A closer look
Tears caused by emotional distress have a completely different chemical composition than the tears your eyes produce to clear out dust or chop onions; sadness tears contain higher levels of protein and stress hormones, meaning that having a mental breakdown is technically a way for your body to chemically excrete cortisol and physically purge anxiety from your system; this makes crying a highly efficient, biologically necessary detoxification process, yet we treat it as an embarrassing failure of emotional regulation; instead of utilizing this free, built-in pressure release valve, we bottle everything up until it manifests as crippling back pain, tension headaches, and an inexplicable urge to yell at customer service representatives
