Crying in front of someone else activates something different to crying alone.

When tears are witnessed, without judgment, without the other person trying to fix or minimise or rush past it...

The nervous system registers something important.

This is survivable. I am not alone in this. I don't have to hold this by myself.

That's a different physiological experience to crying alone in a car or a bathroom, however necessary that's been too.

Being seen in distress, and staying safe anyway, is part of how the nervous system learns that vulnerability doesn't equal danger.

For a lot of us that's evidence we've never had the chance to gather.