Emotions are fundamental in our life. However we are often led to consider some emotions more adequate than others: some “positive”, others “negative”; some “right”, others “wrong”. In reality this labeling is incorrect.
All the emotions we feel are important, even sadness : they were fundamental for the evolution of our species and still perform indispensable functions for our survival and quality of life. For example, they provide us with information relating to situations that could be dangerous or harmful to us; they are useful tools for evaluating situations; they can act as signals to understand what we need, like or want; they can suggest to us whether to approach or distance us from a certain situation; or provide us with information on how we are and the energy we have.
They are, therefore, fundamental means for making decisions and making choices that are “right” for us at a specific time, allowing us to organize our behavior in a manner consistent with what is good for us.
Despite this, however, we often tend to devalue their importance, assuming attitudes that do not allow us to stay in contact with some of them. And this is especially true for what we tend to consider “negative” or “unpleasant”. Among these we find sadness .
In relation to the evolution of our species, sadness has played a fundamental role. The sadness can, in fact, be considered a sign that our attachment system is activated. The attachment system allows us to signal to the other the need we have for his presence in times of difficulty and constitutes the foundation of our most important emotional relationships.
One of the main functions of sadness lies precisely in signaling to people close to us the need for their closeness, their support, help or comfort in times of difficulty. And the crying itself, which can be an indicator of intense sadness , helps to express to others what we feel and signals to them this need for closeness and help.
The sadness plays therefore a central role in experiencing support from others, as well as in the development and maintenance of our relations. Another important function performed by sadness is that of allowing us to “collect ourselves”, promoting deep and authentic reflection and analysis on the events of our life, with the possibility of seeking a meaning to what happens to us or to our pain; and it can also encourage reflection on more general and existential issues of life.
The sadness is, therefore, essential to design the unpleasant events that happen to us, but also has the potential to act as a stimulus for change: contact be there allows us to make them perform the function to signal that something is wrong, think about it and find a way ; but also to urge us to make a change aimed at achieving a balance and structure that are better for us, showing us new perspectives that were previously perhaps not visible.
But what we think about sadness , as well as about other emotions, and therefore our evaluations and beliefs about it, influences our willingness to keep in touch and express it to others. Our culture often leads us to view sadness as something better to hide, not show. And this is especially true in certain areas of life, where one’s own suffering and that of others seem to be little tolerated or acceptable. We often find ourselves immersed in competitive contexts that do not favor the free expression of emotions that could make us appear weak, fragile, not performing enough or winning.
When the expression of emotions such as sadness is considered a risk to be evaluated in this way by others, we may feel the need to hide or mask it, especially when there are no significant external objective events that could justify its presence, such as a serious illness, or the loss of someone close to us.
But the reasons that may underlie the lack of willingness to stay in contact with sadness and express it externally can also concern other planes. In some cases, you may have beliefs that showing sadness may mean that you are not sufficiently interesting or attractive to others. And maybe for this reason also being left alone.
Furthermore, in people who have suffered from depression , it is common to fear that experiencing sadness could mean relapsing into the disorder. And the same fear can be experienced by those who, despite not having suffered from depression in the first person, have experienced the disorder in their family or in people close to them. In these cases, you may not even be available to contact her for fear of not being able to manage, control or tolerate her. Or to think that if you start feeling sad you could be sad forever.
The sadness , like any other emotion, is characterized as a transient state. However, it is worth pointing out that the duration of emotions can be influenced by several factors. Among these we find the subjective value of the event that caused them and the mechanisms of brooding and rumination .
These mechanisms can increase thoughts about the event that made us feel sad , making us feel even sadder, in a vicious circle which, in addition to influencing the duration of the emotion itself, could also significantly lower our mood or maintain a depressive disorder when present.
In order for us to feel our sadness and express it externally, we must also allow ourselves to tell ourselves and others that, at least in a specific moment, we are vulnerable, that we need someone else, that we are not totally in control. And this is not easy for everyone: you can in fact be afraid of feeling sad, if in our life story we have learned early that if we need someone willing to support us, we will not have the chance to find him. And therefore you can quickly learn not to stay in contact with this emotion and deny its existence, to protect ourselves from the risk of not finding someone available to support us and provide us with help when we need it: in this way we learn to “not feel” and to do everything on their own, they believe they need no one and are self-sufficient whatever happens.
In conclusion, the fear of feeling and being in contact often leads us to live avoiding our emotions. But these mechanisms have significant costs. It is true that contacting what we feel can sometimes be tiring, painful, putting us in front of problems to face. But it is also true that not contacting them means living a life that is not full.
Which emotions we don’t feel depends on several factors including the characteristics of the context in which we grew up, the culture we belong to, personal characteristics including our gender. However, even if initially we tend not to contact a particular type of emotion, over time this difficulty can generalize to the others, preventing us from enjoying the taste of our whole life.
To try not to stay in touch we can use different strategies: we never stop setting up our life in order to always have some activity to do and not have spaces to connect with ourselves and feel authentically; we take drugs; we hold back what we feel by not allowing ourselves to feel it fully and preventing emotions from carrying out the functions for which they exist; or, again, we assume beliefs that devalue the importance that emotions play in facing problems and choices with respect to logical thinking and rationality.
These strategies can also be functional and useful at some specific times. But they cannot become the usual way of managing the relationship with what we feel in an attempt to eliminate it; also because emotions, including sadness , cannot be eliminated from our experience.
These attitudes and behaviors have the cost of making us lose fundamental information for our quality of life, negatively influencing the levels of satisfaction we perceive. They also prevent us from learning adequate strategies to manage the emotions themselves: and this can be very problematic, since, when some events will necessarily put us in a position to feel, we will not have the suitable tools to use.
Thus, not allowing ourselves to experience sadness deprives us of the possibility of learning to manage it: we do not allow ourselves to experience the fact that we have all the necessary resources to cope with it or at least learn to handle it. We fail to see that sadness is just sadness . And we don’t accept it as part of our life, a natural transition phase.
All these mechanisms can even lead to the development of a real phobia for painful internal states. For this it becomes essential to allow ourselves to explore the emotional states that are painful or that we are afraid of. Listening to ourselves, connecting to physical sensations and being in contact with what we feel allows us, in fact, to use the signals we perceive in a way that is advantageous and positive for us, also in terms of personal evolution, and to be less and less afraid of them.
