Why We Cry: The Biology of Tears and Emotional Release

The other morning I cried over nothing.

Not onions, not a sad movie, just standing in the kitchen holding a half-burnt piece of toast.
My chest felt tight, and my eyes leaked like they had their own agenda.
I don’t think the tears were about the toast, but who knows.
It was my last piece after all.

Crying has never made much sense to me.
It’s sloppy.
My nose runs, my throat makes that ugly hiccup sound, and my shirt ends up damp like I got caught in bad weather (anyone else get weird hot flashes when you cry?). Scientists say it’s chemistry, poets say it’s language, but when it’s happening it feels more like your body throws a temper tantrum because your head won’t.

Sometimes the tears are about real loss, and sometimes they sneak up while you’re watching a dumb commercial with a dog in it.
Sometimes I even laugh halfway through, and it feels ridiculous, like my face didn’t get the memo on which mood to pick.

The Three Types of Tears

Science says there are three kinds of tears.
Which sounds weird when you realize they’re basically three different personalities spilling out of your face.

Basal tears are the ones you don’t notice.
They’re the reason your eyes aren’t sandpaper every time you blink. Just doing maintenance work, no applause.
Honestly, you only think about them when they stop working, like when your contacts glue themselves to your eyeball and you start bargaining with the universe to get them out with a Q-tip.

Reflex tears? Those are the plumbers you call when the pipes burst in your basement because you forgot to blow out the water in the winter (oops).
Chop an onion, get a face full of smoke, or catch one of those tiny bugs while you’re riding your bike and suddenly you’re Niagara Falls.
These tears don’t give a flying fart about your feelings, they’re just trying to keep your cornea from frying (thank you).
Onion tears don’t make me sentimental, but they do make me question why I keep buying onions instead of pre-chopped.
Just kidding, I’d never buy pre-chopped they get dry (maybe their basal tears are broken).

And then there are the dramatic ones.
The ones that sneak up at weddings, funerals, or for me that one dumb commercial where the old man gives the little kid free soup for his sick mom then the kid becomes a doctor and takes care of the old man.
Those tears are chemically different, loaded with stress hormones and oxytocin, which is basically your body’s way of saying, “Yeah buckle up, we’re going to bond while we leak.”

So emotional tears aren’t just water with salt in it.
They’re more like…proof that something cracked open inside you, even if only for a minute.
They leave you puffy, snotty, maybe a little embarrassed…but lighter, too.

The Chemistry of Catharsis

Crying isn’t just “being emotional.” It’s chemistry with a side of snot.
The ancient Greeks tried to pretty it up and called it katharsis: soul-cleansing through tragedy (drama Kings).
Aristotle swore a sad play could wring it out of you.
Personally, I don’t need theater tickets, but thank you.
My tear ducts run their own matinee whenever life feels like too much or I sleep too little. Which might be more often than I’d care to admit.

What actually comes out of your eyes isn’t just salt water.
It’s this weird cocktail your nervous system shakes up behind the scenes. Inside a single tear you’ll find:

Cortisol — the stress hormone. Basically your body saying, fine, I’ll drain some of this poison before you implode.
Prolactin — shows up in grief, but also when you’re nurturing. It’s like the hormone version of being cracked open and tender at the same time.
ACTH — one of your stress managers, quietly ducking out the back door.
Leucine enkephalin — which sounds like a Star Trek character but is actually a natural painkiller.
Oxytocin — the “cuddle chemical,” sneaking into your tears to remind you that you probably need a hug.

So yeah, when you ugly cry after a breakup or choke on sobs at the end of a Pixar movie (I lost it during Finding Nemo, and all in the first 15 minutes, why Pixar, why?!), you’re not falling apart.
You’re just running a full-body pressure release through your eyeballs, no big deal.

Tears aren’t weakness, they’re some fancy biology moonlighting as therapy.

The Role of Oxytocin and Connection

Oxytocin…the cuddle hormone. My favorite, honestly. Anything to do with cuddling I’m down with.
It sneaks in when the tears do. Especially if somebody’s there to catch you (shout out to my husband right about now).
That’s why crying feels less like chemistry and more like gravity sometimes.

Think about it.
Babies wail until they’re scooped up.
We stumble through grief and all we want is a shoulder to ugly cry on.
Sometimes you’re holding it together just fine, and then a hug from a kind coworker cracks you wide open and suddenly your shirt’s soaked and your tie looks a mess.

Your body is simply saying: I’m hurting. Don’t let me do this alone.
And if you’re lucky, somebody answers. A hand on your back, an arm around your ribs, no pep talk required, just closeness…and somehow the ache eases, even before a single word gets said.

Hormonal Waves (hello period)

Ever cried for “no reason”?
Yeah, me too. But that reason is my period is 3 days away.

Hormones have their own fun way of yanking at the tear switch and making us feel like we’re crazy.
For a lot of us, it builds with the cycle: right before a period, smack in the middle of ovulation, or in those raw, sleepless days after giving birth (don’t know, will have to report back after having a kid).
Estrogen and progesterone steer the mood rollercoaster, and prolactin (the milk hormone, yep, the one tied to breastfeeding) also seems to tip us closer to tears.
As if creating a human and shoving it out our who-ha isn’t enough for the universe.

And then pile on life stressors which can help to loosen the dam.
No sleep makes the floorboards creak, and trauma has a way of shaking the whole damn house. Even being dehydrated can make everything feel brittle.

Why Grief Feels Like Drowning in Salt

Grief tears don’t feel like the everyday kind.
They don’t just slip out and dry on your cheek all daintily. They slam and beat the shit out of you while you’re down.
They come in waves, tidal style, like the ocean decided it just needed to crash through your face.

Sometimes they sting, hot and raw.
After my trauma I cried so much the skin over my eyelids literally peeled for months.
It burned every time I blinked, but still the tears came. My dermatologist was sweet but not helpful to fix it.

And here’s the thing, you can try to choke grief back, but it doesn’t leave.
It just rots inside like those tomatoes you forgot to pick. It thoughtfully turns into insomnia, panic, and that hollow chest that makes you swear your heart forgot how to beat normal.
The body keeps the score, yeah, but it also keeps the tab.
Every tear you swallow shows up later as something heavier.
A service charge, if you will, for forgetting to close the tab after drinking too much the night before.

Crying for someone you lost is messy love.
It’s not pretty and it is certainly not poetic.
It’s your body writing “I loved them” in water because ink isn’t good enough for your brain.

what tears look like under a microscope that are from being sad

Crying and the Nervous System

When I finally let it out, it’s like my body hits a switch.
One minute everything inside feels wired and buzzing, the next it’s as if someone pulled the plug in the bathtub. My heart slows, breathing steadies, and my jaw relaxes without me even telling it to.

It’s messy and puffy-eyed and snotty, but after a hard cry there’s this weird calm.
Not because anything’s fixed, but because my body stopped sounding the alarm for a while.

That’s the strange gift of crying: it resets you in a way nothing else does.

Scientists say it activates the parasympathetic nervous system: the branch that handles rest, digestion, repair. In other words, the exact opposite of fight-or-flight.

Do Animals Cry?

I’ve read the studies.
Some say no, not really, just reflex tears, like windshield wipers.

But others say dogs lose their spark when their person dies. Apes sit in silence, tears sliding slow down their faces, and nobody can tell me that’s just dust in the air all of a sudden.

Maybe science is right, and maybe it’s all coincidence.
It’s possible we project our own grief onto them.

Sometimes we might be desperate to see our pain reflected, so we don’t have to hold it alone.

Why Tears Feel Hot (And Sometimes Cold)

Some tears burn on the way out.
Others slide down cool, almost gentle.
Grief will scorch you. Nostalgia might feel like ice water running across your cheeks.

It isn’t random. When you’re heartbroken, panicked, or even furious the blood in your face actually shifts, vessels widen, and your eyes heat up.
Those tears sting because the whole body is lit up like a damn fire alarm. If you touch your face you can even experience this first hand. Mine turns red and gets so hot it feels like a fever.
But cry at a movie, or let out a softer sadness, and they can feel cooler, like a gentle rain sliding off glass.

Our emotions don’t just sit in our heads, they mess with the weather inside our eyes.
So if you think your tears burn, or they cool, you’re not imagining it.

Why Crying Makes Us Tired

Crying takes more out of you than it looks with just water running down your face.
Believe it or not, it’s actually fuel burning.
Blood sugar dips, your heart pounding, muscles tensing and letting go over and over…from the outside it looks like a couple wet cheeks.
On the inside, it’s your whole body going through the washing machine on the “extremely dirty” cycle.

Every sob is like a little contraction: a clench and a release.
Do that for twenty minutes and no wonder you feel like you ran a race you didn’t sign up for.
When you forgot your favorite pair of running shoes…and the track is made of gravel.

By the time the tears slow down, your nervous system has played the whole lovely deck (fight, flight, freeze) and finally it lets you thaw.
And thawing isn’t easy. The body has to pump the brakes, dump in chemicals that say, stand down, we’re safe now.

That’s why you’re left limp, heavy-eyed, not sure if you’re supposed to sleep or if you’ve just been cracked open.
That strange heaviness after a cry? That’s just the price of feeling.

The Gendered Expectations of Tears

Boys get told not to cry. Girls get told they cry too much.
Both end up screwed (thanks mom and dad).

Confession time: I was one of the girls.
Tears came easy, and so did the shame. “Too emotional.” “Too dramatic.” Like leaking water from your face was some moral failing.
Meanwhile, boys who did let it out were called weak, or worse.
Crying turns into a weapon either way somehow.

The research backs it up, people see male tears as rare and serious, but also uncomfortable.
Female tears? Written off as hysteria, hormones, weakness.
The script starts early: man up, toughen up, stop being so sensitive.

But here’s the thing: those tears don’t disappear because you choke them down. They find another way out.
They’re persistent like that.
Stomach aches, drinking too much, rage you don’t understand, even violence sometimes.

The Beauty of Letting Go

If you’re crying and can’t pin down the reason…there’s still a reason.
You just don’t have the words for it yet, and that doesn’t make it meaningless.

Sometimes your eyes get it before your brain does.
The storm rolls through, messy and inconvenient, but necessary. You’re just trying to move something too heavy to carry in silence.

And tucked inside all that salt is direction.
Not a clean escape route, not a “fix,” but a way back to yourself.
Back to something that feels whole enough to keep going.

Comfort Suggestion:

Weighted Blanket for Emotional Recovery – 15 lb, Cooling and Calming, Machine Washable
Because sometimes, after the crying, you just need weight.

Rishi Tea Lavender Mint Herbal Tea - Organic, Caffeine Free Sachet Tea Bags, Calming Lavender with Peppermint & Sage
To help sooth your soul.

Amazon Basics Epsom Salt Soak, Unscented, Magnesium Sulfate USP, Muscle and Feet Relaxation, Soothing, 3 Pound, Pack of 1
For the body aches after the tears fall.

Sources:

Blagrove, Mark, et al. “Lucid Dreaming: Associations with Internal Locus of Control, Need for Cognition and Creativity.” Imagination, Cognition and Personality, vol. 25, no. 4, 2006, pp. 293–300.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by James Strachey, Basic Books, 2010.

Hobson, J. Allan. Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep. Oxford University Press, 2002.

LaBerge, Stephen. Lucid Dreaming: The Power of Being Awake and Aware in Your Dreams. Ballantine Books, 1985.

Nir, Yuval, and Giulio Tononi. “Dreaming and the Brain: From Phenomenology to Neurophysiology.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 14, no. 2, 2010, pp. 88–100.

Oatley, Keith. Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Provine, Robert R. “Emotional Tears and Biological Functions.” The American Scientist, vol. 91, no. 4, 2003, pp. 326–333.

Trimble, Michael R. Why Humans Like to Cry: Tragedy, Evolution, and the Brain. Oxford University Press, 2012.

van der Kolk, Bessel A. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books, 2015.

Walker, Matthew. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Scribner, 2017.

Vingerhoets, Ad J. J. M. Why Only Humans Weep: Unravelling the Mysteries of Tears. Oxford University Press, 2013.