Let's Talk About SADNESS!

Feels like a downer to start that way ... there's something about sadness that makes me want to rush through it and make people feel better.

Today we are examining another one of the three dominant emotions that is more common for some Enneagram types but still remains often misunderstood. Whether we have frequent experiences of sadness or not, there seem to be many ways we work around, excuse, ignore or replace these natural human expressions.

The Experience of Sadness

We need sadness. Sadness is depth. Sadness rounds out the spectrum of human experience.

We need SADNESS to:

• Acknowledge moments of disappointment.

• Reevaluate goals and problem solve.

• Address important loss and prepare for change.
  

• Communicate our needs and ask for support.

I think we avoid sadness for many reasons. The most obvious one is, it feels sad. But also, it takes time to explore and experience sadness - time that can't be measured and rushed. And for any of us that struggle to even put our finger on some of these emotions, it would take all kinds of time to find them, name them and then what??

As someone who has struggled to name my own emotional experiences, I find sadness to be quite vulnerable. Sadness feels like needing help. Sadness feels like defeat. Sadness feels unnecessarily ineffective and inactive. It feels like there is no action in sadness, there is simply emotion. And yet, I feel the comfort of experiencing the realness of my own humanity - sadness feels so honest it's scary.

Understanding

I don't think the problem is the sadness, I think the problem is how we see sadness.

When we see sadness as a pointer to something underneath, we see opportunity for connection. Just like with anger, more is happening. Sadness is a signal.

We are in a get s%#t done kind of society. We barely have time to make genuine connections with people so we certainly don't have time to sit with someone who is sad and get behind the emotion.

With anger, we jump into action - maybe for good reasons, but probably because we're afraid. With fear, we get that the world is a scary place and we adjust accordingly. But with sadness, we simply don't have the time. Sadness is, to put it bluntly, an unproductive use of our time.

But that's how we've gotten ourselves in the disconnected situation we are in ... where does sadness go if we ignore it? I'm no psychologist but my guess is it either creates a bigger and bigger hole that can never be comforted or a taller and taller wall that can never be scaled. Sadness doesn't go away, I don't believe any emotion just goes away.

Again, if the theory around the Enneagram is true, 1/3 of all people around the world have sadness as their dominant emotion - Types 2, 3 and 4. We are attempting to avoid, push aside or ignore, the very natural way a third of all people experience the world and more than that, preventing all of us from finding the balance we need to live a healthy emotional life.

Hope and Renewal

Here is the other side: there is a darkness to sadness. There is a depth that feels impossible to get out of. Every emotion comes with many sides and if you are in depths that are far beyond anything you thought possible, please find someone, please reach out, no one should be suffering alone.

Holding space for sadness can feel like a lot. I know that is how I feel. But I also know, the highs of life will never feel complete without knowing the other side. If we rob ourselves of the experience of the darker, sad emotions in life, we also rob ourselves of the fullness of the joyful, exciting emotions too.

We are human. Humans are made up of highs and lows. We can't always say "yes", we can't always say "no," we need both and we need something in-between. We need sadness and we need happiness. In some ways, they actually end up becoming blended. Have you ever experienced a sad moment and without realizing, you're suddenly laughing? How did that happen? When did that shift occur?

Tune into your sadness next time; I wonder what you'll notice. Let yourself be human.