Why You Need to Feel Sad to Feel Happy

The other day, I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner. It was loud, crowded, and a little overwhelming. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

As I stood in the checkout line, a mom and her kid stood in the next line over. The little boy, likely no older than five or six, was getting fussier by the moment. Not wanting to be rude, I averted my eyes as the mother hushed and pleaded with her boy. Suddenly, he let out a shrill, piercing wail. I couldn’t help it. I looked over. It amazed me how a tiny thing like him could make such a loud noise. This boy was the embodiment of rage; red faced, fists clenched, belly tight. 

It was kind of beautiful. Not that I found joy in the boy being upset, but it was beautiful that he had the capacity to feel things so deeply. It’s a capacity that only children possess. When they feel, they do it with their entire being! Happy, angry, excited, scared—nothing is felt in moderation.  Of course, this phenomenon occurs only because children of that age haven’t yet learned emotional regulation, but it is still a wonder to me regardless. All children go through a phase of egocentrism where they are unable to understand perspectives outside their own (Piaget, 1923). 

So, when they do feel things, they feel them fully because they cannot fathom any other possibility. A child’s emotions are volatile and, to the child, seemingly infinite. They pay no regard to appearances, manners, or the possibility of imposing on others. Children within the age range of two to seven have not yet learned how to understand the feelings and thoughts of others, unless they are told by someone developmentally farther along like a parent or older sibling. This is the job of the guardian, to guide and educate children on matters of emotion and etiquette. 

Masking Your Feelings

The thing is, no one’s perfect. Some people were never taught proper emotional regulation. Some people learned only how to mask and repress, rather than feel and heal. How can we expect a parent to teach their child healthy ways to cope if the parent themself never learned how? As Helen Russell, author of How to be Sad, puts it, “Children look to parents for how to regulate their own emotions because they don’t yet know how to do it themselves. But if caregivers don’t know either…then we’re really in trouble,” (Russell, 2021).

At some point, regardless of whether it's our parents doing their job well or if we simply realize society becomes less tolerant of tantrums the older we get, we learn not to lose our minds in the middle of grocery stores. This could suggest a healthy ability to cope, but it could also just be a stellar show of dissimulation. Typically, public displays of intense negative emotion are met with awkwardness and even judgment. So, to a child who was not taught proper ways to cope, this leaves the impression that negative emotion is not meant to be felt but concealed or repressed. As Russell puts it, “We live in a culture where distress demands to be alleviated and sadness is supposed to be solved rather than experienced” (Russell, 2021).

Using Distractions

Sometimes, regardless of how much distance is between us and our childhood, our emotions can creep up and take over. They can ambush us, overwhelm us--and, they're rarely rational or reasonable about it. When we aren't taught how to properly regulate our emotions, we often turn to distraction. This can range from scrolling on social media until our brains turn to static or numbing the pain with substances. We turn to easy distractions that make us feel better for a little bit, but what we forget is that our pain and discomfort will still be there when the self-induced mental fog lifts. 

So, if we cannot distract the pain away, what are we supposed to do? The answer is simple, but it’s also not the one anyone wants to hear. The path that leads us away from our pain just so happens to lead us into the thick of it first. We need to sit with it. We need to acknowledge its presence. More than that, we need to become intimate with it. We need to feel it. Take a moment. Take a breath. Find stillness in the chaos. It’s most definitely easier said than done, but it can still be done. 

So, where do we begin? 

1. Start with the sensations.  Acknowledge the physical. What is your body doing? Heart palpitations? Shortness of breath? Welling tears? Don’t try to mask them. Let your body do what it needs to do. Simply take note of them without judgment or shame. 

2. Locate the feeling. You don’t have to slap a label on it yet, but where do you feel it in your body? Is it a crushing weight in your chest? A pit in your stomach? An ache in your heart? 

3. Name it. Once you have a good grasp of where you’re feeling, try to give it a name. Robert Plutchik, an American psychologist, created this perfect model for it. 

4. Accept it. It’s as simple as saying to yourself  “I feel ___. And that’s okay.”

5. Feel it. This is the part that we seem to grapple with the most. Feeling it. We try our hardest to run, to hide, to do anything and everything other than stop, turn, and truly face ourselves. Don’t fight it. It’s scary, really scary, but not as scary as we think. As sticky or crushing or gut-wrenching as it, just let it wash over you. Weather it as you would a storm, with the knowledge that it will pass. 

Indeed, you need to feel sad to be happy. 

References

Piaget, J. (1926). The Language and Thought of the Child.

Plutchik, R., & Kellerman, H. (1980). Emotion. Vol. 1, Theories of emotion. Academic Press.
Russell, H. (2021). How to be sad : everything I’ve learned about getting happier, by being sad, better. 4th Estate.

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Alana Petrilla is a student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, currently pursuing a degree in Psychology. She is also a freelance writer whose skills range from creative to academic writing. View her portfolio here: https://msha.ke/hollow_heart/.