Why is it important to cry?

To tell someone how a donkey in the supermarket was rude yesterday? Or how your neck is stiff and you have a headache? Maybe how abnormal is this world when a square meter of living space costs like half a year's salary?

We all need to eat now and then. To complain about things that annoy us, from the banal to the fundamental.

Good news and bad news about that. It's good that she is howling hello. The bad thing is that it is only healthy in moderate doses.

"Humans are social beings.. We have a need to check our subjective world and share it with others. That connects us," says Tamara Džamonja Ignjatović, professor of psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade.

"Other people are our frame of reference, they help us see things differently. It is enough if they provide us with support, empathy, understanding, to show us that we are not alone in a problem," she said for our Medjuvreme newsletter.

Lament for peace

It's not just about easing the soul. Lamenting is often a discreet way to ask for help, advice perhaps. Or to find in the interlocutors a mirror in which we can better see a possible solution.

The matter is also biological. Some research shows that bittersweet in small doses activates the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for planning and making rational decisions.

Have you ever strangled someone? And then, as soon as you tell someone you trust, you start looking at the problem more coldly, more rationally? So don't strangle anyone.

Therefore, there is nothing wrong with the need to complain even about little things, on the contrary.

"We can share superficial things with a superficial circle of acquaintances. But we choose to whom we will tell deeper personal problems, where we want confidentiality. So it is also a test of how important and close these people are to us and an opportunity to further strengthen the relationship," says Džamonja Ignjatović.

Me and me

The downside of whining, as with many things in life, is overdoing it.

You know those people too - they are good for nothing. They dazzle everyone. You tell them your leg hurts, they take over the conversation and tell you their whole medical history and how they have it worse than you.

"It is already inadequate when you react to someone else's problem by sharing your own problem," says professor Džamonja Ignjatović. "When someone tells you about a personal pain, the point is not whether you have a bigger or smaller problem, but that you listen, hear, understand."

But people usually can't get out of their skin. There are selfish people. That, says the professor, is usually a character trait, and less often a more serious disorder.

"A lot of people are self-centered and can't defocus from their own position. And that's how they go through life. It doesn't necessarily mean a severe pathology, although in worse cases it can be a narcissistic disorder. Most are in the range below that."

Another possibility with excessive whining is not that you are self-centered, but that you see your whole life as a thick web of problems and troubles. Black without any white.

This leads to life's cynicism - we not only notice negative things, but look for them everywhere and in everyone.

The message could be: Let's cry, but in healthy doses!