Believe it or not, sadness, like joy, anger, and fear, has a reason for being. It is an evolutionary tool, and despite the fact that feeling it is not pleasant, it has a vital function that helps us to stay healthy in an integral way.
Do you want to know what are the unexpected benefits of letting yourself feel sad sometimes? Keep reading this article.
Is it normal to be happy all the time?
No one doubts that feeling happy is good. In truth, it seems that throughout the last twenty or thirty years people all over the world have begun a crusade against sadness, trying to hold themselves (or at least pretend to hold themselves) in a state of joy. life.
The truth is that we cannot be in the ecstatic state of the actors in TV commercials all the time.
Although marketing wants us to think that this is our nature, it would simply be impossible and not authentic to feel this way at all times.
This modern society has given a politically incorrect or sick tinge to any feeling associated with sadness, whether it be grief, grief, shame, frustration, jealousy, lack of security or envy.
When they appear, we try to eliminate, hide or deny them. And if we do not succeed, we run to medicate ourselves or we try to distract ourselves with anything, no matter how harmful, to stop feeling them.
Can sadness be a positive thing?
Since experiencing it is not pleasant, it would be said that sadness is a negative emotion. But this is a serious failure.
Emotions are not “positive” or “negative”, but rather have a purpose, and to achieve it they cause us anger or pleasure towards certain things and also increase or reduce our energy level.
These are regulatory mechanisms of our behavior that are distinguished by more factors than the mere fact of feeling good or bad. And having only “positive” regulators would not do much good, since we would not have room for reflection, analysis, and caution, to serve as an example.
Beneath the surface, each emotion orchestrates a complex mechanism of changes in opinions, motivation, the way we focus our attention, the perception of our environment, the memories we evoke, our brain chemistry, and, of course, the way we communicate.
Sweating, having a racing pulse, wailing, laughing, shouting, trembling, and many other attitudes are part of the particular combination of physical and behavioral consequences that appear the moment we feel a certain way.
Each individual component of each emotion has some critical task to fill, whether it be preparing for the fight in the case of anger, urging us to achieve certain things in the case of envy, or paralyzing ourselves to avoid risk, one of the reactions more frequent of fear.
Sadness has its function. When we are depressed, it is as if the energy left us and we could not stop thinking about what makes us sad.
The adaptive function of this feeling is that we stop meditating on something that could cause us some harm, that we have time to free ourselves from the emotions that link us to an inconvenience, and that we do not take hasty actions.
Sadness also serves as a catharsis for the anger that has not been able to free itself, and even for excessive joy. Has it happened to you that you are so happy that you end up crying? Well, that is because sadness comes to the rescue the moment an emotion in this way exceeds us.
What is the use of being sad?
We usually meditate that feelings and reason are opposed. That they belong to different universes. But these practically always and in all circumstances derive from thoughts, interpretations of reality, or needs that are very conscious.
Emotions identify inconveniences and occasions, mobilize physical and mental mechanisms that help us solve the former, and take advantage of the latter. They are instruments of survival. In truth, we would have long been extinct without them.
Feeling sad or angry at times is not only vital to our existence, also, and although it sounds paradoxical, it is necessary to feel good, develop properly and be successful.
As optimistic as we are, we must admit that a planet is a complicated place full of fraud and risk.
To properly face the challenges of life, it is necessary to have the full range of psychological expressions that characterize us as humans.
So the solution is not to try to avoid sadness, or any other unpleasant emotion, but rather to find a way to channel it so that it fulfills its mission, and we return to a true state of well-being.
Some of the specific functions of sadness are:
1. Protect
When someone yells at you, insults you, or hurts you in some way, it will most likely make you angry or sad. The difference between one reaction and the other must generally be seen with how much capacity and right we think we have to defend ourselves.
Two people can react in absolutely different ways to exactly the same ignominy. Imagine 2 brothers who are abused by a third older brother. Perhaps the first reacts violently, and the second becomes distant and depressed.
The one who reacted violently did so because deep down he believes that, although he is at a disadvantage, his actions can change his brother’s attitude, and that he has the right to defend himself.
The one who reacted sadly did so because he feels that the best thing he can do to avoid the damage is to withdraw.
Sometimes the most affirmative way to act is to withdraw and look for a protective space.
2. Reflect
When we are sad, it is quite difficult to distract our attention from what has us in this way. This is not free. If the inconveniences did not cause us sadness, we could forget about them before finding a solution, which would only make them worse.
In this state, we are more likely to meditate than to act, and this helps us avoid making hasty resolutions that could backfire.
3. Accept
Acceptance is an essential part of any loss process; the only emotion in whose context we can specify it is precisely sadness.
If we do not fully admit that we have lost something we wanted, such as a job, a loved one, or a relationship, we cannot move on or advance towards other achievements in life.
Many people get stuck in certain negative life situations exactly because they never admitted the loss.
4. Release
Finally, sadness helps us to release emotions that are no longer going to be useful to us. The best example of this is when a relationship ends and we need to let go of love, or at least the possessive part of the love we had for that person.
Sadness is precisely that process through which we sadly free ourselves from something that bothers us. The process will not be pleasant, but the result will be a healthy inner purification and the possibility of returning to feeling happy.
Conclusion
Sadness, like the rest of our emotions, has a reason for being. Avoiding it or denying it is not healthy because it implies denying ourselves the possibility of going through a process of grief, loss, or pain of any kind in a natural way.
Do not let the rest tell you that it is not your right to feel sad. But don’t get stuck in that feeling either. The best thing you can do is use it to meditate, admit, let go or protect yourself, and then return to face life with optimism.