Sadness, Loss, and Redemption
Sadness is a dirty word to most of us. No one wants to be sad. In fact, we can go to great lengths to avoid sadness. We look for distractions - extra work, lots of TV and video games, alcohol and other substances, over-eating, over-shopping, and (put personal favorite distraction here). We adopt a sunny, ‘Can Do’ attitude and do our best to fake it until we make it. We keep other people or a pile of possessions around us obsessively to avoid alone time with sadness. We can retreat into sterile, Polyanna-style spirituality that keeps us distant from sadness by rigorously denying it in the guise of rising above it.
I am no exception. I have been a master of “Put My Head Down And Keep Going” tactics for years, ignoring how badly I felt in mind and body in the name of taking care of business and getting things done. This allowed me to dodge many emotions (including sadness), thinking I was a tough broad for doing so. I gave myself pats on the back for rigidly compartmentalizing my emotions and holding myself together in the face of traumatic circumstances. I would get irritated, angry, judgmental, and highly uncomfortable when other people broke down and cried. Then I would pat myself on the back some more for my awesome fortitude.
I did it because I felt it served me well, which in some ways it did. As a nurse, it was imperative to stay calm, keep myself together, and do my job in some devastatingly sad and stressful situations. (Nobody wants their nurse sobbing over their arm while he/she is inserting an IV.) I also did it because that is the culture that I was raised in. Our Western society is not forgiving of sensitive people. I feel like “Suck it up and soldier on!” is engraved in the collective American psyche. Showing sadness or other gentle emotions outwardly is considered by many as a sign of weakness. No one wants to be thought of as weak. Like a wounded prey animal limping through the herd, we don’t like to expose our pain for fear of attracting attack, ridicule, and shame.
This type of strength serves best in life or death situations, when the choice we face is to keep on going or face consequences that will be catastrophic. The ability to push through discomfort, fatigue, anxiety, uncertainty, stress, and trauma is invaluable when faced with emergencies, but it is made for short-term, temporary circumstances. The human body was not built to sustain this survival mode indefinitely without damaging itself. The chemical stew that is released to help the body deal with this kind of stress is finite. There comes a point where the hormones and neurotransmitters become out of balance and depleted. Overused survival mode causes the body to exhaust its reserves, yet it has this paradoxical reaction of being unable to turn the survival mode off. This can cause anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, depression, apathy, digestive problems, heart problems, inhibited libido, inhibited growth, inhibited immune system, high blood pressure, and other body imbalances.
Survival mode strength is a brittle strength. The longer it is used the more brittle we become. Stuffing our emotions and honest feeling reactions takes an enormous amount of energy. It creates a substantial amount of pressure inside. It’s like we are a flexible hose. Every act of feeling suppression causes the pressure inside the hose to increase. If those feelings are not vented, then the pressure just keeps building. The hose becomes harder. Flexibility keeps decreasing and the likelihood of breakage or rupture increases until it becomes a certainty. It is not a question of if the hose will burst, but when.
When we stuff what we feel because it is not safe to deal with it in the moment, we are required to take time later to pull it all out, look at it, and give it satisfying expression. Yet so many of us consider stuffing emotions as a permanent solution. In reality, it is only half of the answer. We are not made to keep what we feel packed away and shelved indefinitely. It does not fade. It starts to fester and come out in maladaptive ways, through our bodies, through how we treat others, and through how we treat ourselves. How many times have we watched the TV show Hoarders and heard, “This all started after my mother (father, sister, brother, best friend) left or died?” Unacknowledged sadness, grief, anger, guilt, and shame can start to run our lives from the shadows, unconsciously causing us to react in harmful ways.
When my survival-mode lifestyle brought me to my knees in mind, heart, spirit, and body, I started looking for a new perspective. I found it when I read the book The Language Of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying To Tell You by Karla McLaren, which I highly recommend reading. McLaren (who is a highly sensitive empath) defines emotions as massive amounts of energy and information. She also goes on to describe how each emotion has a job. Yes, sadness has a job! She describes sadness as the restorer of “life-giving fluidity and movement when you’ve become arid and inflexible. Sadness helps you slow down, feel your losses, and release that which needs to be released—to soften into the flow of life instead of holding yourself rigidly and pushing ever onward.” Sadness washes our souls clean after loss. It moves our grief through and rejuvenates the parts of ourselves that have been damaged. When allowed to flow, sadness eases suffering instead of causing it. Sadness is a friend, not an enemy.
Allowing sadness and emotion to move through us is our natural state. It can happen in more ways than crying it out. Here are some options:
BREATHE -Deep breathing is at the top of my list for moving emotions because it can be done anywhere at any time. The deeper the breaths, the more emotional energy is moved. Have you noticed that when you are trying not to cry your chest becomes tight and your breathing shallow? It’s to prevent the emotional energy from moving. Deep breathing lets it flow.
GO OUTSIDE - Nature is grounding. Grounding means connecting to the earth, usually to disperse excess or unwanted energy. Like a lightning rod with one end buried in the ground, we can allow the earth to pull out and balance our energy. Emotion overload can begin to smooth out simply by relaxing outside. Walking in the grass with bare feet, sitting on the ground, gardening, leaning against a tree, or relishing the wind on your skin can all be ways to release pent-up feelings. Breathe deep while you’re out there and be doubly effective in allowing your emotional energy to flow.
WRITE - Free writing is housecleaning for your psyche. It literally moves emotions up out of the body and onto the page where they can be seen and acknowledged. Free writing means writing whatever comes into your head without worrying about spelling, punctuation, grammar, or whether it makes any sense or not. It gives your mind and emotions the space to roll out of you.
GET CREATIVE - Creating is transformative. It takes energy and reforms it into something new. That is why art heals. It takes energy that needs to be released and uses it to make something new. It does not matter if the art is considered good or bad, beautiful or ugly. It is the act of creating that matters. Paint, sing, dance, rearrange your furniture, cook, change your style, weave - however you decide to create, it is worthwhile.
MOVE - Exercise not only pumps our immune systems and moves life-giving oxygen to all our body systems, but it can also help release emotions. Next time you feel like you have a bundle of stuck feelings making your body tight, try dancing in private. Move without worrying about what you look like, especially the part of your body that feels tight, and watch the emotions flow. The key is that when the emotions rise up, let them out. Don’t stuff them back down again.
CONNECT - Talking to friends, family, counselors, therapists, life coaches, and support groups are all good emotional healing outlet activities. Sharing how we feel with others in a welcoming and safe environment builds a support system not only for ourselves but for others. That is the gift of community—the process of helping ourselves also helps others.
ENERGY WORK - Energy healing modalities like Quantum Touch and Reiki move energy by their very nature. Releasing emotions caught in the body is one of the great benefits of energy work. Plus it feels good. The emotions moved out are replaced by a sense of peace and well-being as the body systems affected by the stuck emotions balance themselves.
TAKE THE TIME - The most important part of this whole emotion-moving process is regularly taking the time to do it. We move through our day-to-day lives often at breakneck speeds without giving ourselves the space to let it all go and just be for a while. Setting aside time regularly to mourn, grieve, and allow feelings to move through us (and do their jobs) after going through loss is a sane thing to do. Actually, airing out our emotional closets regularly, whether we have suffered loss or not, is a sane thing to do. It is like internal weight loss. It takes the weight of our suffering and transforms it into new life.
Since covid marched over our lives and changed our reality, we have become a world of walking wounded. We have suffered under the weight of massive loss. Whether it be frontline workers being the continual witnesses of loss, the people who suffered the loss of loved ones, children who lost years of development and learning, people who lost their livelihoods, people who lost their health, lost time with our families, and our lost our way of life, we are still recovering and will be recovering for years to come. Giving ourselves the time and space to honor and grieve that loss allows it to pass through us on the back of our sadness, so we can remake ourselves anew.
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