Emotions are fundamental in our life. However, we are often led to consider some more adequate emotions than others: some “positive”, others “negative”; Some “right”, others “wrong”. In reality this labeling is not correct.
All the emotions we feel are important, also the sadness: have been 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 to evaluate situations; They can act as signals to understand what we need, that we like or want; they can suggest whether to get closer or move away from a certain situation; Or provide us with information on how we are and on the energy we have.
Therefore, they are fundamental means to make decisions and make choices that are “right” for us at a specific moment, allowing us to organize our behavior consistently with what is good for us.
Despite this, however, we often tend to devalue its importance, taking on attitudes that do not allow us to be in contact with some of them. And this applies, above all, for those that we tend to consider “negative” or “unpleasant”. Among these we find the sadness.
In relation to the evolution of our species there sadness He played a fundamental role. There sadness In fact, it can be considered a signal that our attachment system has activated itself. The attachment system allows us to report to the other the need we have of its presence in moments of difficulty and constitutes the foundations of our most important emotional relationships.
One of the main functions of sadness He lies precisely in reporting, to people close to us, the need for their closeness, their support, help or comfort in moments of difficulty. And the cry itself, which can be an indicator of sadness Intense, it helps to express to others what we feel and marks them this need for closeness and help.
There sadness He therefore plays a central role in experimenting with the support by others, as well as in the development and maintenance of our relationships. Another important function performed by sadness It is to allow us to “collect” us, promoting the profound 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 life themes.
There sadness It is therefore essential to elaborate the unpleasant events that happen to us, but also has the potential to act as a stimulus to change: to stay in contact allows us to make them perform the function of reporting that something is wrong, reflecting and finding a sense; But also to solicit us to a change aimed at reaching a balance and a structure that are better for us, showing us new perspectives first perhaps not visible.
But what we think of the sadnessas well as other emotions, and therefore our evaluations and beliefs about it, influences our willingness to stay in touch and express it to others. Our culture often leads us to consider the sadness Like something that is better to hide, not to show. And this is true above all in certain areas of life, where one’s own suffering and others seem to be not very 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 quite performing or winning.
When the expression of emotions such as the sadness It is considered a risk to be evaluated like this by others, we can feel the need to hide it or mask it, especially when there are no significant external objective events that could justify its presence, as a serious illness, or the loss of a person close to us.
But the reasons that can submit to the little availability to stay in touch with sadness And expressing it outside can also concern other plans. In some cases there may be beliefs relating to the fact that show sadness It could mean showing itself not sufficiently interesting or attractive for others. And maybe for this reason even be left alone.
In addition, in people who have suffered from depression, the fear that experimenting is frequent sadness can mean falling back into the disorder. And the same fear can be experienced by those who, despite not having suffered from depression in the first person, had the experience of family disorder or in people close to him. In these cases you can also not be available to contact her for fear of not being able to manage it, check or tolerate. Or to think that if you start to hear the sadness You could be sad forever.
There sadnesslike any other emotion, is characterized by being a transitory 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 mechanisms of mobble and rumination.
These mechanisms can increase the thoughts relating to the event that made us try sadnessmaking us feel even more sad, in a vicious circle that, in addition to influencing the duration of the emotion itself, could also significantly lower our tone of mood or maintain a depressive disorder when present.
To allow us to feel our sadness and express it Outside, we must also allow us to tell us and to others that, at least at a specific moment, we are vulnerable, that we need someone else, who are not totally in control. And this is not easy for everyone: it can in fact have fear of feeling sadnessif in our life history we have learned soon that if we need someone to support us, we will not have the opportunity to find it. And therefore you can soon learn not to stay in touch with this emotion and deny its existence, to protect us from the risk of not finding someone available to support us and provide us with help when we need it: so you learn to “do not hear” and do everything yourself, you believe you don’t need anyone and to be self -sufficient anything that happens.
In conclusion, the fear of feeling and being in contact often leads us to live avoiding our emotions. But these mechanisms have important costs. It is true that contacting what we feel can sometimes be tiring, painful, put us in front of problems to face. But it is also true that not contacting them means living a life that is not full.
What emotions we do not feel depends on several factors including the characteristics of the context in which we grew up, the culture of belonging, personal characteristics including our sexual genre. However, even if initially we tend not to contact a type of emotions in particular, over time this difficulty can generalize itself to the others, preventing us from savoring the taste of our whole life.
To try not to stay in touch, we can use different strategies: we never stop by setting our life in order to always have some activities to carry out and not have spaces to connect with ourselves and feel authentically; We take drugs; We hold back what we feel not allowing us to feel it all the way and preventing the emotions from performing the functions for which they exist; Or, again, we assume beliefs that devalue the importance that emotions are of dealing to deal with problems and choices with respect to logical thinking and rationality.
These strategies can also be functional and useful in some specific moments. But they cannot become the habitual way of managing the relationship with what we feel in an attempt to eliminate it; also because emotions, sadness Included, they are not 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 the condition of feeling, we will not have the suitable tools to be used.
So, don’t allow us to experience sadness It deprives us of the possibility of learning to manage it: we do not allow ourselves to experience the fact that we have all the resources necessary to face it or at least learn to handle it. We can’t see that sadness is only sadness. And we do not accept it as part of our life, a natural passage phase.
All these mechanisms can even induce the development of a real phobia for painful internal states. For this reason it becomes essential to allow us to explore the painful emotional states or of which we are afraid. Listening to us, connecting to physical sensations and being in contact with what we feel allows us, in fact, to use the signals that we perceive in a manner advantageous and positive for us, also in terms of personal evolution, and to be less and less afraid of it.
