Embrace sadness, the benefits of occasional sadness

 

“Wanting to be happy every day is a disease,” writes Zygmunt Bauman. Sadness and joy are two sides of the same coin, and both are necessary to lead a full life. There cannot be one without the other. But we don't mean it. Or we don't want to mean it.

We have classified sadness as a "negative" emotion. And being negative we want to get rid of it as soon as possible. We resist being sad. We worry because we are sad. We are saddened even more by being sad. And so we fall into a vicious circle that worsens our mood.

The dictatorship of happiness makes us unhappy

In 2018, a group of psychologists from the University of New South Wales carried out a series of experiments to determine how the social expectation of happiness affects us, especially when we experience failure.

In one of the experiments, the participants faced trials designed to fail. One group was told that they were unlikely to be able to solve the problems. Another group was in a "happy room" with motivational posters and cheerful notes pinned to the walls. And a third group was in a neutral room and were not told anything about their possible performance.

Psychologists found that the people in the "happy room" were much more concerned about their failure. "When people find themselves in a context where happiness is highly valued, it creates a feeling of pressure to feel that way," the researchers explained. As a result, when they experience failure, they begin to ruminate and reject negative feelings. This makes them feel even worse.

They also found that when we think society expects us not to feel sad and to be happy all the time, we more frequently experience negative emotional states marked by stress, anxiety, and sadness.

It is no coincidence that a person living in a Western country and sharing its culture is 4 to 10 times more likely to develop depression or clinical anxiety during their lifetime than a person of Eastern culture. In China and Japan, the emotions we classify as negative and positive are seen as essential parts of life. There is no constant pressure to always feel happy and cheerful.

Indeed, the Buddhist philosophy that permeates Eastern culture demands that we recognize all emotions and embrace sadness and pain as part of the human condition. Instead of running away from sadness, emphasize the need to understand its nature and learn to live with this feeling.

It's not what you feel, it's the meaning you give it

In 2016, psychologists from Colorado State University, Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and the Max-Planck Institute for Human Development developed another very interesting experiment that disproved some of the beliefs we often take for granted on an emotional level.

They recruited 365 people and subjected them to six daily tests of their emotional health over a three-week period. They noted their emotional states, their physical health and the degree of well-being and satisfaction.

They found that there is no direct link between negative emotional states, poorer physical health, less well-being or dissatisfaction. However, people who classified these feelings as negative reported feeling worse, both physically and emotionally.

This shows us that it is not the adverse experiences themselves that can harm us, but the meaning we attach to them. Sadness is not inherently negative, it depends on how we experience it and take it on.

The benefits of occasional sadness

To embrace sadness we need to reclaim its role in our emotional universe. In fact, sadness encourages personal reflection after a loss. It is a rite of passage that helps us update our mental patterns to accept the loss and move on.

It also helps us to be more empathetic. A Queen's University study revealed that saddest people were able to detect emotions faster than others as they are more sensitive to small extraverbal signals. In turn, sadness allows us to strengthen bonds with others and receive the help we need in that moment because it generates sympathy in others.

Interestingly, sadness also helps us find better arguments and be more persuasive. In fact, occasional sadness encourages critical thinking, helping us to see things from a perspective that can be much more objective because it takes us away from the optimistic bias we usually have.

Sadness also helps us spot lies and be less gullible, so we aren't fooled that easily and are more accurate in detecting false data, as University of Illinois psychologists discovered.

Accepting sadness is not optional if you want to feel good

For a long time, society has been sending us a clear message: there are negative emotions that we need to get rid of as soon as possible. Therefore, when we experience them, we worry and put into practice all possible maladaptive strategies to make them disappear, from avoidance to suppression and denial.

Accepting sadness, on the other hand, will free us from that pressure. When we strive to avoid sadness at all costs and to consider it a problem, we will not be happy, but we will condemn ourselves to a vicious cycle of dissatisfaction.

We must understand that every emotion has its reason for being, so instead of rejecting sadness, we must understand its cause and the message it wants to convey to us. We can also step forward and embrace sadness, which implies not resigning ourselves to its presence, as if it were a necessary evil to be imprisoned, but welcoming it with open arms, as we do with joy or happiness.

That hug can last as long as we decide. Embracing sadness will give us the opportunity to make peace with pain, suffering, loss and failure. That embrace comforts the soul because it allows us to recognize our humanity. And, in the long run, it gives us back the balance.

Sources:

Bastian, B. et. Al. (2018) Does a Culture of Happiness Increase Rumination Over Failure? Emotion ; 18 (5): 755-764.

Dejonckheere, E. et. Al. (2017) Perceiving Social Pressure Not to Feel Negative Predicts Depressive Symptoms in Daily Life. Depress Anxiety ; 34 (9): 836-844.

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.

Harkness, KL et. Al. (2005) Enhanced accuracy of mental state decoding in dysphoric college students. Cognition and Emotion ; 19: 999-1025.

Forgas, JP et. Al. (2005) Mood effects on eyewitness memory: Affective influences on susceptibility to misinformation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology ; 41 (6): 574-588.