when I was 8, a good headbump or playground injury would make me cry in pain. Now, in my 30s, I’ve had some of the worst injuries of my life with no crying response.
In: Biology
Crying is more about emotional than physical pain. As a kid you’re scared and helpless when injured, and even a minor bump or scrape may be the worst you’ve ever experienced. As you learn to take care of yourself, and that others will help you when you need it, injuries are less distressing even though they’re still painful.
Some people may also block out feelings of weakness and helplessness due to not having their emotional needs met as kids, and stop crying altogether, even when in emotional pain. If it goes too far they can even become cruel to those who do show signs of weakness, perpetuating the abuse.
Because it doesn’t work. Crying as a child gets attention from the people who can fix it. Crying as an adult doesn’t.
It may be significant that this crying response drops off much in the same way childhood fearfulness drops off? Both are linked to feeling vulnerable
Crying is more than a pain response, consider it a signal to the tribe of distress. Thinking of crying in this way helps break the association of “sadness”. People cry when they’re hurt, angry, scared, laughing, and they can be sad without tears.
So as a child you cry to get attention, a baby cries when it’s hungry, when it’s uncomfortable, when it feels like it because it has no means of self, so it is constantly distressed. The cry gets a parent’s attention.
Parents try to condition their child out of crying all the time, self-soothing for example, so now the sligkty older child is finding other was to cope with duress, it’s building an inventory of self-care.
A bit older rhe child begins socializing with peers, it has some self-care skills, maybe it can speak words, or indicate what’s wrong without reverting to the basest means of communication. However around this time they learn self-policing.
Where as before if they cried mommy came to the rescue, now if they cry Billy calls them a cry baby and steals their lunch money. So crying becomes less of a go-to response. Now instead of crying the kid can recognize the scrape isn’t that bad, and instead of crying goes “Ouch, my knee” and then a teacher comes over, tells them it’s ok and gets them a band aid. All better.
Carry that through, to an 8 year old, they’ve spent 4 years seeing crying gets you ridiculed, they have the ability to speak, gesture and express, they have some ability to contextualize a crisis on a scale of 1-10, a minor scrape, is a 1, Grandfather dying is a 9, they know somethings are appropriate to cry about and others aren’t.
As a teen, crying is an aberration, a last resort, a primitive communication, and there’s enough social awareness to recognize when they cry they may get sympathy, ridiculed, infantililized, etc… so it becomes even more reserved to say nothing if being better able to contextualize duress.
Once you’re an adult that’s all baked in, and you’ve been through enough shit that your body doesn’t go meltdown crisis mode anymore, you’ve scraped a knee, broken a bone, mourned death, been heartbroken, etc… and despite all that you’re still going so you can cope with the crisis, and you can call for help, reach out to a support network, actively rather than crying, wailing, and hoping someone comes to your rescue.
Because we associate crying with pain, they aren’t linked? Ever spontaneously cry with happiness?
Crying, like children do, is not so much about the pain, but the fear and inability to “do anything about it”.
I have a 3yo son, and his natural response to many things is crying. As a parent you very quickly learn whats real and whats not. Now if he falls down and gets hurt outside playing, and nobody saw it – crying is his only option. He doesn’t know or have the communication ability to say “Daaaaad! I hurt my leg, can you help me?” – but he certainly know “which” tone of crying to go for to get me or his mom to come running quick.
My nephew at 12 knows this is worthless…. he might have some tears, but he doesn’t cry, and he will come into the house after falling on his bike “Uncle, can you help me please?”
As adults to, we usually only cry when things are hopeless. When we just broke up with a long term partner, you are crying because you really dont know how to arrange the next week now that you are alone – it seems hopeless. Or someone dies – there is nothing you can do, then crying feels “better”. Because it releases a lot of “ssssshhhh, its going to be alright” hormones. It does very little for physical pain – swearing on the other hand, does. Studies have shown that people who scream out profanities when they have pain – experiences less pain in total than the people who just keep it in.
Latest Answers