Sadness

Sadness

Question # 1 What does sadness mean?

If we care about someone or something, we feel sad when we lose him / her or it.

https://www.mindful.org/a-time-to-be-sad/

Question # 2 What’s bad about sadness?

When people feel sad, they are more likely

to blame external circumstances.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3777340683 Page 32.

Question # 3 What’s good about sadness?

Many people enjoy watching sad movies or listening to sad music because crying can be emotionally soothing.

https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/sadness

If you give yourself over to crying, your sadness will move through you and cleanse your soul.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2768418051 page 163.

Sadness helps us let go of things that are not working anyway.

It helps you release uncomfortable things such as muscle tension.

Thereby, sadness calms you, helps you relax and brings you back to yourself.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2768418051 pages 34 and 136.

Feeling sad improves your judgment. How? Feeling sad helps you develop a more accurate, detailed way of thinking and reduce the tendency to believe that what is familiar is true.

For example, when you feel sad, you are less likely to think that certain people, who do something very successfully now, can do no wrong.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_sadness_may_be_good_for_you https://www.scienceofpeople.com/the-science-of-sadness/

Feeling sad triggers more effort and motivation to deal with a challenge.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_sadness_may_be_good_for_you

When we feel sad we are better at convincing others than are people, who are in a positive mood.

Why? Because we are able to produce more concrete

arguments which support our position.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_sadness_may_be_good_for_you

Question # 4 How can you handle sadness?

To have a less painful relationship with sadness, recognize that

you are feeling sad and that you are worthy of comfort and self-compassion and have a need to care for yourself.

By being kind to yourself in times of difficulty, you shift the relationship you have with the suffering from one of avoidance and resistance to one of acceptance and kindness.

Adapted from https://www.mindful.org/a-time-to-be-sad/

To handle the emotion sadness, try this: 1. When you start to feel sad, let yourself feel sad. Let the discomfort of sadness come through you. Do not let your fear find an excuse to avoid feeling sad.

2. When you feel sadness, name it. Tell yourself: “This is sadness.”

When you call the emotion by name, it helps you realize that sadness is an emotion, and that this emotion does not have to define who you are.

3. When the sadness emotion wants to go, let it go. https://www.lifehack.org/688438/how-to-be-happy-again

When you feel sad and are given the opportunity to express

yourself in a communication with another person, you can release emotional stress and clear your thinking. Thereby, you can overcome sadness and better solve the problem.

https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/sadness

If a baby feels sad and is crying, say “You feel really sad. Things are hard now.”

Usually, the baby will stop crying much faster if you just let the baby feel what he / she is feeling, i.e. if you support the baby in the

way he or she feels at that moment.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2768418051 page 86.