The real benefit of crying arises from the fact that we feel psychological pain. It looks suspiciously as though the endorphin system might be involved. And since the endorphin system provides the brain’s own built-in aspirin, psychological pain naturally triggers an endorphin response that both dampens the pain and makes us feel better by giving us a slight opioid high. In other words, the origins of crying may lie in what it does for us directly by making us feel better rather than in what it does for us indirectly by rousing sympathy in someone else.
