Everyone wants to feel good all the time. It’s understandable. Unless we are masochists, we do not want to settle into sadness or discomfort. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a realistic expectation. Often desire goes one way and reality goes another. In fact, sometimes it’s good to be sad. Occasional sadness also has its advantages.
Sadness is not bad, it all depends on how you deal with it
The popularization and misinterpretation of Positive Psychology has led us to praise positive emotions and try to escape negative feelings at all costs. However, in our emotional universe everything is important and has a reason for being. As Carl Jung wrote: “The word happiness would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”
A study conducted at Colorado State University, for example, revealed that experiencing feelings that we wouldn’t exactly classify as positive actually promotes psychological well-being. These psychologists recruited 365 people, who had to indicate six times a day how they felt. The researchers monitored their “negative” and “positive” feelings, as well as their perception of their level of well-being and physical health.
They found that the link between negative mental states and poor physical health and decreased well-being was weaker in people who found those moods helpful. In fact, negative emotions and feelings only affected life satisfaction in those who did not perceive those feelings as useful.
These results indicate that we are often not affected as much by the situation and the primary emotion it triggers as by our response to it (the secondary emotion). It’s like feeling stressed for being stressed or feeling depressed about being sad. If we believe that we should not experience negative emotions, we will reject, ignore or repress them, which will end up reinforcing them since we will not understand the message they are trying to convey to us, so the discomfort they generate will continue latent within us.
The benefits of occasional sadness, a necessary pause button to reflect
Sadness, like the rest of the emotions, brings with it a message, so we must try to understand it. Recognizing our emotions and accepting pain as part of the human condition is essential to achieve the balance essential to growth.
Sadness is a natural self-regulation mechanism, something we are born with and that we do not consciously choose. We don’t wake up thinking: “Today is a great day to be sad!” It is a perfectly adaptive response to something that has happened to us, usually a loss, something we wanted to have, or a situation that hurt us emotionally.
Therefore, occasional sadness is an automatic, useful and adaptive response that invites us to reflect on what has happened to us, but also to understand why that is important to us. It informs us about how we feel, what is happening and what we need to – hopefully – be able to better address the situation we find ourselves in.
Sadness tells us that something is wrong and we must solve it. Therefore, it is an alarm signal that our mind sends us. It’s their way of telling us that we need to stop and pay attention.
In some ways, occasional sadness is like a pause button. It forces us to slow down precisely to give ourselves time to think and restructure our world. Research carried out at the University of New South Wales found that this emotion encourages us to disconnect, so it also acts as a protective mechanism designed to keep us safe when we feel most vulnerable.
This time for ourselves not only helps us delve deeper into what happened, but often also helps us get to know ourselves better. It highlights what worries us and what really matters to us.
A little solitude, tranquility and silence may be all we need to process those complex feelings and put our lives in perspective to gain a more global vision of where we are.
Additionally, occasional sadness helps us connect with others. Although our natural tendency is to isolate, expressions of sadness encourage those around us to put themselves in our place and treat us with compassion, as a study conducted at Harvard University found. Sadness alerts the others that we are vulnerable, so it can activate feelings of empathy, acting as a social glue to provide us with the support, validation and help we need.
Why is being sad good for your brain?
Occasional sadness also has a profound impact on the way our brains process the world. In fact, it helps us pay more attention to the details. An experiment, also carried out at the University of New South Wales, revealed that on rainy days that cause sadness, people remember details much better, while on sunny days, when they are happy, their memory is more non-specific.
Occasional sadness not only improves our accuracy in remembering details, it makes us more immune to misleading information. Therefore, being sad improves our attention and enhances the memory of details, sharpening our ability to detect lies.
Interestingly, occasional sadness also prevents us from jumping to conclusions. Science has shown that when we feel happier we are more likely to make judgments based on our stereotypes and prejudices.
Being sad helps us put on the handbrake: it prevents us from rushing and making judgments about people or situations that may be wrong. It also makes us less likely to fall into cognitive biases: it protects us from both the fundamental attribution error and the halo effect and the primacy effect.
Everything seems to indicate that occasional sadness acts as a scale that leads us to more carefully consider the situations and people with whom we interact, preventing us from falling into stereotypes and activating mental shortcuts that can lead us to erroneous or biased conclusions. It helps us develop a more attentive attitude and more detailed thinking.
And when the time comes to turn the page?
First of all, it is important to note that being sad is not being depressed. There are big differences between sadness and depression. Sadness is an emotion and, as such, we must embrace it. It is neither positive nor negative, neither normal nor strange. It’s just an emotion. And, therefore, an essential piece of our psychological functioning.
What if you don’t want to be sad? In that case, embrace sadness. As contradictory as it may seem, you need to take note of its existence and accept that you feel that way at that moment in your life. Don’t try to run away from what you experience, accept that there are things that hurt. And nothing happens about it.
Sometimes, it’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to not be okay when something painful happens to you. It’s okay to feel bad when you lose something you cared about. And it’s also okay for that to shake your foundations and make you cry or for pain to move you.
From there, listen to your sadness. Don’t shy away from it. Even if you’re tired of feeling sad, you won’t be able to overcome that state until you understand where it comes from and what you need to do to feel better. Treat yourself with kindness and compassion. You don’t deserve less. With that approach, sadness will disappear as it came, leaving room for other emotions in your life.
References:
Lomas, T. (2018) The quiet virtues of sadness: A selective theoretical and interpretative appreciation of its potential contribution to wellbeing. New Ideas in Psychology; 49(1): 18-26.
Luong, G. et. Al. (2016) When bad moods may not be so bad: Valuing negative affect is associated with weakened affect–health links. Emotion;16(3): 387–401.
Forgas, J. P. (2014) Can sadness be good for you? On the cognitive, motivational, and interpersonal benefits of negative affect. In W. G. Parrott (Ed.), The positive side of negative emotions (3–36). The Guilford Press.
Forgas, J. P. (2013) Don’t Worry, Be Sad! On the Cognitive, Motivational, and Interpersonal Benefits of Negative Mood. Current Directions in Psychological Science; 22(3): 10.1177.
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