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Tears are shed for various reasons, perhaps sadness or anger, and sometimes joy and extreme happiness. Despite the importance of crying for a person’s physical and psychological health, and tears being considered one of the most important means of expressing feelings, sometimes, for reasons unknown even to those who cry, the tears may stop flowing.
Since the seventh of last October, many have been following developments in the situation in the Gaza Strip, through pictures and videos exposing the genocidal war that claimed the lives of thousands of martyrs, most of whom were women and children.
A state of human sympathy is sweeping the entire world with the tragedy of the Palestinians, but “Why am I not crying?” asks the forty-year-old woman, Sherine Mahrous, who follows events daily, and does not stop moving between social media platforms to follow the latest news and news of the resistance.
I cried a lot and then suddenly everything stopped
Sherine has sympathized with the Palestinian cause since her childhood. She witnessed the events of the First Intifada and the Second Intifada, the peace treaties, the two-state solution, the separation wall, the martyrdom of Muhammad al-Durra, and the assassination of Sheikh Yassin. Every time she cried, screamed, and prayed for the cowards, but she did not know what happened to her this time. She is still screaming, calling, and boycotting every product that supports the occupying entity, but she does not know where her tears went. Sherine tells Al Jazeera Net, “My eyes are not responding, despite the cruelty of the pictures and videos I see, despite the pain in the videos of children and their martyrdom or the martyrdom of their families. I don’t know why not.” “My eyes obey me.”
Among the most common reasons for crying in adults is “empathic crying,” and it comes in third place after separation and loss, according to a study published by “Pumped Center,” a website concerned with publishing scientific studies, on empathic crying.
The researchers concluded that sympathetic crying is a complex mixture of physiological and emotional phenomena, and standard psychological theories of emotion cannot attribute crying to one section of the involuntary nervous system. The results indicate that sympathy tears are part of an internal interaction related to the experiences and personal characteristics of the individual that are triggered by the tears. In the form of catharsis or as part of shared grief.
Crying is a defense method
In one of the letters sent to the professor of psychiatry, Dr. Mohamed Taha, a woman asked what bothered her most: “I have a problem (…) Why am I not crying?”
The psychiatrist answers that the reasons that may lead to this condition are twofold. The first is related to dry eyes, for example, or a defect in the tear ducts. Then he addresses the most important reason, which is the psychological reason, as he emphasized that the mind has defensive means that it uses in difficult times against severe psychological pain, which may push us to extreme fear, excessive anxiety, or deep sadness.
Sometimes feelings freeze, due to their extreme boiling, and due to their extreme depth, they flatten, in order to protect us, and in this way feelings work contrary to the laws of nature, because the mind that allowed some sadness to pass into your feelings, does not allow that sadness to flow endlessly because that will befall you. With damage that both your body and yourself may not be able to bear.
Crying is a relief
Professor of Psychology at Benha University, Dr. Medhat Gad Al-Rab, said in his interview with Al Jazeera Net, “Tears are a relief that some people sometimes postpone for a time when they have the luxury of crying.”
Jad Al-Rab added, “Sometimes there are other roles that require a person to have a level of psychological strength, so he is forced to suppress his feelings and sorrows in order to carry out his role as he should, and this is what we are seeing now on screens. Most of the people who cry are those sitting in homes watching from afar, while those who cry are The issue is that they go about their daily lives and tasks, even sitting down to tan and joke about enemy planes, all of this while they are in the midst of adversity, and this is what is called in psychology “defensive means” that protects them from collapse at such times.”
Jad Al-Rab confirms that sympathy varies in its forms depending on the age stages we go through, so most of the crying comes from the younger age stages, who have no power to harm or benefit the cause, and perhaps some of them hear about the Palestinian issue for the first time, but in the older age stages, a type of Another way to share grief, share work, and support the cause by donating or calling for a boycott, or going to squares, or raising the Palestinian flag over homes, are all solidarity positions that are far from crying, but they give people satisfaction with themselves and relieve them of some of the self-flagellation that exhausts them because they have no hand or power. A trick to prevent harm from their siblings.
