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Sadness is one of the most common emotions. After a breakup or loss of a significant one, it's typical to feel negative emotions, especially sadness. When life gets you down, sadness takes over, reminding us that not all experiences in life bring about joy and happiness.
Although sadness is typical, it may also gradually become a trap and hold us back. First, if we try to tell ourselves that we shouldn't feel the emotions, we may end up prolonging sadness. Sometimes, we may look at others and compare our losses. You may feel that it's not like you have lost everything, but the reality is that you are sad, and it doesn't matter what others have experienced.
Accepting Sadness Impacts Mental Health
The first step to dealing with sadness is accepting it. Often the emotions associated with events and experiences are so disturbing that we want to push it under the carpet. Instead, we should acknowledge and accept the associated emotions so that we can process them.
On that note, here are six reasons why accepting sadness positively impacts mental health:
1) Acceptance Helps Us Reach Out
Difficult emotions can feel like climbing plants. They can grow incredibly quickly. Sometimes it can even feel as if they enclose us, and we may end up getting trapped. Fortunately, we can help the plants loosen their grip. One great way to get the feelings out is to talk about them.
Talking about how we feel can be difficult. It requires courage to be vulnerable, but it's never a sign of weakness to ask for help. In fact, reaching out to a friend or family member shows that you trust them.
When someone asks us for help, it almost feels as if they are giving us a gift. Likewise, when we open up to someone, we often experience how it can bring us closer together; it makes us stronger
2) Acceptance Is Not Resignation
Imagine being a soldier who has endured a long battle with your emotions. This is a metaphor for acceptance. The act of surrendering your weapons and leaving the conflict is known as acceptance. You are not allowing your emotions to humiliate you. You are merely letting go of the struggle.
Admitting emotions can often entail accepting that they will change. When you're joyful, you have to acknowledge that it's a temporary state and that it won't last forever. That holds true for all feelings, including fear, worry, and sadness. Feelings are transient; they typically disappear within a few seconds, minutes, or hours.
3) Boosts Psychological Health
Research shows that acceptance of negative emotions leads to greater psychological health. It helps us avoid reactions and exacerbate negative mental experiences. Psychological studies have shown that acceptance of negative emotions is the more reliable route to regaining and maintaining peace of mind rather than being pro-positive.
4) Allows Adaptation
You can use sadness to respond to the ideas and emotions it has helped you process.
Rumination, defined as repeatedly thinking the same thoughts, is frequently regarded as a negative activity. However, when coupled with sadness, it may assist you in developing a new coping mechanism and help you accept disappointment or loss, according to a 2018 review.
Sadness is linked to post-traumatic growth, which can happen in the wake of challenging life events. Post-traumatic growth may result in a more profound spirituality or the drive to make constructive changes.
5) Accept Vulnerability
The biggest benefit of accepting sadness is that it allows you to embrace who you are and the vulnerability you're dealing with. Even though it can be challenging at times, it's essential for our general well-being to embrace sadness in addition to accepting it.
Accepting that you occasionally need a break and that you are not always strong will offer you the room you need for self-care and rest. This space will assist you in becoming more conscious of your needs and in identifying the negativity you associate with other people and situations.
For instance, if you continue to feel unhappy about a certain experience, you will continue to add layers of unhappiness to your life.
6) Blunting Effect
Research suggests that the power of acceptance lies in the ability to dampen emotional responses to difficult circumstances.
It's this mechanism that, over time, can result in better psychological health and higher levels of life satisfaction. In other words, accepting negative emotions like sadness or worry won't depress you or make them worse, but they may not make you directly happy as well.
Takeaway
Sadness is like a low-level hum that's always there if we don't actively address it. It's one of those feelings that if you just spend some time with it, don't judge it, or question it and recognize that it hurts to be like that, it can go away.
Like other cognitive habits, acceptance is a skill that can be acquired. One commonly taught tactic is to think of your emotions as passing clouds, visible but not a part of you. Like wisdom, the trait tracks with age, so most of us will get there eventually.
Janvi Kapur is a counselor with a Master's degree in applied psychology with specialization in clinical psychology.
