Why do I feel worse after crying?

Crying exerts a lot of energy because we often have increased breaths and our hearts are racing. Because of the energy our body exerts to cry, we often find ourselves feeling tired and physically exhausted afterward. This isn't abnormal, and it's very common to feel this way after crying. You're using so many muscles and there are so many thoughts racing during a good cry that it seems almost as if our bodies are completely out of juice after. What has always helped me feel better after crying is taking a nice bath or drinking a cup of coffee just to re-orient myself and get a little bit of that energy back. If it's just before bed, that lack of energy in your body from crying can send you right off to sleep which is also useful!

Crying is the bodies way of releasing tension and emotion. Sometimes after we cry our minds go into a state of healing. We usually feel down and upset during this time, but we usually bounce back sooner rather than later. I know how this feels personally and I get it. Feeling worse after crying is normal. We sometimes even feel pain in our limbs, jaw, or head because it takes a lot of energy to cry, laugh, sing; etc. Just know that holding it in can also hurt as well, so try not to hold it in either. Letting out emotion is good and bad, but we always feel better about ourselves in the end knowing we got it out rather than bottling it up.

You may feel worse after crying as it is exhausting on your body. Crying releases stress hormones, causes an increased heart rate and slower breathing resulting in lower oxygen levels to your brain, crying is physically exhausting. And while the physical aspects of crying may leave your body feeling calm after it has spent so much energy, you may feel worse as you may not be emotionally self-aware and therefore crying may not relieve the particular emotional distress you are holding at any given point in time as you are not able to transform those emotions into something positive.

Sometimes, crying can be a really therapeutic way to release negative emotions. Other times, I find myself just feeling more vulnerable than how I started. For me, it all depends on the situation; crying from grief often results in getting a step closer to acceptance, while crying out of frustration only makes me more sensitive afterwards. All in all, though, crying mostly feels inevitable. When the tears come, it's not often that I feel I'm capable of stopping before it's run its full course. So I try to take the crooked with the straights, as my mom says. It's hard to know how crying is going to make you feel until you've done it, but when the moment feels right there's no shame in letting it loose.