We live in a society where being positive is offered as the best attitude a person can take to life. Yet sometimes this simply isn’t possible, and people find themselves facing temporary or long-term sadness. At such times, positivity isn’t much help because negative moods can have a life of their own.
How do you deal with being in sad gear? In times of crisis, the sad truth is that most of us become passive. We distract ourselves by watching more television or spending more hours on the computer. We wait for sadness to pass and carry on as if nothing bad is going on. Keeping up a good front is important in most people’s lives, yet behind the facade can lurk a good deal of fear.
Instead of positivity, what you need is reality. There are ways to cope with sadness and gain control over it. Being realistic means that you drop the main defense that all of us are tempted to employ: denial. The only reason to deny your sadness is if you feel that you can’t do anything about it. As we’ll see, there is a lot you can do.
Step 1: What Kind of Sadness Do You Have?
Moods are changeable by nature, and it’s perfectly normal to have sadness in your life. Some kinds of sadness, however, give cause for concern. If you are feeling sad at this moment - or have been experiencing a down mood for a while - look honestly at your situation. There are three types of sadness that you could be experiencing.
Short-term sadness: This is a passing mood, lasting a few days or at most a week. It sometimes has a cause and sometimes not. The best remedy is to lower your stress, go to bed early and get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, make sure you exercise, and break up your normal routine a bit. Boredom, lack of sleep, being too sedentary, and excess stress are all associated with a sad mood.
Triggered sadness: This includes a downturn in mood because something bad has happened to you, such as losing your job or the death of someone close. In such a situation, you will generally know what the trigger is. The problem is that most people feel helpless when they enter extended sadness, even when they know there is a good reason for it. Here you need to process your sadness, let nature take its course, and share your feelings with someone who can counsel and console you. Triggered sadness lasts an unpredictable length of time, yet in an emotionally healthy adult, within six months, there is a return to the level of emotions that existed before the trigger happened.
Depression: If you feel sad, exhausted, helpless, hopeless, and unable to sleep, eat, or enjoy sex for a period of time lasting more than a few weeks, you should suspect that you are depressed. There is often a trigger for a bout of depression, but instead of being a realistic cause, it is often something that you could normally cope with. If you feel that you can’t cope, even with minor stress and ordinary setbacks, depression may be indicated. This is a complicated mood disorder that varies from person to person. We won’t deal with it here, for lack of space. If you suspect that you or someone near you is depressed, a doctor’s care is needed.
Step 2: Dealing With Sadness
Let’s say that you fall into the first two categories of short-term and triggered sadness. If so, there are things you can do to get out of sad gear. They fall under the category of finding out how to be happy. It surprises people, but in fact, the best cure for sadness is happiness. The problem is that when you passively accept your sadness, you forget to build your happiness. Happiness is more than a mood. It’s a lifetime project for well-being.
People who are successful at this project show the way for what you can do.
DO:
Give of yourself. Take care of others, and care for them.
Work at something you love.
Set worthy long-range goals that will take years to achieve.
Be open-minded.
Have emotional resilience
Learn from the past and then put it behind you – live for the present.
Plan for the future without anxiety, fear, or dread.
Develop close, warm social bonds.
As you can see, there’s a lot more to exchanging sadness for happiness than simply waiting for a mood to change. One of the key things on this list is developing emotional resilience, which means the ability to bounce back from bad things in your life. One of the pitfalls of positivity is that people tend to fantasize about a perfect life instead of realistically facing the fact that no life is perfect. Everyone’s existence contains challenges, disappointments, frustration, and failed expectations. Despite this, you can build lifelong happiness, not by the futile pursuit of all pleasure and no pain, but by learning emotional resilience.
How is that done?
1. Be present with your feelings instead of fearing them.
2. Get past victimization or “poor me” thinking.
3. Make a plan of action when things go wrong and stick with it.
4. Associate with emotionally mature people.
5. Seek counsel from someone who has managed the same kind of crisis that you now face.
6. Focus on the times you have survived and thrived in the face of bad things.
7. Appreciate and reward yourself for dealing with your personal difficulties.
These are only general guidelines. What’s most important is to have a vision of emotional maturity, however you define that. Then work to make your vision come true. Such a vision should include the kind of emotions that make life richer, that allow you to express yourself fully, that are honest and true to who you are, and that give you strength and purpose. If your emotions don’t fit this picture, it’s time to work on them.
Step 3: Avoid the enemies of Happiness
There isn’t a lot of agreement among psychologists who study happiness; the whole field of positive psychology, which studies normal emotional states, is too new and untested. But human nature has been around for quite a while, and you can spot the influences that work against happiness. There are definitely things you want to avoid if you intend to get out of sad gear.
DON’T:
Hitch your happiness to external rewards.
Postpone being happy until sometime in the future.
Expect someone else to make you happy.
Equate happiness with momentary pleasure.
Pursue more and more stimulation.
Allow your emotions to become habitual and stuck.
Close yourself off from new experiences.
Ignore the signals of inner tension and conflict.
Dwell on the past or live in fear of the future.
In a consumer-driven society, it’s all too easy to fall into all the don’ts on this list, because they share the same element: linking happiness with temporary pleasure and external rewards. Of course, we all live for the pleasure that life brings. No one is saying that you must deny yourself- just the opposite. The best way to deal with down swings in your mood is to prevent them by working on long-term happiness. Sadness comes and goes. Well-being can be cultivated to last a lifetime.
Namaste,
Deepak