The Untold Story of Sadness
Sadness that surfaces after a loss is not a foe to be shunned but a friend to be welcomed into your life. If you have your doubts, read on.
I didn’t always consider sadness as my friend especially when it rolled in like an unexpected tsunami. Later, however, I realized that the emotional and physical symptoms that accompanied sadness actually helped me to grieve.
The ability to feel and experience sadness is built into us at birth as a physiological response to loss. Sadness enhances and adds value to the grieving process. It is an automatic response in a healthy person to the presence of losing something or someone important to us.
Let’s look at four reasons why to welcome sadness as a friend and not resist her with suspicion.
Four Reasons To Treat Sadness as Your Friend
1. Sadness helps you slow down and reflect
In general…sadness helps us focus accurately and promotes deeper and more effective reflection. During bereavement, when we are trying to adjust to the death of a loved one, the functions of sadness become essential tools that help us accept and accommodate to the loss. — George Bonanno, The Other Side of Sadness
Sadness helps us take a forced timeout and works in an opposite way to anger which prepares us for the fight or flight response. Sadness causes our body to slow down not run faster.
When Vicky died, my world shrunk. The earth was still spinning at the same speed, but I felt like everything had stopped. Looking back on those early days after her death, I see how important sadness was to help me deal with the pain of my loss.
The pain of loss is real and often very deep. Thankfully, sadness walks with us to help us come to grips with our new and painful reality.
2. Sadness provides a reality check and helps us accept the loss more readily
You feel what your brain believes. — Lisa Feldman Barrett
The feelings we have are a readout of what is going on in our mind at any given time.
The emotion of sadness occurs when our brain tells us the unwelcome news that we’ve lost someone or something we value. Plenty of other emotions surface after a loss like blame, anger, and guilt but sadness in its purest form helps us recognize that a loss has occurred.
With that reality check we have more accurate view of our abilities and capabilities. Sadness causes us to be more thoughtful and less biased in our perceptions of others. In a strange way, we are less prone to unhelpful ideas that may be presented to us.
Sadness takes us into a room where we can sit with our loss and give it time to sink in. Sadness helps us say, “I can’t change my circumstances but I can choose my response to those circumstances.”
Sadness slows you down so you can reflect on what your response will be.
Eventually, sadness helped me get to the place of acceptance. It allowed me to feel what my brain was telling me — that Vicky was indeed gone and will not be coming back.
3. Sadness lets others know you need support
When we feel sad, we often look sad. This provides a helpful clue and lets others know how to respond to us.
Physically when we are sad, our face sags, our eyebrows pinch together and raise upward, our eyelids narrow, our jaw slackens, and we look like we’re pouting.
— George A. Bonanno, The Other Side of Sadness
Facial expressions associated with sadness can communicate to others you need empathy, understanding, and support. Other nonverbal cues like dropping our heads, bringing our hands to our face or collapsing our chests has the same effect.
It takes courage and a willingness to be comfortable in our grief to let others in on our journey. When I see someone with sunken facial features or red around their eyes or a hunched over posture, I’m kinder to them and am reminded in the words of Socrates…
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
I see this lived out in the faces and body language of those who attend the grief groups I facilitate. Their difficult journey of sadness is written on their faces and evident in their bodies. The sadness I see reminds me to care and be an empathetic witness to their story.
Practices That Treat Sadness as a Friend
1. When loss happens in your life, invite sadness to walk alongside you
A favorite poem of mine puts this practice into perspective.
“I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow; And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her, When Sorrow walked with me.”
― Robert Browning Hamilton
2. Create space to allow sadness to be in the drivers seat
Sadness will naturally slow you down and give you time to reflect and feel what you need to feel. How you respond matters.
If you keep busy and force yourself to push through your sadness, you might hinder good grief from happening. Letting sadness drive the car of your life will allow for a pace you can handle and avoid the consequences of inattentiveness to your much needed grief.
3. Don’t try to hide your sadness from others
There’s no shame in looking sad if you’re feeling sad. It’s challenging if the people you are with minimize your grief or are uncomfortable with sadness.
I learned to worry less about those who couldn’t handle my sadness and be more concerned to find empathetic friends who could allow me to my authentic self.
If you hide your true feelings, you run the risk of getting stuck in your grief which has a long lasting negative impact.
4. Use healthy prompts to facilitate sadness and remembering.
Prompts can include music, movies, or a story. The song, See You Again by Wiz Khalifa was a healthy prompt I used in the early days of my grief. When I would play it, I felt deep sadness and often cried deep healing tears. We included it in the slide show as we remembered Vicky’s life and it fit perfectly to enhance the remembering.
It's been a long day without you, my friend
And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again
We've come a long way from where we began
Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again
When I see you again.
Reflection questions
What is your relationship with sadness?
What limiting belief do you need to let go of in order to make sadness an even better friend?
