Discover the Beauty of Sadness
1. Understanding Emotions
Do you struggle with understanding your emotions and how they affect you? Learning about the core emotions can help you improve your emotional regulation skills. Being more informed about the core emotions can allow for more open and honest communication with your loved ones. This month, we will be focusing on the core emotion of sadness.
2. What is Sadness?
Sadness is an emotion consisting of feelings like disappointment, grief, hopelessness or disinterest. Some ways sadness can be expressed is through crying, having a low mood, withdrawing from others, and feeling lethargic. Sadness may be caused by neurological imbalance, memories of significant difficult life experiences, immediate physical pain, stress, relational disputes or spiritual distress and other factors.
Sadness is not a positive or negative emotion. It has an important role in human survival and wellbeing. Sadness reminds us of what is important. If something or someone is making you feel sad, it or they must mean a lot to you. With this emotional insight, It can help us focus our efforts on the things or people that matter and need attention. At times, sadness drives us to seek support from others. Humans are social beings, and connection is important in our survival. In other circumstances, sadness may lead us to stay away from people. What we do with this feeling of sadness may lead to different outcomes for different people. It is important to recognize what may be the causes of this sadness and to respond to the need that your body is indicating to you through the emotion of sadness.
3. Tips to Acknowledge and Cope with Sadness
While it may seem counterproductive, it is important to acknowledge your sadness in order to properly process your emotions. Here are 3 practical tips for acknowledging and coping with sadness:
- Mindfulness exercises like body scans or calm-place visualization can help to locate where your sadness is felt and allow your body and mind to calm in dealing with the presenting problem at hand.
- Journaling may help to clear your mind about what is causing this sadness. Identifying things that you are grateful for in your life and journaling them is also helpful.
- Reach out to a trusted individual (i.e. friend, mentor, family) to talk things out and perhaps find new perspectives to the situation.
4. The Challenges and Misconceptions About Sadness and Depression
Are you or someone you love struggling to accomplish tasks that were once simple and straightforward? From eating at regular times to keeping track of personal hygiene, does everything seem exceptionally effortful?
Before you label yourself or someone as incompetent, lazy, hopeless or worthless, know that it might not be simply the lack of motivation or productivity. Instead, you or someone may be suffering from depression.
Depression is more than just feeling down. There are many different types of depression and it can look vastly different from one person to the next. While someone with mild depression can experience insomnia and yet function well, another person could experience debilitating depression that renders them bedridden.
Furthermore, depression typically affects a person’s ability to function not only physically, but emotionally, spiritually, socially, and cognitively. Some of these symptoms may include:
- Persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” mood
- Feelings of hopelessness, or pessimism
- Feelings of irritability, frustration, or restlessness
- Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness
- Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities
- Decreased energy, fatigue, or feeling “slowed down”
- Difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
- Difficulty sleeping, early morning awakening, or oversleeping
- Changes in appetite or unplanned weight changes
- Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts
- Aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems without a clear physical cause that do not ease even with treatment
- Suicide attempts or thoughts of death or suicide (National Institute of Mental Health, 2022)
Depression is a persistent mood disorder that cannot be “cured” with positive thinking. Instead, with the proper treatment and support from mental health professionals, family, and/or friends, the path towards healing does not have to be a lonely one.
Relational and emotionally-based therapy models like Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) or Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) and Supportive psychotherapy groups can be helpful to deal with prolonged sadness and /or depression.
Learning to be mindful of your emotions may be hard, but it can ultimately result in many positive changes in your mental well-being, relationships with others, day-to-day interactions, and more.
At Grace Health Centre, our team of physicians, registered psychotherapists and social workers offer clinical counselling in individual, couple or family counselling. Book your free 15-minute consultation here to get started on your journey to wellness.
A free resource Grace Health Centre offers is supportive psychotherapy groups, which provides you with the support you need while equipping you with practical tools to build connection, resiliency and improved coping. There are three supportive psychotherapy groups ongoing currently: the “Mental Health Supportive Psychotherapy Group”. the “Parenting Supportive Psychotherapy Group” and the “Neurodiversity Supportive Psychotherapy Group”. For more information, you can visit our page.
You are not alone in this and being a part of a learning group community setting can be life-changing.
*Disclaimer: The information in this blog post is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Should you have been struggling any emotional or mental health challenges and would like to seek professional helps, please talk to your family physician, or professionals like Registered Social Worker or Registered Psychotherapists.
