Sadness

Sadness is emotional pain associated with, or characterized by feelings of disadvantage, loss, despair, helplessness, sorrow, and rage. When sad, people often become outspoken, less energetic, and emotional. Crying is an indication of sadness.

Sadness can be viewed as a temporary lowering of mood, whereas depression is characterized by a persistent and intense lowered mood, as well as disruption to one's ability to function in day to day matters.

Sadness is one of Paul Ekman's "six basic emotions - happy, sad, angry, surprised, afraid, disgusted".

Usefulness

For John Cleese, 'the idea that sadness was actually useful was probably the most important, and for me the most surprising single thing that I learnt' in therapy. It seems clear that 'a main function for sadness is to help adjust to a significant loss, such as the death of someone close or a major disappointment. Sadness brings a drop in energy and enthusiasm....This introspective withdrawal creates the opportunity to mourn a loss or frustrated hope, grasp its consequences for one's life, and, as energy returns, plan new beginnings'.

Thus 'sadness can be a potent force for reflection, a call for down time, a retreat, a sign of transition, a force for change', and represents 'a healthy and appropriate response to experiences of loss and diappointment, whether personal or global'.

In childhood

'Being sad is a common experience in childhood...If faced openly, sadness can help families become stronger and more able to handle painful feelings'. On the other hand, some families may have the (conscious or unconscious) rule: 'No sadness allowed...we were not allowed to be sad...a matter of family pride'. The problem may then be that 'that screened-off emotion isn't available to us when we need it....the loss of sadness makes us a bit manic'.

Sadness is part of the normal process of the child separating from an early symbiosis with the mother and becoming more independent. 'Every time he separates just a tiny bit more, he'll have to cope with a small loss. He'll have to get sad for a little bit'; and if the mother cannot bear this, 'if she dashes right in to relieve the child's distress every single time he shows any...the child is not getting a chance to learn how to cope with sadness'. This is why 'trying to jostle or joke out of a sad mood is devaluing to her' or him: 'we need to respect a child's right ot experience a loss fully and deeply'.

At the same time, it seems clear that 'Sadness, however, seems to require a great deal of ego strength to bear', and a child in self-protection may develop 'hyperactivity or restlessness...as an early defensive activity against awareness of the painful affect of sadness'. This is why D. W. Winnicott suggests that 'when your infant shows that he can cry from sadness you can infer that he has travelled a long way in the development of his feelings....some people think that sad crying is one of the main roots of the more valuable kind of music'.

Coping mechanisms

'The single mood people generally put most effort into shaking is sadness...Unfortunately, some of the strategies most often resorted to can backfire, leaving people feeling worse than before. One such strategy is simply staying alone'. Ruminating, and "drowning one's sorrows", may also be counterproductive.

Two more positive alternatives have been recommended by cognitive therapy. 'One is to learn to challenge the thoughts at the center of rumination and think of more positive alternatives. The other is to purposely schedule pleasant, distracting events'.

Object relations theory by contrast stresses the utility of staying with sadness: 'it's got to be conveyed to the person that it's all right for him to have the sad feelings' - easiest done perhaps 'where emotional support is offered to help them begin to feel the sadness'. Such an approach is fuelled by the underlying belief that 'the capacity to bear loss wholeheartedly, without pushing the experience away, emerges...as essential to being truly alive and engaged with the world'.

Pupil empathy

Facial expressions of sadness with small pupils are judged significantly more intensely sad with decreasing pupil size. A person's own pupil size also mirrors this with them being smaller when viewing sad faces with small pupils. No parallel effect exists when people look at neutral, happy or angry expressions. The greater degree to which a person's pupils mirror another predicts a person's greater score on empathy.

Cultural explorations

During the Renaissance, "Edmund Spenser's high estimation of sadness renders it as a badge of sort for the spiritually elect...this endorsement of sadness" in The Fairie Queene. In The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard is described as having "a sad look in his eyes, sad but not unhappy". This may be linked to the way "an early meaning of 'sad' is 'settled, determined'", exemplifying "Tolkien's theses that determination should survive the worst that can happen". Julia Kristeva considered that 'a diversification of moods, variety in sadness, refinement in sorrow or mourning are the imprint of a humanity that is surely not triumphant but subtle, ready to fight and creative'.

See also

References

Further reading

David Allen Karp, Speaking of Sadness (1997)

Ambady & Gray, 2002

Keltner et al., 1998

Category:Emotions Category:Personal life Category:Grief Category:Metaphorical darkness