Better Outcomes for Feelings of Sadness
I cried at a sad movie last night – and it felt so good! Why is that?
The Issue:
There are a great many experiences in the emotional family of Grief. Try to feel differences as you slowly read these: grief, loss, sadness, feeling lost, longing, yearning, lonely, regret, sorrow, anguish, missing out, left out. For too long, people with these experiences are seen – and see themselves – as weak. These feelings make others uncomfortable and are not tolerated for long. So, we apologize, remove the tears, and try to put on the happy face others are more comfortable with. I’ll admit, I was more comfortable crying in the privacy of the dark movie theater than I would have been more publicly. But why does it feel so good?
Better Approaches:
It turns out, sadness connects us. To what is most important to us and, therefore, to ourselves, our humanity, and to others sharing our human experience. Sadness moves us and opens our hearts, though painfully. And we want to be moved and have our hearts open, even if that hurts. Research shows the ability to feel like this correlates with enjoyment. This means that honoring, feeling, and courageously expressing the many expressions of grief is healthy; it makes us human, whole, and fully alive. Who doesn’t feel better after the release of a good cry? And yet many “never cry”, with the proud sense they are stronger for it.
Another faculty of this emotional family is that grief wants to be witnessed. Yes, in addition to the quiet, personal heart-relating that grief uses to heal, and counter to the hiding we do with it, telling our story and sharing these deep-heart experiences brings better outcomes to processing loss and change. Find a friend or professional who can hold the space to hear you without trying to fix it or trying to make you feel better. And be that kind of listener for others.
PS: Depression feels a lot like grief but they have different jobs to do, so we’ll look at the differences next time.
My Suggestion:
If you could use a deep dive into the Grief family, we’ll spend a month in Emotional Liberation finding the love buried in sadness. Every year, it’s beautiful to see students discovering and processing issues from the past that kept them from connecting fully to themselves and others. Email me with any questions you have about this life-changing program which begins on September 6th.
Check out Emotional Liberation here, and stay tuned for more Better Outcomes.
This is the second in our series exploring common emotional experiences and solutions.
These are brief by design, not offered as instant cures, but as an invitation to healthy and productive approaches to common experiences for which many of us learned ineffective coping habits.
