访谈录 Interview 2007-01-31&0202, 哭吧哭吧,不是罪

Dr. Gail Saltz is Today contributor. Hey, Gail! Good morning. Nice to see you.

Good morning, Matt.

Is there a physical reason for calm crying?

Actually crying has an evolutionary 1 reason. We are the only mammals that shed tears when we are upset for emotional reason. And that's probably twofold, it's a form of communication. In other words it allows us to bond on a much higher level. Because you can't really fake tear. You can fake wailing 2 and so on. But the actual tears coming down and the muscles associated with it are not under voluntary control, really.

So, it, but, but it's hard to really do a lot of science on it, isn't it? Yes. Because you can't take people to the breaking point in laboratory.

You can't put them in lab and really make them cry tear. So, what we can conjecture 3 has a lot to do with, for instance, things that happen naturally. So for instance, we know that crying probably has more to do with calming our bodies down. We think it's all I'm upset so I cry. But it's actually the aftermath of re-equilibrating your body. The reason you know this is that the sympathetic part of the nervous system that flight, fright part when it's damaged the other half, the part that calms us down after the flight and fright functions and that's when we cry.

Do we possess, it's that what puts people over the edge, I mean going from being just upset to bawling 4. What is that line?

The line actually is deep in the brain structure. And it is twofold. It is how well you tolerate your emotion. So long as when you're sad, when you're upset, how well do you handle that. Do you have other coping skills for that or does it overwhelm you. And then, coming back to your normal states. So that you don't basically bust 5 the blood vessel 6. How do you return.

You know, I'm not one of the people who cries when I get upset, or angry or really sad. I get upset. I cry when I get happy or when I see something like Mohammad Ali lighting 7 the Olympic torch in Atlanta. Bow

It's not just happy, you are touched. And that is a very deep, deep, emotion which, which, bespeaks 8 nuance 9. And that's something that humans do that no one else does and it draws other people to you. So when you saw Mohammad Ali, other people like, oh man, he said something that's about you. It's really meaningful.

We had a good cry we did, we had a good cry. According to studies women cry 5 times more than men. Hormones 10?

Somewhat, but not entirely 11. It's partially 12 socially more acceptable. And women are in touch with emotion in a different way from men psychologically. So it's a combination of all those things.

So as a psychiatrist 13, What about people who never cry?

Yeah, usually that's actually kind of a problem. I mean there are some people have a very high threshold but basically if someone is probably repressing their feeling they won’t let themselves be in touch with the bitter sweetness of Mohammad Ali lighting the torch. So it's actually a healthy thing to allow yourself to cry. You might wanna not do it in every situation like here now, on the show.

Jus breaking down, yeah, that would be a problem.

But it's good to let it out.

Gail, thanks very much!