Another Vaknin video. Enough to bring tears to your eyes. Are you crying? Why are you crying? I promise to make this video shorter than usual. Well, not that short.
So today we're going to discuss crying. When is it okay to go lacrimose? When is it okay to cry? What are the risks in crying and what are the benefits? All this in today's tearful admission of a video.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, the first book ever about narcissistic abuse. I'm also a professor of clinical psychology and all my students regularly cry, at least in my classes.
When is it okay to cry? Three rules.
Let's start with the basics. I'm sorry, I'm still under the weather.
Crying is a form of signaling. I'm sorry, I'm still under the weather.
Crying is a form of signaling.
When you cry, you're trying to signal something.
Crying conveys information to the environment about distress, hopelessness, helplessness, sadness, and despair. Yours, of course, the crying persons.
You're communicating to the environment. Hey, listen, I am distressed. I feel hopeless. I feel helpless. I'm profoundly sad and I'm desperate.
Implied in this message is, Please help me. It's no wonder that the phrase is a cry for help.
Crying is also anxiolytic. It reduces and mitigates anxiety.
And it is anxiolytic because it is instinctively, unconsciously perceived as a cue, a behavior modification cue.
In other words, the implicit assumption when you cry is that your tears, the sounds you make, the facial expressions associated with crying, all these will somehow serve to modify the behaviors of people around you.
Now this is very reminiscent of anger. Anger fulfills the same function.
In anger, the expression, facial expression changes. In anger, there are sounds made. Anger is ostentatious in a public display. There's no privacy in anger.
And indeed, crying and anger co-occur. They often happen together. You often cry when you are angry.
And so the anxiolytic impact, the anxiety reducing effect of crying is because you predict the future. You anticipate the future.
It's like you're saying to yourself, I'm crying now. People are going to notice that I'm crying. They're going to change their behaviors and the reason for crying will disappear.
I'm crying because of what people are doing or what people are not doing. I'm crying because what people are saying or what they're not saying. I'm crying because I'm shunned and ostracized. I'm crying because I'm overcrowded. I'm crying because things are not going my way. These people are obstructing me, envious to me.
I'm crying. And I'm crying. And I'm making a spectacle out of it because I expect people to modify themselves, their behaviors and the environment to accommodate me, to somehow reduce the causes of my distress, somehow render me more hopeful, I'm sorry, randomly more self-efficacious.
So crying is anxiolytic because it's a behavior modification cue.
Babies cry in order to modify adult behaviors. A baby cries because the baby wants to modify the mother's behavior and to kind of coerce her or force her to feed the baby. To change the baby's diapers, because baby is wet, to pay attention to baby, to remain in the room, because it's terrifying when mother leaves the room.
So crying is a tool. It's an instrument.
And even babies use crying in order to impact their environment in ways which are benevolent and beneficial and conducive to favorable outcomes. This is known as self-efficacy.
Crying therefore is closely associated with self-efficacy. And these forms of externalized emotions, anger, crying, and so on so forth, they are all about making sure that you rearrange your human environment and physical environment so as to maximize beneficial outcomes.
And this restores a sense of safety.
It's as if when you cry, you're telling yourself, everything will be okay.
Now that I've cried, people will notice, and once they have noticed, they will change your behaviors, they will change your environment, they will remove the proximate causes of my distress, my unhappiness, my despair, and then the crying will have accomplished its goal.
Crying is also a form of psychological sharing, and we have this saying, sharing is caring.
Crying forces people to offer succor, advice, help, directions.
Crying, therefore, brings out the best in people.
And because it does, because you can anticipate these outcomes, crying is soothing and comforting.
Albeit inexorable and uncontrollable, one could even say impulsive, crying is also a kind of self-regulatory behavior.
It's as if you have crossed the Rubicon, as if you have kind of transitioned from an inhibited state of I'm brave. I'm going to put a brave face on it. I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to make a spectacle out of myself. I'm not going to stand there and wipe my tears and you know and then you say I can't take it anymore and you transition it's a phase transition you transition from one state of mind the state of mind of what is socially acceptable what is internally regulated what is controlled what is socially acceptable, what is internally regulated, what is controlled, what is appropriate and transition from this state of mind to another state of mind which says, I am now babylike. I'm babylike and I need to cry and I need to cry because it's going to make me feel better and I need to cry because I need to communicate my state of mind to other people and I need to do that because I need help I need help it's a cry for help and I need them to empathize with me and sympathize with me and help me and extend a hand across a divide, the intersubjective divide between people. I need company. It's not that misery loves company. It's that crying brings together people in ad hoc mini or miniature communities.
And then once the situation is resolved somehow, the community disperses.
Crying brings people together.
Regrettably, crying is stigmatized. Stigmatized, it is linked to all manner of dysfunctional behaviors and traits and dynamics.
For example, we associate crying with affective dysregulation, with people being out of control, with crazy making, with manipulation.
Crying is often cast as fake and manipulative. And crying is closely associated with negative affects such as shame.
So it's shameful to cry. It's disgraceful.
And it's also a gender thing. It's part of gender stereotyping and gender roles.
Boys don't cry. Or boys who do cry, cry in highly specific ways within highly legitimate and well-defined environments, for example, therapy.
So, crime is highly proscribed and prescribed by society, by the dominant culture, hegemony culture. And it's therefore no longer a spontaneous behavior.
Because spontaneity has been taken out of crime, crime has become a suspect. Crime has become not a genuine authentic message or signal.
It's regrettable that we have tainted and contaminated crime with this overriding ulterior motivations and analysis because at the core at the foundation crying is probably the most genuine authentic spontaneous real true behavior as I mentioned babies cry possibly it's the first behavior ever when a baby is taken out of the womb when a baby is born the first thing a baby does is cry.
I know that it is a physiological, mechanical thing. But still, it's the first discernible human behavior. Animals, some animals cry as well.
And yet we, in our hyper-masculinized society, combative, aggressive civilization, we regard crying as a sign of weakness, fragility, invulnerability.
And when we cry, we open the door to exploitation by predators and to maltreatment by abuses. Crying has become a risky behavior.
If you cry in public, you stand the risk of attracting to you very unsavory characters who would leverage your moment of weakness, your crime, would leverage it to penetrate your defenses and then abscond with everything you have.
So people abstain from crying because they're afraid. Crying has become associated with fear.
So when is it okay? When is it okay individually? When is it okay socially? When is it self-efficacious to cry? When is it a good idea? When is it likely to bring positive outcomes?
Number one, cry, feel free to cry only in a friendly environment.
Never ever cry in an environment which is indifferent to you, strange, foreign, or hostile, especially hostile.
If the environment you're embedded in or you find yourself is such that you are an unknown, that these are people you've met for the first time, or is a hostile environment, for example, prison or the army, you know, crying is a seriously bad idea. It's like saying, you know, it opens the floodgates.
Crying is a portal. Crying is a portal. Crying is a gate, and you are the gatekeeper.
Once you cry, you're opening yourself wide to intrusion, invasion, and a kind of intimacy or instant merger and fusion. These are highly, highly vulnerable positions.
So cry only when you're surrounded by friends. Never cry in front of potential enemies or predators.
Number two, when you're alone, allow yourself to cry. Even if it is an act of self-pity or self-soothing, seek relief through crying. It's a good idea. It's always a good idea to cry when you're alone.
Crying has all these impacts. Hormonal, by the way, hormonal and biochemical as well.
Crying is a great way of purging yourself, of all negativity, of reframing and regaining perspective about what has happened and what is about to happen, and about becoming your own best friend, self-soothing, self-comfiting, and yes, self-pity and self-empathizing.
Hug yourself metaphorically, if not otherwise, and allow yourself to wallow in crying.
Number three, when crying is likely to avert or avoid or modify circumstances and behaviors that might lead to adverse outcomes or might engender a situation which is dangerous or unfavorable, then cry.
In other words, if by crying, you avert or avoid or modify circumstances and behaviors that might lead to adverse outcomes, cry.
If by crying, you can engender or foster succor, support, advice and help, cry by all means.
We are all at one time or another in need of succor, support, advice and help. We are all in need of this type of human communication and human touch and the sharing of the common experience of being human. We're all in need of empathy.
Solicit it, ask for it, and the most effective way of doing this is through your tear ducts.