30 Interesting psychological facts about crying and tears

                 Crying is one of the most common emotional reactions in humans. Pretty much everyone has cried at one time or another in their life.Emotional tears seem to be a uniquely human experience. So what are some interesting facts to know about crying and the tears that come along?

1. There are four types of tears. 

       • Emotional tears - which happens when you are overwhelmed by emotions. 

       • Reflex tears - which flows to clean out debris when your eyes are irritated by onions or pollen. 

       • Basal tears - which lubricate your eyes and keep them clean. 

       • Crocodile tears - well, this is an unofficial fourth form, but people who have superb acting skills can create them. 

2. Tears have three layers. 

       • The lipid layer (oil) 

       • The aqueous layer (water) 

       • The mucous layer (mucin) 

3. Holding of tears and pretending to be okay puts lots of stress on your mind as well as on your heart. Crying keeps you healthy. 

4. A good cry makes you feel better, and a  bad cry may make you feel worse. 

5. Crying is caused by sense of pain, sorrow or emotions etc. Pain, sorrow and emotion act as a trigger for release of energy through these acts. 

6. Researchers believe emotional tears may be evolutionary adaptation. 

7. The nose is running when you are crying, because the tears actually goes into the nasal passage. Some of them end up in your nose, so your nose runs. 

8. Tears come from the lacrimal gland. 

9. Crying literally flushes unhealthy bacteria out of the human body, strengthening the immune system while relieving stress. 

10. Having someone ask you "Are you okay? " actually causes you to tear up even more when you are trying not to cry. 

11. Humans are the only animal that cry tears of sadness.

12. Babies average about 1-3 hours of crying everyday. 

13. By crying you accept your emotions, you can strike a balance in your life means being able to strike a balance between your emotions and feelings. 

14. While crying from happiness the first tear will come from your right eye, but if you are crying from sadness, it will come from the left eye. 

15. Women cry 3-5 times more often than men. Testosterone seems to have an inhibiting influence on crying as well. 

16. Your tears can generate electricity. 

17. Tears have different chemical compositions depending on the emotion you feel. 

18. Seeing somebody cry changes your perspective on that person. People who cry are percieved as more empathic, reliable, sincere, and less aggressive. However seeing somebody cry also has negative effects as the person is seen as less emotionally stable. 

19. If someone can't cry, he/she is weak. 

20. Crying is how your body speaks when your mouth explain the pain you feel. 

21. SYN-PROPANETHIAL-S-OXIDE is the reason why onions make you cry. It is a chemical irritant that stimulates the lacrimal gland which make you tear up. 

22. Women have physically smaller tear ducts than men. 

23. If someone cries on little things, he/she is innocent and soft hearted. 

24. Prolactin is a protein that affects the endocrine system which may cause women to cry more often than men. Women have 60% more prolactin in their body than men. 

25. If you feel tears coming on a need, to hold them back, relax your jaw and refrain from blinking. 

26. People are more likely to cry at night, because lack of sleep makes emotions hard to control. 

27. A neurological condition called pathological laughing and crying (PLC) can cause involuntary crying at inappropriate condition. 

28. The human body produces an average of 5-10 ounces of basal tears each day. 

29. Physical signs of helplessness like crying, are not threatening signals. As such, tears could reduce violence better than an argument. 

30. Crocodile tears are real. 

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Facts on anger

            Anger is a part of our emotion. It's a natural phenomenon. Anger is a frequently misunderstood emotion. People confuse it with aggression, violence,they think of it as mostly unhealthy and they fail to recognize the times in their lives when their anger has been positive.At the same time, anger may even make people take wrong decisions in their daily life and may clash while in anger. Anger can be controlled and saturated in right direction as well. 

√ Anger is not inherently bad

           One of the most common misconceptions about anger is that it is bad for you. It's not. In fact, anger is a valuable emotion as it helps people confront injustice. It alerts us to the fact that we have been wronged or treated unfairly and it energizes us to respond to that injustice. Much like hunger motivates us to eat,thirst motivates us to drink, and fear motivates us to avoid things that are dangerous,anger motivates us to respond to confrontation and unfairness. 

√ Anger can act as strongest motivation

         "Anger is like Gasoline, if you spray it around and somebody lights a match, you've got an inferno, but if we can put our anger inside an engine, it can drive us forward."

           When we feel that emotion that rules us up, we also feel motivated. At first, knowing how best to act is difficult, but in time the emotion of anger can drive us to create something innovated to solve a problem. While we can all relate to anger as a result of injustice or pain, we don't always realize that stress and taking on too much can cause angry outbursts. The body and the mind sometimes work together to tell us we need to cut back at work or find more time to relax. Motivating ourselves to enjoy life more and stress less is one of the best benefits of anger. 

√ Two hormones adrenaline and cortisol are released when we are angry

         These chemicals acts as strong boost to our body muscles for several minutes. 

√ Anger teaches us about our ability to cope

          We all experience anger from time to time, and even when we repeatedly feel frustrated and irritable our feelings may not indicate anything abnormal. Anger teaches us about our ability to cope, because we can easily and objectively look at ourselves and answer a few questions.Am I feeling angry? Sometimes we feel pressured or rushed and that leads to anger. Solving the underlying problem in this situation means planning and being more organized. 

√ Anger is an emotion with physiological effects

        We all understand the feeling of a rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms and burning stomach as our muscles tighten and we feel anger. The "fight or flight" system engages as we decide how best to deal with our anger.Expressing anger is always the best thing for you. When anger feeds off itself, your release of anger causes you more damage. Be wary of the cycle that wreaks havoc on your nervous system. 

√ Anger can cause a variety of problems for people

         Everyone knows that anger can be problematic for people. We have all read about cases of people who lost their temper and hurt someone or hurt themselves. However, people don't always recognize the scope of the types of problems that can emerge from anger. While arguments,damaged relationships, physical fights and risky driving are fairly common.We see several other types of consequences that emerge from maladaptive anger. Chronic anger has been known to lead to long term health consequences and finally anger can lead people to experience other uncomfortable emotions like sadness, fear or guilt. 

√ Anger causes separation 

         Speaking of separation, what are the effects when you are angry? Anger pushes people away, scares them, makes them fight back or shut down. Relationships don't have room to breathe when they are defined by anger. "How could you?" "You shouldn't have...... "sound familiar? 

          Remember that anger or any reaction is not the fault of the other. If you are angry, look within yourself. Lovingly investigate what has been triggered in you, and your whole perspective on the situation will shift. 

√ Chronic and uncontrolled exhausted anger can directly lead to heart attack or paralysis

             When you just can't shake the anger and it feeds off itself for too long, you will either find yourself making yourself physically sick or your ourburst can land you in jail. Pressure in veins begin to rise with increase in anger. Smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise can exacerbate the effects of anger, putting you at an increased risk for cardio-vascular events. 

√ Anger stops growth of new neurons in brain

         Thus, growth of brain is weakened when a person is angry. 

√ Humor can diffuse anger

           Realizing that life is stressful is only the first step. Actually, the realization is more like lacing up the shoes than even taking the first step. The first step comes from the understanding that anger is an emotion that men and women feel differently and anger does not have to control us. The simple act of laughing at anger can diffuse it. In an argument one person can defeat the mounting anger with a joke. Wouldn't recommend a stand up comedy act to diffuse a dangerous hostage situation, but when your coworkers can't agree on a project, trying to diffuse the situation with office antics can help everyone get focused. 

√ Start working out when experiencing anger

          When we're angry, a large quantity of energy is stored in our muscles. To calm down, this energy needed to be released. Best remedy to release this energy is to start working. 

           All that anger, all that fear, all that negative energy take it to the gym and spend it there. These things make a great fuel,let these things nourish you and not the either way around. 

√ Try to fill your stomach with healthy diet when you're angry

           Hunger increases magnitude of anger exponentially. 

           AGGRESSION IS ANGER IN ACTION

          Feeling the anger,and choosing to take a deep breath or choosing to verbally assault a cheating lover is the difference between anger as an emotion and anger in action. Aggression is when we act on our anger, and aggression can land us in jail. Men often feel like showing anger in public or in workplace is a sign of weakness. Hiding feelings of anger can cause outbursts at home in these situations. Accept when you feel angry and try to understand its root. 

          When anger must be released in a physical form, try mixed martial arts or boxing lessons to control the aggressive instinct. The benefit from anger in this scenario is that you can express your aggression and exercise at the same time. Sometimes, this physical exercise is what the body needed when the mind felt the anger emotion. 

           

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Truth about butterflies in your stomach

          We all have experienced a variety of gut feelings and gut reactions associated with different emotions, including anxiety, anger and sadness. "butterflies in the stomach" is the familiar experience.While it's a universal, even charming experience,butterflies mean that a complex interaction has been activated from deep within the brain, manifesting throughout the body, including the digestive system. Even more outlandish and provocative is the, recently proposed idea by Dr. Emeran Mayer, that the 100 trillion microbes living in our gut may have a word to say in this mind - gut conversation. 

           "Any emotion or stress response that originates in the brain will change many gut functions", Mayer, a gastroenterologist, neuroscientist and professor of medicine at UCLA,said in an interview. 

           " The gut will change like a face, associated with every emotion" Mayer said. When we experience an emotion,the brain talks to the gut,and the gut responds back to the brain. 

              Emotion related changes will also affect the gut microbes and the molecules they produce. That creates a feedback loop, by sending more information back to the brain either through the bloodstream or the vagus nerve, which is a part of autonomic nervous system. When that happens, the hypothalamus in the brain produces a hormone called Corticotropin-releasing factor,or CRF. It spreads to the amygdala, which makes your hand sweat, heart race and stomach clench. CRF also signals the adrenal glands to release cortisol and adrenalin, and tells the enteric nervous system to divert energy away from digestion. The stomach slows down and may even reverse, and the intestines speed up. This is the "butterflies in the stomach" feeling. 

              Blood flow is diverted to the muscles and away from the gut,creating characteristics facial expressions. The only difference is that while everybody can read an emotional facial expression,we are completely unaware of the emotion related events going on in our gut. 

Now the next time you hear someone say, they have butterflies on their stomach, you know exactly why that's happening. 

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