We do not want and do not know how to be sad, says existential psychotherapist Svetlana Krivtsova. But it is this feeling that can help us understand what hurts us and what we lack in order to move on in life.
Of all the emotions, sadness is the most difficult to describe: it is not a sharp pain, not an outburst of rage, and not a fit of fear, which are easy to recognize. It is a lingering feeling that, in the words of Françoise Sagan, always “alienates from other people.” Many of us treat sadness worse than, for example, aggression. To be aggressive is in some sense “more honorable” than to be sad – remember Harlequin and Pierrot. Sadness is often associated with impotence, weakness, is not approved by modern society and, it seems, prevents one from being successful, in demand, and happy.
When we are sad, we want solitude and silence, it is difficult for us to communicate. Sadness sets a special course of thought and, as Benedict Spinoza noted back in the XNUMXth century, “weakens our ability to act.” At such moments, active life stops, it is as if a curtain is lowered in front of us and the performance is stopped. And there is nothing left but to turn to yourself – to start reflecting. From the outside, a person seems ill, and he is advised to urgently do something. But is it necessary to hurry back to the bustle of life?
Life cannot take from us anything that we dare to love. Everything we love stays with us forever.
“It’s sad that my relationship with a good person has deteriorated” or “it’s sad that the best ones leave first” … If we are sad, it means that something good has disappeared from our life or never appeared in it. We may not yet know what exactly, but thanks to sadness we ask ourselves this question: what do we lack for the fullness of existence, for happiness? We listen to ourselves, pay attention to our relationship with the world.
Sometimes resentment, discontent, anger are mixed with this feeling – this is a cocktail of “terrible mood”. But often we also drink a pure drink of sadness, which can only be spoiled by the consciousness of our wrongness – then its taste becomes heavy, astringent, bitter. In sorrow without guilt, a beautiful bouquet of bitter-salty notes is felt … combined with sweetness. The way it is. How many beautiful poems have been written in this state, and what music!
But sometimes life is cruel and takes away what is dear, the most precious… We can close ourselves and stop feeling, so as not to accidentally remember what we have lost, because it is unbearably painful. And then we will choose the path of depression. And we can open our hearts and live our loss – all the way, to the drop: and self-pity, and resentment of the abandoned and abandoned being, and loneliness, because no one can help in sadness.
This is not an easy path to healing. It is necessary to make a decision, one’s own, deeply personal, in order to humbly go all the way. This requires patience, as well as the freedom to allow yourself to cry in order to wash and cleanse the wound. In addition, we will have to part with guilt: when, having forgiven ourselves, we can cry, we will feel that the wounded soul is as if wrapped in a warm blanket – it still hurts, but also … warm.
What if it’s depression?
Lack of desires, a feeling of inner emptiness and own uselessness, severe fatigue, insomnia, suicidal thoughts … Often depression occurs as a reaction to a very bad life for a long time or as an emotional response to severe pain that a person cannot cope with.
And yet the main condition for depression is to leave yourself to your own devices and not allow yourself to grieve about what is happening. Today, more and more Europeans refuse to take antidepressants in order not to drown out depression, but to hear her questions properly. Do I like my life? Why do I tolerate bad behavior for so long? Why live if I’ve lost the ones I love? The ability to experience sadness, despair, self-doubt really means that we are living people. Against all odds.
You need to mourn, mourn comfortably, carefully, gently. Someone has to lull the crying soul – why not do this for your soul yourself? Make tea, cover yourself with a blanket and grieve as much as she, her soul, wants.
And it’s amazing how soon everything changes from such an accepting attitude towards oneself. Now with a smile it turns out to remember your loss. Now you can talk about it, look at the photos. Relationships become more perfect, because everything superficial leaves them. Now you can not only remember, but conduct a dialogue, feel the support of the one who left us.
And this deepest wisdom awakens such a strong desire to live that all grievances against life melt away. It turns out that she cannot and does not want to take away anything from what we dared to love. Everything we love stays with us forever.
“There is nothing destructive in sadness”
I rarely smile. Maybe because a heightened sense of humor does not allow me to react to what lies on the surface. But I am sure that sadness, being in its place, plays a positive role in the appropriate situation. It is possible, for example, to sway in a hammock surrounded by children and grandchildren, look at a family album, recall departed comrades with sadness and sadness – and there will be nothing destructive in this, on the contrary!
Pushkin said: “My sadness is bright, my sadness is full of you.” So, I didn’t see anything negative in it. I completely trust his word. If sadness fills with thoughts about a loved one, then this feeling is bright. In general, the division of feelings and emotions into negative and positive is something from the old school curriculum.
When it was necessary to describe characters in the lessons, a vertical line was drawn in a notebook in the middle and we wrote positive qualities on the left, and negative ones on the right. If we were talking about a modern character, then sadness would fall into the column of negative qualities, in contrast to optimism, which would stand opposite.
But a simple question: why was Onegin devoured by the blues, seemed sad, even deplorable? Because Byron and Childe Harold were in fashion. And it doesn’t matter that his sadness is an absolute game, that he needed to hide his frantic temperament: in those days, melancholy, hints of an early death, talk about the frailty of life were at a special price.
In general, sadness at a young age is often not a position, but a pose. But then everything changes… Once Sergey Dovlatov divided creative matter into three spheres. The third – dramatic, hard-won optimism – is the most interesting for him. And I completely agree with him on this.
“My sadness is easy”
Neither sadness nor sadness has ever been associated with depression in me. Rather, on the contrary, the ability to be sad seems to me a sign that a person can think, observe life. Which is not at all conducive to meaningless fun. Sadness… My sadness is always light, and there is a lot of smile in it. This is a tribute to the past years and their retrospective in my memory. That sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, by the way.
The past is just the past! And I love this state too. Many often confuse sadness and sadness with despondency. I hate despondency, it is an extreme form of sadness. Invalid. It is she who must be driven in the neck and fought with her. How? Labor. Despondency is a sin. Sadness is the need of the living in us. Sadness is a luxury.