Crying: emotional and spiritual meaning

What crying is

Tears are a flow from the eyes, and a release of emotion. People cry from joy, love, fear, grief and disappointment. Crying often lowers the inner pressure. It is a healthy human response. It becomes a concern when it is constant, or when it comes with despair, or when the eyes themselves are inflamed or blocked and the tears cannot come.

The reading below does not replace care for the eyes, or for a mood that has become too heavy. It listens to what the tears are carrying.

The emotional meaning of crying

In the emotional approach, crying frees you from an overflow of feeling and of very strong thoughts. The eyes may also have been caught by a scene that was unbearable, a scene you were driven to watch in every detail. Or you cry because you cannot communicate what you feel. You are ignored. You feel invisible. There is little contact with your inner world.

Holding on, and calling for care

You may attach too tightly to people and things, from fear of losing them. You feel fragile, anxious, with little trust in yourself, and dependent. The tears evacuate sadness and disappointment. They drop the pressure.

Tears can also be a way of drawing attention and sympathy, so that someone will look after you. Read gently, this is what happens when need has no other voice. The source suggests that showing the qualities you actually have can bring care without the tears having to beg for it. You may feel you are always fighting, and you are exhausted. You always want to cry because what you are living is too much. You need help, and you do not ask.

Tears that will not come

Not crying can be a way of not looking weaker. Someone else's power can feel confirmed if they have made you "crack". Blocked tear ducts, in this reading, point to a resistance to free expression, sometimes the belief that crying is only for babies. You wanted, in some situation, not to show your suffering, and the ducts closed. You want to show that you exist, and it does not work.

In a baby, inflamed tear ducts are read as vulnerability to touch: a fear of being hurt. That is never a reason to blame a parent. A baby's eyes need a doctor. Comfort and gentle contact sit beside that care.

As tears leave the eyes, the source says, they can also carry away what you were afraid you would not see come true.

A gentler way to hold it

The aim is not to judge yourself for crying, or for being unable to. The emotional perspective invites you to let the overflow move, and to ask for help in words when you can.

• Let them come. Tears are a release, not a defect.
• Say the feeling as well. If crying is there because you cannot communicate, one true sentence helps the eyes.
• Ask for the help. Needing care is allowed to be spoken, not only wept.
• If you cannot cry, ask what you forbade. A rule that tears are weakness can block the ducts, in this reading.
• Have the eyes checked if they are inflamed, sticky or painful. The meaning does not replace that.