Have you ever woken up with tear-stained cheeks and pillows wet from crying during the night? You may wonder why you shed tears while asleep and what deeper meaning this phenomenon could hold.
Crying in your sleep, known as nocturnal lacrimation, is more common than you may think. Upwards of 15-20% of adults report experiencing this. Understanding the potential triggers and implications can provide insight into your subconscious world.
Common Causes and Triggers of Crying While Asleep
There are a few key reasons why someone may wake up crying without realizing it:
Vivid or Emotional Dreams
Crying during dreams is one of the most frequent triggers for nocturnal tears. If you have intense, vivid dreams that elicit strong emotions like sadness, fear, stress or loneliness this can lead to actually crying while asleep. The tears you wake up with reflect the inner narrative and imagery created by your subconscious mind.
Similarly, dreams about highly emotional events or memories can spark tears too. This may include nightmares, replays of past trauma, dreams about loved ones who have passed on, or other sentimental visions conjured while you slumber.
Physical Eye Irritation
Sometimes there is a physiological reason behind waking up with wet eyes. Dry eyes or environmental allergens causing ocular irritation can stimulate reflex tears while you’re unconscious. These protective, reflexive tears aim to flush out and defend against anything bothering your eyes.
So in some cases, non-emotional factors like dryness, dust, pet dander or eye infections lead to lubricating tear production that you aren’t aware is happening until the morning.
Medications Causing Excess Lacrimation
Certain prescription drugs and ocular medications have lacrimation, or excessive tear production, as a side effect. Some common culprits include medications for allergies, anxiety, depression, blood pressure issues and Parkinson’s disease.
If you have recently begun a new medication shortly before experiencing midnight weeping, discuss this reaction with your doctor.
Substances and Supplements
Some supplements and substances are linked with nighttime tearfulness or general lacrimation as well. Notably, alcohol and cannabis consumption before bed can increase dream vividness and intensity. So if you recently drank alcohol or used cannabis products, this may explain crying episodes during sleep.
Other supplements like melatonin, 5-HTP and SAM-e help regulate sleep cycles and mood. But in some people they may potentiate dreams or emotions in a way that activates the lacrimal system.
Emotional Release Through Nocturnal Tears
The theory that crying “releases emotions” causing cathartic, restorative effects is still a point of scientific debate. However, tears shed specifically while asleep may offer unique psychological benefits.
Some researchers posit that the unconscious mind continues processing your waking emotional experiences while you dream. Dreams allow this processing to happen in a safe psychological space. So tears activated by your dream state may be your mind’s way of helping you work through unresolved feelings, memories or inner conflicts.
Stress and Worry Resolution
Have you been dealing with high anxiety lately? Do unresolved stressful thoughts keep you up at night? Many psychologists theorize that crying in your sleep represents releasing or resolving tension that accumulates from daily stressors.
While asleep, your conscious defenses are down allowing this release to happen. From this perspective, finding your pillow wet after crying enables emotional catharsis so you can start the next day fresh.
Grieving and Loss
Have you recently lost someone close? Are you coping with grief over a loved one, broken relationship or shattered dream? Highly emotional dreams can activate the grieving process during sleep, demonstrated by tears that then carry into waking consciousness.
Therefore, nighttime crying may indicate your psyche accessing sorrow, confusion and longing in order to process trauma. Working through grief with crying stimulated by REM activity can help move you incrementally closer to acceptance and peace.
Inner Child Healing
Some psychologists interpret sudden onset of unexplained crying in both waking life and sleep as a positive sign. They believe it means repressed childhood wounds, upsets and transmitted intergenerational trauma may be surfacing in order to stimulate self-healing.
Waking up weeping but without overt dream content could suggest your inner child feels safe enough to move into awareness so their tears can finally flow. If so, validating and comforting this part of yourself whenever midnight weeping occurs can have deeply therapeutic effects long-term.
Psychological Implications of Weeping During Sleep
While nighttime tears may simply reflect temporary dream content, frequent or sudden onset lacrimation can signal deeper issues.
Accumulated Stress Build-Up
Repeatedly waking up crying with no dream recollection could indicate bottled up stress. The conscious mind may utilize sleep to access and drain emotional tension in the background.
Not dealing effectively with waking life pressures can cause strain that then emerges through midnight weeping. So pay attention if frequent unexplained nocturnal tears develop, as reducing life demands and stressors maybe wise.
Mood Disorders
Those struggling with clinical anxiety, depression or bipolar disorder often experience heightened dream vividness with intense emotions reflected in sleep crying. Someone used to steady emotions may observe development of nighttime tears as their first noticeable mood shift.
If you spot sudden onset waking up crying daily, yet cannot tie it to identifiable stress factors, exploring a mood disorder assessment maybe worthwhile.
Repressed Trauma
Sometimes, unexpected crying spontaneously activates during sleep without identifiable life triggers or overt dreams. Childhood trauma specialists believe this can signal buried pain pushing into awareness so healing can occur.
Unexplained chronic sleep crying may mean suppressed traumatic memories stored deep in the unconscious are close enough to consciousness to leak tears, especially during REM cycles. Working with a trauma-informed therapist can help safely address such distress.
When Nighttime Crying May Indicate a Serious Issue
For most people, intermittent experiences waking up choking on tears or with eyes full of water is not immediately concerning. However chronic, frequent, intense or escalating sleep crying can potentially indicate medical conditions requiring evaluation.
Depression and Suicidal Risk
Though research is limited, some mental health clinicians spot correlations between severe melancholic depression and intense lacrimation both while awake and asleep. This may be especially true for those simultaneously reporting dark, hopeless dreams.
If you or someone you love demonstrates escalating nighttime tearfulness alongside withdrawn mood, hopelessness expressions or suicidal thoughts, seek help from a psychologist or suicide prevention hotline immediately.
Serious Illnesses
Certain serious health conditions also list increased lacrimation as a symptom. While not the first noticeable sign in many cases, conditions like encephalitis, meningitis and Wilson’s disease include excess crying on their diagnostic checklists.
Uncharacteristic frequent or intense sleep crying unrelated to dream content in someone previously emotionally steady could potentially reflect an underlying neurological or immune issue worth having evaluated.
RBD involves acting out one’s dreams in a vivid, intense or violent way. They may scream, flail, hit or try getting out of bed still asleep. RBD can cause injuries to self or bed partners.
While RBD arises during REM cycles later in the sleep period, 10-30% of patients do additionally report crying in their sleep correlated with dream actions. RBD requires both medication therapy and safety precautions for prevention.
Waking up with mysterious bruises or aching muscles alongside tear-stained cheeks may indicate emergence of REM sleep behavior issues worthy of assessment.
Crying in your sleep, especially chronically or without explanation following dreams, remains an intriguing phenomenon that science still struggles explaining fully. However, paying attention to patterns and making note of any physical or emotional changes that coincide can help assess if simple dream intensity is at play.
Alternatively, frequent midnight weeping could indicate accumulated stress, grief, repressed traumas or medical issues needing support. Either way, validating your tears when you wake up troubled without sure understanding can offer comfort along the journey with self and psyche.