Weeping works
December 17, 2023 6:30 PM Subscribe
Crying on a regular basis can boost your mental well-being. So welcome to cry once a week, which offers a new short, sad video for that very purpose as often as you care to refresh the page.
People need help crying? In modern America? Are they not paying attention?!
posted by evilDoug at 8:06 PM on December 17, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by evilDoug at 8:06 PM on December 17, 2023 [18 favorites]
Yeah, I bust into hysterical tears multiple times a week now and I still don't feel better.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:24 PM on December 17, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:24 PM on December 17, 2023 [16 favorites]
The Marseillaise scene is ideal for this.
Assuming defiant tears work as well as sad ones.
posted by Klipspringer at 10:37 PM on December 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Assuming defiant tears work as well as sad ones.
posted by Klipspringer at 10:37 PM on December 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
"It tastes a little bit salty," said Owl, "but tear-water tea is always very good."
posted by aws17576 at 10:45 PM on December 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by aws17576 at 10:45 PM on December 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I cry pretty reliably and I can tell you it just makes me feel worse. The thing I'm crying about is still a thing and I've just escalated my perpetual ongoing migraine up a notch or two.
Laughing regularly actually does help, but is harder to pull off. And I'm talking real laughter, the kind that you didn't see coming and is an unexpected delight as well as funny.
If you're lucky enough to get this with a friend or loved one, it can put you into one of those laughter feedback loops where you wind up laughing at how helplessly the other person is laughing and as soon as one of you calms down the other will start up again and you're off for another round. I call this the "big-ass crow moment" after a memorable time a friend and I got in a loop for over 10 minutes because that phrase just happened to tickle one of us the right way.
Mind you, that can literally make your cheeks and sides hurt from laughing, and isn't great for migraines either, but it's a hell of a lot more fun.
posted by Athanassiel at 12:04 AM on December 18, 2023 [11 favorites]
Laughing regularly actually does help, but is harder to pull off. And I'm talking real laughter, the kind that you didn't see coming and is an unexpected delight as well as funny.
If you're lucky enough to get this with a friend or loved one, it can put you into one of those laughter feedback loops where you wind up laughing at how helplessly the other person is laughing and as soon as one of you calms down the other will start up again and you're off for another round. I call this the "big-ass crow moment" after a memorable time a friend and I got in a loop for over 10 minutes because that phrase just happened to tickle one of us the right way.
Mind you, that can literally make your cheeks and sides hurt from laughing, and isn't great for migraines either, but it's a hell of a lot more fun.
posted by Athanassiel at 12:04 AM on December 18, 2023 [11 favorites]
Okay, there's two things that will break me every time, and I don't need a whole website for it, and they are :
1. This absolutely delightful 1-2 minute read that mostly makes me happy-cry, but I tried to pull it out for a friend's funeral once and no one (myself most of all) could even imagine being able to say it out loud without just turning into a ball of tears.
2. (and this really should've been in first place, but it's more well known, so...) When Fred (Mister) Rogers got a lifetime achievement award and broke an entire auditorium into tears with silence. I've seen this so many times and to this day I cannot make it the entire 10 seconds without ugly crying.
Just linking those two chopped some onions in this household.
posted by revmitcz at 1:34 AM on December 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
1. This absolutely delightful 1-2 minute read that mostly makes me happy-cry, but I tried to pull it out for a friend's funeral once and no one (myself most of all) could even imagine being able to say it out loud without just turning into a ball of tears.
2. (and this really should've been in first place, but it's more well known, so...) When Fred (Mister) Rogers got a lifetime achievement award and broke an entire auditorium into tears with silence. I've seen this so many times and to this day I cannot make it the entire 10 seconds without ugly crying.
Just linking those two chopped some onions in this household.
posted by revmitcz at 1:34 AM on December 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
I call this the "big-ass crow moment"
Athanassiel, may I introduce you to a reliable source of laughter, depending on your maturity.
The phrase X-ass Y often becomes laughter inducing when you move the hyphen to make it X ass-Y (as in big ass-crow).
posted by kokaku at 1:51 AM on December 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Athanassiel, may I introduce you to a reliable source of laughter, depending on your maturity.
The phrase X-ass Y often becomes laughter inducing when you move the hyphen to make it X ass-Y (as in big ass-crow).
posted by kokaku at 1:51 AM on December 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Psychological studies aren't all total bullshit, but plenty of them are, which means it's often easy to pick and choose those that support your priors. So I'm going with Suppressing negative emotions may actually benefit your mental heath, study finds.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:30 AM on December 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:30 AM on December 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
I don't have a link for this because I saw it years ago, but there was some article in O Magazine about how a woman fought her cancer by digging up every funny video she could find and watching them to make herself laugh. This strikes me as being a good idea, in general.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:59 AM on December 18, 2023
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:59 AM on December 18, 2023
that mostly makes me happy-cry,
yeah, what about when happiness makes you cry?
posted by philip-random at 8:03 AM on December 18, 2023
yeah, what about when happiness makes you cry?
posted by philip-random at 8:03 AM on December 18, 2023
Why do I need this site's videos when I can just rewatch Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas?
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:27 AM on December 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:27 AM on December 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
That montage from Up! gets me every time.
posted by storybored at 10:49 AM on December 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by storybored at 10:49 AM on December 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
One time I told my therapist that I put all the sad (and very big happy) thoughts & memories into a mental room, because otherwise I would just cry non-stop for possibly ever. Door of Cry is always closed except for when it opens by itself.
He said that worried him which is how you win therapy, I think
So is the purposeful crying supposed to be in addition to involuntary crying, or do I get credit for periods of crying already served?
posted by Baethan at 12:21 PM on December 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
He said that worried him which is how you win therapy, I think
So is the purposeful crying supposed to be in addition to involuntary crying, or do I get credit for periods of crying already served?
posted by Baethan at 12:21 PM on December 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Heard about this on this week's Search Engine episode, and share PJ's skepticism that there's any scientific backing to this. Even the citation abstract seems to suggest a kind of "sometimes it help, sometimes it makes things worse" heterogeneity. In fact that article doesn't actually claim what the Independent claims it does, and instead cites other unpublished work. Someone else -- ideally the journalist who wrote the news article -- can go find out whether that "in press" research ever made it through peer review.
posted by pwnguin at 2:22 PM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by pwnguin at 2:22 PM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
We watch "hearing impaired child/teen/adult hears for the first time" videos when we want to cry. Works every time. And not sad. Also, dog adoptions.
posted by Wetterschneider at 2:45 PM on December 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Wetterschneider at 2:45 PM on December 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
I should add, my experience of regular crying being unhelpful may be because my baseline is depression (and migraine). Definitely not intending to cast shade on anyone who finds crying cathartic or helpful on any level!
I absolutely think there needs to be more acceptance of crying being ok, regardless of your gender, sexuality, mental health status etc. As someone who can cry just from intensity of feeling, not necessarily as an indication of upsetness or sadness, I wish there was more general understanding of the complex reasons behind crying.
posted by Athanassiel at 5:09 PM on December 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
I absolutely think there needs to be more acceptance of crying being ok, regardless of your gender, sexuality, mental health status etc. As someone who can cry just from intensity of feeling, not necessarily as an indication of upsetness or sadness, I wish there was more general understanding of the complex reasons behind crying.
posted by Athanassiel at 5:09 PM on December 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
One time I told my therapist that I put all the sad (and very big happy) thoughts & memories into a mental room, because otherwise I would just cry non-stop for possibly ever. Door of Cry is always closed except for when it opens by itself.
A cartoon about the coping mechanism of bottling up
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 9:32 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
A cartoon about the coping mechanism of bottling up
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 9:32 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I should add, my experience of regular crying being unhelpful may be because my baseline is depression (and migraine). Definitely not intending to cast shade on anyone who finds crying cathartic or helpful on any level!
I've read that there also can be an issue where if you are under prolonged stress - and therefore your body pumps out cortisol constantly - the cortisol receptors because de-sensitized to cortisol release. Cortisol is supposed to downregulate itself from my understanding - i.e. when a stressor happens your body releases cortisol (plus adrenaline etc) and that release of cortisol is supposed to tell the stress response to stop.
Which I think is in part where this idea comes from of crying being cathartic - that maybe the excess release of cortisol can stop the stress response.
Except what happens when your cortisol receptors have been significantly desensitized due to severe chronic stress?
This last part is just my hypothesis, and I'm not sure if there's evidence to support it, but after years of severe physical and mental stress, I found that once i would start crying, it was like, it just would keep going and going until I physically exhausted myself. And it made me wonder if maybe it's that cortisol dysregulation.
And I started wondering about this in part b/c when I was on prednisone for asthma recently, it seemed to reset things. I can't say I enjoyed crying, but it was like, I would cry for a bit, and then it would stop. It was like magic!
Although complicating things is the fact that there's some evidence that ongoing abuse in childhood that causes CPTSD can lead to a DECREASE in baseline cortisol levels. So who knows.
I guess maybe my point is, if you hate crying, pop some prednisone and give it a shot? *Insert shrug emoji here*
posted by litera scripta manet at 10:53 AM on December 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've read that there also can be an issue where if you are under prolonged stress - and therefore your body pumps out cortisol constantly - the cortisol receptors because de-sensitized to cortisol release. Cortisol is supposed to downregulate itself from my understanding - i.e. when a stressor happens your body releases cortisol (plus adrenaline etc) and that release of cortisol is supposed to tell the stress response to stop.
Which I think is in part where this idea comes from of crying being cathartic - that maybe the excess release of cortisol can stop the stress response.
Except what happens when your cortisol receptors have been significantly desensitized due to severe chronic stress?
This last part is just my hypothesis, and I'm not sure if there's evidence to support it, but after years of severe physical and mental stress, I found that once i would start crying, it was like, it just would keep going and going until I physically exhausted myself. And it made me wonder if maybe it's that cortisol dysregulation.
And I started wondering about this in part b/c when I was on prednisone for asthma recently, it seemed to reset things. I can't say I enjoyed crying, but it was like, I would cry for a bit, and then it would stop. It was like magic!
Although complicating things is the fact that there's some evidence that ongoing abuse in childhood that causes CPTSD can lead to a DECREASE in baseline cortisol levels. So who knows.
I guess maybe my point is, if you hate crying, pop some prednisone and give it a shot? *Insert shrug emoji here*
posted by litera scripta manet at 10:53 AM on December 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
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other than the same link to the independent from 2014 that is repeated above, no background info on the website about who made this or what their intentions are, no "about" no "contact us" just some social media links to boost the website, but you can sign up for the mystery creator's free ebook and website updates.
my lazy guess is someone took some content-farm listicle of "scenes that make us cry every time" and embedded them in a website in hopes to monetize the traffic somehow
but the website is right... i did feel something
posted by glonous keming at 6:48 PM on December 17, 2023 [5 favorites]