Sadness is an emotional state which leads people to crying, social withdrawal, and slowing down all the activities. Sometimes people also experience emotional pain and feelings of loneliness when they are sad. There are different physical characteristics of sadness like changes in the heart rate and skin conductance. Also, the facial expression changes: drooping eyelids, downcast eyes, lowered lip corners, slanting inner eyebrows are some of the typical traits of sadness. Expressing sadness is not always supported by people around us. There are several common expressions like “Don’t cry” and “Men don´t cry”. Each emotion has an important role and purpose in people’s autoregulation. Therefore it is important to recognize, acknowledge, and channel sadness in us.

Sadness like all the other emotions has its evolutionary purpose. The goal of it is to facilitate the process of loss- for example, the ending of a friendship or a romantic relationship or also losing resources or status. It has also been found that sadness helps to improve the attention to capture details, be less biased by prejudice, maintain orientation to goals and encourage generosity towards others. A short-term sadness is useful and necessary because it helps to adapt to different life events. When sadness lasts for a very long time it may lead to depression and negative feelings towards oneself and the world.

Creative activities

Try to find activities that help you to channel sadness. For example listening to music, painting, handicrafts, etc. Pick an activity that suits you. It’s important to connect with sadness, but not to stay with it for too long. Therefore try to find a suitable space and time where you allow yourself to experience sadness, but pay attention that it wouldn’t become a dominant feeling in all areas of life.

Connection with people close to you

Try to find support from others. Others may not always understand our sadness and therefore it’s important to choose who to share it with. Even if people around us can’t deal with emotions the same way, close relationships help us to cope with sadness and sometimes focus on other things as well

Mindfulness

Mindfulness techniques help to observe your thoughts and feelings compassionately. It can support us to be more present and aware of our bodies and thoughts. You can find different mindfulness exercises from here:

https://www.mindful.org/mindfulness-meditation-guided-practices/