and also people suffering from conditions like colitis and ulcers
Speaker 1: tend to have a less positive attitude about crying than
Speaker 1: their healthier counterparts, which seems to indicate a correlation between
Speaker 1: you know, your health and whether or not you're crying.
Speaker 1: If you're holding in all these tears, all this tension,
Speaker 1: it's building up, and it's actually causing health problems, contributing
Speaker 1: to health problems. Right. But then on the other side,
Speaker 1: sometime that's worrying is that, you know, we know that
Speaker 1: women are are diagnosed more often with depression, and crying
Speaker 1: is often seen as a symptom of depression as opposed
Speaker 1: to something that we may just be doing biologically exactly.
Speaker 1: So we sort of have this conundrum of you know,
Speaker 1: tears being good and bad physically. What about crying in
Speaker 1: let's say the workplace, Oh, christ and it is always
Speaker 1: bad to cry in the workplace. Suicide, right, suicide? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, Ellen cried in the workplace. She got blasted
Speaker 1: by Bill maher, Hillary cried on the workplace. CNN had
Speaker 1: a field day with it. She did win an election,
Speaker 1: one election, she won. She won the battle, but not
Speaker 1: the war. Yeah, that's true. But um, even on The Apprentice,
Speaker 1: the one that was hosted by Martha Stewart. When a
Speaker 1: contestant cried, Martha told her women in business do not cry.
Speaker 1: Just as there's no crying in baseball, there's no crying
Speaker 1: in the workplace. That's right. Um, And this is this
Speaker 1: might be kind of hard because women really are more
Speaker 1: inclined than men to feel the urge to cry when
Speaker 1: they're frustrated. So these smaller frustrations at work, maybe being
Speaker 1: late or botching and presentation or just those kind of
Speaker 1: small irritants that can build up and get under your
Speaker 1: skin will make us want to cry more than men.
Speaker 1: But Molly, it might also be because women, socially or not,
Speaker 1: um as free to express their anger outwardly. If that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Oh, I think so. Like let's say you
Speaker 1: asked for a raise it was and I like, you know,
Speaker 1: a guy might just go out and throw a stapler,
Speaker 1: pound his fists. Yeah. And and then the woman, if
Speaker 1: she does that, she is an emotional time um, ticking
Speaker 1: away before she was carried away to a straight check.
Speaker 1: Right and uh. In this article about women crying in
Speaker 1: the workplace from the New York Times, Uh cites a
Speaker 1: psychology professor at Yale University who says that if women
Speaker 1: could act out like men, there would probably be less tears.
Speaker 1: And one book on crying called Crying The Natural and
Speaker 1: Cultural History of Tears UM traces this workplace repression of
Speaker 1: tears and then back to the Industrial Revolution when managers
Speaker 1: would train these male workers to be calm and rational
Speaker 1: while you know, the women were still working at home, right,
Speaker 1: so they weren't They didn't get this sort of on
Speaker 1: the job training about tears. All they know is they
Speaker 1: showed up and they could not cry, right, And in
Speaker 1: Western culture, there's definitely a stigma of you know, men
Speaker 1: being more stoic and not crying so they don't weakness. Right. Basically,
Speaker 1: if you do cry, you're showing weakness and you're showing
Speaker 1: that you're less um, I guess capable to take on
Speaker 1: these small irritants every day. Um. You know, especially if
Speaker 1: a woman's in a in a leadership position, if she's
Speaker 1: the boss. Uh, you know, I think there'd be a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure to not cry, to not lose that composure,
Speaker 1: even though you know, like we said that it might
Speaker 1: just be sort of a biological response to things that
Speaker 1: are going on your body exactly. And speaking of women
Speaker 1: in leadership, crying um. One study from Pennsylvania State University
Speaker 1: found that men's tears are viewed more positively than women. So, say,
Speaker 1: if something stressful is going on in the workplace and
Speaker 1: your boss who breaks down a little bit into meeting,
Speaker 1: your male boss, I should say, breaks down a little
Speaker 1: bit in the meeting, it might be a sign that oh,
Speaker 1: he's you know, you see human side of women. He's
Speaker 1: just you know, he's a little more sensitive than you
Speaker 1: thought he was. Whereas if that was a female boss,
Speaker 1: you would tell her to grab her hanky and go home, right,
Speaker 1: And it's it definitely. I think people evaluate the cause
Speaker 1: of the tear. They'll look at you sort of the
Speaker 1: degree of situation, which maybe why something like crying over
Speaker 1: a dog on television was really pooh pooed. But if
Speaker 1: you cry, like, let's say, over you know, a major
Speaker 1: national tragedy that we seem as very dignified, very um
Speaker 1: you know, in touch with emotions, et cetera. Right, But okay,
Speaker 1: so we know you can't cry in the workplace, but
Speaker 1: I can admit every now and then it happens. So
Speaker 1: what are we gonna do about it? Let's give people
Speaker 1: some tips. If you're in your office, you need to cry,
Speaker 1: What should you do? First of all, just keep in
Speaker 1: mind that workplace is not the place to cry. You
Speaker 1: gotta get out of the office. If if you can't
Speaker 1: hold it back and you're not in a meeting or
Speaker 1: anything like that and you can step out, do so.
Speaker 1: Don't go to the bathroom, right, that is the place
Speaker 1: where people normally go to cry. Do not do it
Speaker 1: because someone is going to see you, right, and then
Speaker 1: that's just gonna lead to goss about you being some
Speaker 1: weepy worker. Right, You need to take a walk, go
Speaker 1: sit in your car if you have to listen to
Speaker 1: some feel good tunes, but in brief, breathe, get away
Speaker 1: from the office. And if you aren't a meeting and
Speaker 1: you feel a starting to well up inside of you,
Speaker 1: don't try and hold your breath because then if you
Speaker 1: release it, it might kind of sound like a sob.
Speaker 1: So you need to keep breathing deeply, breathing regularly. And
Speaker 1: you know, there are all sorts of things you might do,
Speaker 1: like pinch your cheek, pinch your leg um, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of you know, things like they're coping mechanisms. They're
Speaker 1: probably gonna be different for everyone to kind of experiment.
Speaker 1: In worst case scenario, you're in a meeting with your boss,
Speaker 1: you freak out, you start crying. If that happens, you
Speaker 1: got to go to your boss and talk to him
Speaker 1: or her afterwards to just let let them know that, Hey, sorry,
Speaker 1: I freaked out. This is not normally me and control
Speaker 1: of the situation. Yeah, acknowledge the fact that you cried.
Speaker 1: Get it out of the way, and acknowledge that you know,
Speaker 1: clearly we were talking about a situation where I feel
Speaker 1: very passionate. I think you can kind of spin it
Speaker 1: into a positive like, you know, I feel very strongly
Speaker 1: about this project I was assigned about the reasons I
Speaker 1: deserve a raise, etcetera, etcetera. But here's the one thing
Speaker 1: you do not do. Yeah, this is this is important,
Speaker 1: and this is something that I think everyone one's done
Speaker 1: once in a while. To blame it on hormones in
Speaker 1: your period. Do not say, oh, I'm sorry, she's having
Speaker 1: my period, because while that sounds like an easy excuse,
Speaker 1: it does not help your working sisters, right. It does
Speaker 1: not reflect well on you as a professional. You got
Speaker 1: a suprofessional, Yeah, Kristen, Big girls don't cry dot dot
Speaker 1: dot in the workplace. But I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: too down on tears. I mean, when we started, we
Speaker 1: were talking about how tears are sort of a biological
Speaker 1: response to hormones you've got to get out of your body.
Speaker 1: There is a reason why we refer to crying sometimes
Speaker 1: as a good cry. It can have very positive health results,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned before, and also just um positive psychological effects. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a study that came out in December two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight from the Journal of Social and Clinical
Speaker 1: Psychology about um whether or not crying actually is cathartic,
Speaker 1: whether that emotional release really is a positive thing. And
Speaker 1: of course it found mixed results that depended completely on
Speaker 1: when and where you cry. So let's say you are
Speaker 1: upset in the workplace, you run into the bathroom, you're sobbing,
Speaker 1: your boss walks and sees you crying, It's probably not
Speaker 1: going to be a very cathartic positive experience. Uh. The
Speaker 1: results of the study found that if an order for
Speaker 1: a cry to be a positive experience, it needs to
Speaker 1: have UM three elements. You need to have social support
Speaker 1: surrounding this. If you are crying in front of somebody,
Speaker 1: it needs to be someone who is encouraging you and
Speaker 1: you know, coaching you through things, saying it's gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: Then second, there needs to be some kind of resolution
Speaker 1: to whatever made you cry in the first place. If
Speaker 1: it was like, um, you know, stressful job presentation, go back,
Speaker 1: think about what you did, think about how you could,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe do better the next time, and then
Speaker 1: have a new understanding of whatever made you cry as well.
Speaker 1: So kind of have to come full circle with the
Speaker 1: whole crying experience in order for an emotional cry to
Speaker 1: really be an honest cleansing experience. Wow, that was really impressive, Kristen.
Speaker 1: Kind of makes me want to go home and watch
Speaker 1: Beaches with you. Yeah, I could. I could use it
Speaker 1: cry now all right, so while we um go have
Speaker 1: a good cry, cry it out, Cry it out, And
Speaker 1: if you want to tell us your crying story or
Speaker 1: just have any other questions or comments about the podcast,
Speaker 1: you can email us at mom Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And if you have more questions about crying,
Speaker 1: check out how Crying Works via Leah Hoyt on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Want more, How stuff Works. Check out our blogs on
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