Aslam Alikum to all of you

Is Sadness is Healthy ?

Myths and realities of sadness that will optimize your emotional intelligence.
Posted Jan 30, 2019

What Sadness might look like according to Disney.Source: Disney/Creative Commons
Sadness has gotten a bad rap in U.S. culture. It seems everywhere you turn you will find a plethora of options for avoiding sadness and becoming "happier." Social media is a prime culprit, with endless Instagram feeds dedicated to showing the world only our happiest of faces. In many ways, happiness, or at least the performance of "being happy" on social media and in daily life, has become an indicator of success while sadness has become an indicator of failure or pathology.

article continues after advertisement
All of this making you sad? Of course, there's an app for that.

Actually, there are about 10 apps for that in all styles and approaches, from CBT to DBT to positive psychology, from Donald Trump and beyond.

So, is sadness bad? Well if you follow the breakout success of Disney Pixar's Inside Out, an animated film about the internal emotions of a tween girl, hinged upon the protagonist Joy (Happiness) and her confusion about the role of other emotions like Sadness the answer is clear.

Spoiler Alert: Joy discovers that Sadness has a very important role in our lives—exactly what I help many of my patients and clients do in therapy and coaching.

Inside Out helps us see that there are many problematic myths about sadness that get in the way of our abilities to live healthy, meaningful lives. Here are a few of the most common myths and realities about sadness in U.S. culture that I've encountered in my work over the years.

Myth: Being sad means you are depressed. Equating sadness with depression is one of the number one mistakes I see many people make when negotiating their emotions. Most psychologists would agree that being sad is an indicator that something painful has happened in your life-usually a loss or emotional injury of some kind. If you've been in a relationship for years that suddenly end, of course you'd feel sad about the loss of connection. If someone important to you demeans or rejects you, it makes sense that you will feel sad and in pain.