Is crying wrong?

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I think tears are viewed as unacceptable as angry outbursts are. Negative emotional outbursts are viewed as childish behaviour, it causes unease in others because you have lost control of yourself and are not communicating verbally as an adult should.
We are hard wired to be unable to ignore the sound of a baby crying, I think this might be where the manipulation accusations stem from. The noise apparently activates the fight or flight parts of our brain "One is the middle temporal gyrus, an area previously implicated in emotional processing and speech; the other area is the orbitofrontal cortex, an area well-known for its role in reward and emotion processing." http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012 ... ard-ignore

Pure speculation, but I think that the sight of adult tears stirs an involuntary subconscious response, but without the ability to simply comfort. It has a helpless impact on the other person, a weakening of their composure, caused by the vulnerability and weakness of another, and based on their experiences everyone reacts differently to it.

There was a point in my life where I awoke crying every morning, it was depression related.

I saw this baby crying up a storm yesterday on the subway.

it took all my energy not to pop the father one, because he seemed to be treating the baby like crap. There was no toy for the baby to play with. He wasn't trying to comfort the little girl. He was stuffing her roughly into that "sleeping bag thing" which most strollers have these days.

The only reason why I didn't say something is because I didn't know the whole story. Maybe he sensed that she was tired, and needed a nap. I don't know.

It was certainly frustrating that I couldn't get the baby to stop crying.

The cry of babies are supposed to wreck our nerves

The issue is: other people complaining when you cry when the other person "mistreats you".
Is that correct?

Next time someone complains when you cry after they mistreat you- you should bash them in the face with the nearest handy solid object.

This will cause THEM to cry. And the you can then condemn the other person for being a crybaby!

I can't ignore a baby crying either. I want to help and soothe the infant. It's especially hard when the parent is being harsh.

I think of crying as a bodily function that should be done in private, like any other excretion. Society expects children to be potty trained by the time they start school, just as they expect them to develop emotional self-control by the time they reach adulthood. Holding in urine is just as unnatural as holding in tears, but we do these things as part of living in a civilized society.

There have been studies that show:

Crying raises the level of the neuropeptide oxytocin in the brain;
Withholding tears decreases the level of oxytocin in the brain;

There is an antagonist effect between oxytocin and testosterone: as one rises, the other falls and vice versa. So men who actively repress tears raise their testosterone (also true for women). Men who cry raise their oxytocin (also true for women).

Given the research which is starting to come through on oxytocin and autism, these inter-related findings are interesting to me.

The most recent research on oxytocin shows its capacity in rats to bind the effects of alcohol, so that they do not get drunk and show impaired motor function, no matter how much alcohol they drink (Dr Michael Bowen, University of Sydney).

I do NOT think oxytocin causes autism - please don't start on about that! - though I do think it is one of the important neuropeptides we need to look at in regard to ameliorating the negative side effects/co-morbids of autism. I think this field will yield more helpful information than the current vogue for fMRI to look at brain structure differences, which actually tells us much less than the researchers have claimed... but I won't start on again about that!! !

PS: Waterfalls, I have noticed that you are consistently one of the most empathetic posters on WP - crying would raise your sensitivity to other's feeling according the studies that have been done on this. So don't stop crying! (Unfortunately it doesn't raise the sensitivity of judgmental onlookers)

Wrong? No. Just no.

I cry a lot. I've had a few instances in public as an adult where I've cried and I've definitely received a lot of condescending looks from people. To be fair I was under a lot of stress those times I cried and I had difficulty holding it in. Usually I would just rush to the bathroom to cry silently in a stall if my emotions were high. I used to think it was OK to cry in front of good friends but even then I noticed the weird looks and awkward silence that followed. So now I only cry when I'm alone and at home. It's not something I can permanently stop. I used to hold in my emotions when I was younger because my narcissist mother told me not to cry, but then traumatic experiences kept piling up in my life and I couldn't hold the tears in any longer.

I personally don't think crying is wrong. It is a natural and healthy part of being human. But society often tells us it's inappropriate to cry. Especially if you're a guy, for years parents have told their boys they aren't supposed to cry, even when they get hurt. it's misinterpreted as a weakness. Now it seems okay for a man to cry if someone he loved dies or he's in a lot of physical pain, but not really much more than that. But sometimes it seems that they really aren't able to do so, and it's like they don't have feelings at all, plus they scoff at it and make jokes and complain when women want them to talk about their feelings. I have very seldom seen either of my parents cry and they really hate it when I do. I can't cry or be really upset around them because then they get upset. Because of this I'm reluctant to tell them when something is really bothering me. But as my mother told me, it would upset me if they told me what was really bothering them. Like one time my mom said that if anything happens to dad she wants me to move back in with her, but I don't think I can. Not permanently, anyway.

It seems okay to cry when you do it quietly, no bawling your head off, especially if you're in public because it makes other people uncomfortable or even angry at you, although there are some individuals who are kind enough to come up and ask what's wrong. If someone tells me to stop crying I usually just cry even harder on purpose because that is like telling a frog to stop croaking.