Sadness: how to heal and go up the slope?
Written by: Loris Vitry (holistic coach)
Validated by: Cathy Maillot (Osteopath)
Caution: If you have any medical questions or concerns, please speak to your doctor. Even if the articles on this site are based on scientific studies, they do not replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Sadness is a lethargic state that reflects emotional pain characterized by feelings of disadvantage, helplessness, and disappointment.
It is linked to loss, despair and grief.
It manifests as crying, loss of appetite or loss of vitality.
If it is prolonged, sadness or melancholy may indicate depression.
This manifests as a feeling of sadness associated with self-pity, hopelessness, stress and anxiety.
Indeed, it is better to go towards psychotherapeutic approaches than towards pharmacological approaches, at least initially.
However, you must adopt attitudes in your daily life that will help you.
Discover for this purpose in this article, methods to overcome your sadness and go back up the slope.
Causes and risks
Sadness is an emotion that stimulates the parasympathetic system.
It is the part of the nervous system that pushes to rest, sleep, heal or withdraw.
Sadness puts the person out of time in order to mourn a loss, think about it, and then make the psychological changes necessary to move on.
The reasons for poor living are many and varied:
- The loss of a loved one:
The grieving process is naturally accompanied by a deep sadness that is temporized with time and the acceptance of the disappearance.
However, it will remain linked to memories.
The breakup of love or friendship is also often experienced as mourning and leads to a feeling of sadness.
- A huge change of life
Moving or leaving school can produce melancholy due to nostalgia for good times.
- hormonal upheavals occurring after childbirth
They can cause a feeling of sadness in many mothers.
Usually, this “baby blues” doesn’t last and goes away within a few weeks.
If this stress sets in for a long time, it is postpartum depression.
- A situation of failure in one or more areas of his life can also be the cause.
To a lesser extent, stress, a genetic predisposition to mental disorders including depression or the influence of the environment and personal history on DNA can cause sadness.
Sadness can lead to risky behaviors for the affected person, such as:
- the consumption of drugs or alcohol which can lead to dependence,
- social isolation and loneliness,
- inactivity or procrastination,
- loss of appetite which can lead to an imbalance in diet.
So many things that increase stress and disturb the psyche of the sad individual.
Behavioral solutions
They consist in turning away from his sadness by occupying his mind with something else.
Get out of the isolation which is the natural tendency of the sad person by being in contact with others: going out, going to see an exhibition, a movie or a show.
Distractions and conviviality are effective enough to divert attention from sadness to other sensations.
An equally effective solution is to turn to others for generous action.
Take care of your quality of life through a healthy and balanced diet, exercise regularly or dance to let off steam.
Take care of the quality and quantity of your daily sleep.
Take the time to relax and unwind by exploring your creativity and passions: drawing, painting, sculpture, singing or photography.
Take the time to notice the finer things in life and celebrate the little victories that are won.
Share your feelings with someone who cares about them and who you trust like a relative or close friend.
Talking to a professional can help explore the origins of this feeling of sadness.
Being in contact with Nature through long walks in the forest, in a park or going on hikes.
These simple behaviors are known to be beneficial for mental and physical health.
In Japan, we speak of Shinrin-Yoku.
Emotional solutions
Some people recommend the combination of a positive feeling and heart consistency.
This would increase the ability to experience joyful emotions on a daily basis.
Emmanuel Pascal, with his experience as a cardiac coach, offers another type of breathing: breathing in frequency 3: 3 breathing cycles (inspiration / expiration) per minute.
This involves breathing in for 10 seconds and then exhaling deeply for 10 seconds for at least 3 minutes, or 9 times in all.
Once this respiratory rhythm has been adopted, a positive emotion is associated with it to reinforce its beneficial effects.
Let the sadness come out: cry, scream, sob, write down your feelings.
The main thing is to evacuate.
Accept the sadness.
Indeed, suppressing his emotions only makes his condition worse.
Avoid stressful situations.
If possible, take time off from work or activities and take a break.
Cognitive solutions
The term “positive thinking” sums up the idea of this type of method.
It relies on the human ability to choose his thoughts.
Positive thinking therefore consists in focusing your attention on cheerful thoughts.
To be effective, you need to have a strategy in place to dismiss sad thoughts in favor of pleasant images at all times.
Positive thinking also involves choosing activities and reading.
A sad person will have a tendency to go naturally towards the less fun activities.
Also, just keep in mind this tendency and make the opposite choices each time.
Avoid stressful or sad novels, run away from dramatic movies and sad songs and go for comedies, upbeat stories.
Your emotional rehabilitation goes through this, because you will have to put down the old reflexes.
Take that resolution and don’t worry if you don’t always get it.
Positive thinking is a process, it takes time and patience to master.
Sadness is a necessary emotion, because it pushes to react in difficult situations.
The best way to overcome it is to be kind and patient with yourself in order to give yourself time to recover.
However, when sadness turns into deep depression, with this feeling of having no quality, absolute despair, chronic absence of joy, loss of appetite and of all pleasure connected with sensations, with the feeling that nothing is wrong. is of interest and this leads to consequences such as insomnia, confusion, physical pain, desire for suicide, etc., the solution may be medical.
