This is Part 3 of a 6-part series in which we take a closer look at the basic emotions: Anger, Happiness, Sadness, Love, Fear, and Guilt/Shame. Simply click on each link to view the associated article.
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Sadness
Our eyelids grow heavy. Our eyes become moist or teary. We get an achy sensation in our chests as we well-up. We may even experience a loss of energy and an all-over sense of heaviness, of slowing down and turning inward.
Like all of the basic emotions, there are different physical sensations associated with sadness. It’s an emotion we feel in different degrees when faced with some kind of loss in our lives. Most of us will have felt the mild disappointment of not winning the lottery, or dismay when a work project doesn’t turn out the way we hoped. Perhaps we feel loneliness at certain times of the year when we want to be around people, or full-blown sorrow and grief when we think of loved ones who are no longer with us.
It’s natural to be uncomfortable with, even fearful of the physical manifestations of sadness and seek ways to avoid them. But, for our emotional wellbeing, it’s important that we find the courage to feel and move through rather than suppressing or denying our true feelings when we are sad.
Recognizing how we truly feel
No real change in how we negatively cope with sadness can happen until we recognize and learn to manage what’s going on inside of us.
As with all of our emotions, the seeds of how we respond to sadness are sown in our early years when we learn to suppress the feelings that threaten the connection we have with our caregivers. If a parent gets frustrated or irritated by a child’s sadness or disappointment, and they respond with impatience or dismissiveness, the child learns that showing these feelings as well as the need for reassurance and care are dangerous. To a child’s mind, these responses signal potential loss of our caregivers at a time when we need them most for our survival. So the ways we adjust our emotional responses get wired into our brain’s circuitry and become our automatic response to our feelings.
Signs that we might be uncomfortable with feeling sadness and expressing what we truly feel in adulthood include not wanting to cry in front of other people, holding back our tears in emotional situations, worrying about being or seeming vulnerable or weak, even acting as if we’re unaffected by situations that have actually deeply hurt us. Some of us even worry that we won’t be able to stop crying once we start, that we’ll lose control.
As with all our core feelings, our sadness gives us important information. It is a sign that we’re experiencing the loss of something important to us and need healing, empathy, compassion, or respect. And to get what we need, we may have to find the courage to share our deepest selves, including the sadness we feel when we’re disappointed, hurt or grieving. Doing so will help us get our needs met and, in so doing, change our lives and help us feel closer to our partners and them to us.
I detail a four-step process in my book Living Like You Mean It that can help navigate the emotions we feel when we’re sad by cultivating our capacity for emotional mindfulness. This process involves purposefully paying attention, without judgement to our physically felt emotional experiences as they happen. The steps are:
Step 1: Recognize and Name – identifying when our sadness has been triggered and labelling it
Step 2: Stop Drop and Stay – slowing down, focusing inward and working through our emotional experience
Step 3: Pause & Reflect – stepping back, making sense of our emotional experience, listening to what it’s telling us and deciding how best to respond
Step 4: Mindfully Relate – thoughtfully expressing our core feelings, needs and desires and engaging in a constructive manner
In short, emotional mindfulness is all about attending to, being present with, and making good use of our feelings in our lives. Practicing the skills of emotional mindfulness develops new neural pathways and changes the way our brains operate. When we’re mindful, we can find a path toward freedom from our old habitual patterns of responding. We can stretch the space between whatever is causing us to be sad and the way we respond to it, giving ourselves more time to make choices that are better aligned with our greater good.
An exercise to help you be more mindful of your sadness
Try and recall a situation in which you experienced a loss of some kind. It could be the passing of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or being disappointed by someone close to you. Or imagine someone you love suffering, perhaps having to put a beloved pet to sleep, saying goodbye to a close friend at the airport as they move away to another country. Notice how your body reacts to these recollections. What do you notice physically?
You are likely to have some of the experiences detailed at the start of this article. Perhaps you had other physical sensations you noticed – a tight throat or slouching shoulders? If so, your recognition of what’s happening to you physically is a positive sign that you’re growing your awareness of the way you naturally react when sadness shows up in your body and impacts your emotional experience. Breathe into these sensations. Give them a lot of space. See if you can notice the flow of energy that comes with them. Try to ride out the wave of experience. With greater awareness and presence, and regular practicing of mindfully being with your feelings, you can begin to move in a different direction, change the way you automatically respond to sadness, and be more open about the feelings you experience, ultimately improving your wellbeing and ability to flourish.
