Avoiding sadness can backfire, here’s how to turn towards it

Need to know

I have a particularly poignant memory of a day when my son was a teenager, and we had just gotten into the car after an emergency trip to the orthopaedic clinic. My son had hurt his hand while playing soccer – another sports injury to add to many recent ones. He was told that he would not be able to play again for quite some time, dashing his hopes of getting on the varsity team. I recall him getting in the car and doing something I hadn’t seen him do since he was younger: sobbing deep, heaving tears and allowing himself to fully feel and express his sadness.

Initially, I thought that he might become depressed over the situation, but I watched as, over time, he rallied, making the best of the situation, showing up at practices, cheering on his teammates, and even offering to be an ‘assistant coach’ from the sidelines. Allowing himself to fully acknowledge and process his sadness helped him move through it. This is something I have seen time and again with my patients and have experienced often myself.

Sadness is likely not a stranger to any of us. It is a normal human emotion that we experience in the face of loss or disconnection from something we care about. Sadness can arise from a range of experiences, including separation, such as when you’re unable to see family during holidays, or a friend moves away; big life transitions, such as leaving one’s home of 20 years; or losses, such as the breakup of a relationship or the death of a pet or a loved one. (Sadness, as I refer to it here, is different from depression – which can include feelings of sadness, but also other symptoms such as persistent low mood, diminished interest in most activities, and a lack of energy or motivation.)

Feeling sadness is not, in itself, a problem. It’s what you do with sadness that can be helpful or problematic. Many of us tend to avoid or suppress unpleasant emotional experiences. Unfortunately, this can come at a cost to physical and mental health in the long term. I think of an emotion like sadness as a bit like food that needs to be digested in order to move through you. When left undigested, it can sit there for a long time and cause unintended consequences. I have found that, for me, unprocessed sadness can show up as anxiety that masks the sadness. And when I allow myself to acknowledge, name and feel the underlying sadness, that anxiety unwinds and releases. For others, I have seen suppressed sadness manifest as physical symptoms (such as unexplained, ongoing stomach aches in a teenager) that have dissipated when the sadness was given space to be seen, heard and felt. Importantly, there are times when a short-term distraction or focusing of one’s attention elsewhere can be appropriate and even helpful to get through sad times. But suppressing or avoiding one’s feelings in an ongoing way tends to backfire.

There are a couple of other things to watch out for that can add to the suffering: often, instead of just allowing themselves to feel sad, people judge themselves for having these feelings and then attach a narrative to them. Time and again, I have sat with patients who feel understandable sadness over various losses, and yet apologise for their feelings, saying: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me’ or ‘I should be stronger.’ Additionally, it is common for the voice of the inner critic to chime in with unhelpful narratives such as ‘I’m a loser’ or ‘I’m a failure’ or ‘I must be unlovable’ in the face of certain losses (such as the breakup of a relationship or the loss of a job). All this compounds one’s pain in an already difficult situation.

So, what can you do when you come face to face with sadness? Whether you tend to avoid, suppress, or judge your sad feelings or not, learning ways to meet and greet this difficult emotion, listen to its needs and find the courage and inner resources to move forward can help make it more bearable. One way you can do this is by learning to shift your vantage point.

In my book You Don’t Have to Change to Change Everything (2024), I talk about six ways that you can shift your perspective when you face difficult emotions – not to change the emotions, but to meet them with greater presence and self-compassion. What follows are six different ways you can try shifting your vantage point when it comes to sadness. These can be employed in moments when sadness arises, but can also be helpful to practise on a daily basis with whatever difficult emotions might be present. If your feelings are very intense, or you have experienced a trauma, it may be important for you to seek the direct guidance of a licensed mental health professional as you use these strategies.

What to do

How to shift your perspective on sadness

The anchor view

In the midst of strong waves of sadness, if you can metaphorically grab hold of an ‘anchor’, there is more stability and safety from which you can watch the storm and allow it to pass. Often, you cannot stop inner storms, but you can learn to anchor yourself. Physiologically, when the autonomic nervous system is in a state of greater regulation and balance, it is easier to access inner resources for coping, such as perspective, compassion and clarity.

How? To take the anchor view when you feel sadness arise, you can start by seeking a safe space in which to feel your feelings. When possible, you might select or create an outer environment that signals safety to your nervous system – perhaps by wrapping yourself in a blanket, holding a warm cup of tea, or sitting in a comfortable spot in nature. If you have a supportive person in your life who can sit beside you or offer an attentive ear, a gentle hand or a soothing voice (without trying to ‘fix’ your feelings), you might seek out that person.

Alternatively, you might mentally picture a safe place in nature; take deeper, slower breaths in and out through your heart centre (the area in or around the centre of your chest); or engage your senses mindfully, focusing on what you can see, hear and touch in the moment. All of these can help to calm your nervous system and create an inner environment in which it’s easier to sit with your feelings.

The child view

Like an innately curious child who turns toward objects in their environment and explores them with openness and non-judgment, you can learn to turn toward your inner experiences with greater curiosity. Remember, your initial inclination might be to turn away from sadness, so this step may need to be taken with care. When you turn toward sadness with the curiosity of the child view, you open up to what the sadness may be telling you, and how it ‘wants’ you to be with it. This is not an intellectual figuring-out so much as an embodied exploration. In my experience, sadness often just demands acknowledgement and space to be seen, and this alone can shift one’s inner experience in a way that brings greater ease.

How? One way to take the child view is to engage in a practice called ‘notice and name’. As you turn toward your inner world, you can notice and name sensations and emotions that are present (eg, I feel tightening and heaviness in my chest… a sad feeling in my heart… sorrow that hangs heavy around my eyes… a tugging in my throat). You can be curious about what sadness feels like in this moment, how much space it takes up, whether it has a shape, colour or image associated with it. Notice the difference between being aware of your inner experience and being swallowed up in it. Curiosity can help you to turn towards what is happening inside you with friendliness rather than judgment, and with enough distance that you do not feel overtaken by your emotions.

The audience view

In addition to looking at sadness with curiosity, you can take another half-step back to notice even more about your experience. Rather than being the ‘actor’ caught in the drama on stage, you can locate yourself in the ‘audience’, to watch with care and attention as your feelings arise and pass. From here, you can start to notice what thoughts arise that are associated with what you are feeling. Typically, people don’t just feel an inner experience, they also have an interpretation of that experience. You might judge what you’re feeling as pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad; you might create a narrative around it that is not accurate or true.

How? Imagining yourself as an audience member observing your experience, you can distinguish the raw emotion of your sadness from whatever story your mind might be attaching to it. You might notice, for example:

• There is sadness, and I am aware of thoughts telling me that I should be over this by now.
• There is loss, and my mind is telling me that I’ll never find anyone else who cares about me.
• There is heartbreak, and I’m having the thought that this relationship ended because I’m not good enough.

When you notice interpretations such as these, from the viewpoint of being ‘in the audience’, it helps you loosen the grip of these thoughts and recognise that they are just thoughts – not facts that necessarily reveal something true about you.

The compassionate parent view

Many of us have had the experience of sharing a moment of sadness with a compassionate other – sometimes a parent, though it might have been a friend, mentor, teacher or someone else. In the presence of a compassionate person, when the sadness is simply seen and heard by someone who cares, a kind of alchemy occurs. While the sadness might not go away, it often feels easier to bear.

The ‘compassionate parent’ view is all about learning to bring this kind of compassionate presence to yourself, to your own inner experience, as if you are a parent for the hurting parts of yourself. This kind of self-compassion takes some practice to cultivate, but it can be transformative when applied to your own suffering and sadness.

How? A few ways to practise cultivating this self-compassion are to ask yourself:

• If a dear friend, or someone else I care about deeply, were feeling this sadness, how would I be with them? What kinds of comforting words or gestures might I offer? For example, words of comfort might include: ‘It’s understandable what you’re feeling, this is difficult,’ ‘All your feelings are welcome,’ or ‘I’m with you.’ A gesture of comfort might involve putting one’s hand over one’s heart.
• If this sadness could talk to me, what would it say? And how might I listen with care?
• If my sadness was a small child, how would it want me to be with it? (Would it want me just to listen, to be present, to put an arm around it, or something else?)

When you take the compassionate parent view, it is like you are saying: ‘I see you, I hear you, I’m with you’ to your sadness, and to yourself.

The mirror view

When many of us think about ourselves – when we ‘look in the mirror’ – we see shortcomings, what we don’t like, what we perceive as missing or wrong. This is in part thanks to the negativity bias, which gives more weight to negative experiences than to positive ones. But there is a different, more expansive kind of mirror that you can use to see yourself. When you take this mirror view, you shift from seeing the ‘hole’ (what’s wrong, what’s missing, what needs to be fixed) to seeing the ‘whole’ (including your inner qualities and strengths). Instead of trying to make sadness go away, you call upon something else to sit side by side with it – something like acceptance, courage, care, equanimity or resilience. You draw upon your inner resources to support yourself through a difficult time, while making space for your sadness to be as it is.

How? One way to practise the mirror view is to reflect on the following questions:

• What was a previous time in your life when you went through something difficult and felt sadness?
• What helped you get through that?
• What inner qualities or resources did you call upon to help you through?
• What inner quality, if it were more present right now, might help you in your sadness (eg, acceptance, courage, care, tenacity, self-kindness, etc)? Call to mind a time you experienced that quality – or imagine stepping into the shoes of someone who embodies that quality – and think about how it would feel for that quality to sit side-by-side with your sadness.
• What might this sadness show you about your own humanness and your capacity to care deeply?

The ocean view

Often, individuals go through life thinking they are each an isolated wave, forgetting that the wave is actually part of a vast, interconnected ocean. When you take what I call the ocean view, it reminds you that you are not alone, that you are connected with something larger than yourself. This can help to give you a greater sense of meaning and purpose, even in the face of your sadness.

In the story with my son, he found a way to not only stay connected with his team despite his injury, but to contribute and assist, giving him a sense of purpose beyond himself. Similarly, participation in a support group, helping others who are going through a related experience, volunteering in some capacity, or reaching out to a lonely neighbour are just a few of the ways I have seen people find connection amid their sadness.

How? To help you take the ocean view, consider these questions:

• Who might you reach out to in your sadness, so that you don’t feel so alone?
• What might you do that makes you feel part of a larger whole? Spend some time with family members or friends? Go to a community event? Attend a religious gathering? Visit a park where others are gathered? Something else?
• In what ways do you already contribute to the lives of others – such as through your work, your role in your family, the way you support your friends, etc? Can you recognise and honour this?
• Is there anything else you might do that gives you a sense of meaning and purpose outside of yourself, even in the midst of difficult emotions?

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