LICKING THE RAZOR’S EDGE

Addiction #31 – the challenge of SADNESS

“I am intrigued by the smile upon your face, and the sadness within your eyes” ~ Jeremy Aldana

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ~ Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

“I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out from my throat.” ~ Sylvia Plath

We all feel sadness sometimes, and we have been told that our occasional melancholy is “just the way life is” – that feeling saddened every now and then by life’s tragedies and crises and disappointments is “normal” en “healthy”.

And this might very well be the case – each of you must decide for yourselves how you will deal with the periods of sadness that wash over you during your lifetime.

And while I am NOT here to tell any of you how to do so – while I am NOT here to claim to know anything objective about the way you encounter sadness, I AM here to offer an alternative view. I AM here to make the somewhat bold claim that most of the sadness that most of us experience is completely unnecessary.

In fact, I will offer the proposition that sadness for most people is far more than an occasional emotional experience.

I would offer that sadness is an actual addiction.

Indeed, if we have the humility to take a calm look around us, it becomes apparent that it is not enough for many of us to merely feel sad on occasion; that in actuality we seem to have created an entire culture that revolves around sadness; that relies upon more than a few subtle-yet-potent forms of repetitive mourning.

For starters, we do almost anything to feel “happy” – a completely misunderstood emotion that we have somehow come to confuse with fleeting excitement, hollow pleasure and superficial material accumulation. In fact, I would submit that most of the addictive behaviors mentioned in this series of articles are at least partially the result of us striving to obscure our gravest addiction of all – our addiction to sadness.

When we are bored or even mildly amused with life – when things are going “well” (or at worst neutrally), we humans constantly search for the next “kick”; that next spike in interest; that next thrill – the newest controversy, the freshest fad, the latest media distraction … anything that will keep us from feeling “down” or “low”; anything that will keep us as far as possible from the constant threat of sadness.

And yet, oddly enough, in those times when we are sad, it is not enough for us to simply deal honestly with that emotion and then “get on with life”. Instead, we call our friends and tell them all about our newest crisis; indirectly encouraging them to actually prolong our sadness with their well-intended expressions of sympathy, pity, worry and commiseration.

And then when things are going well once again – when we actually feel happy, what do we often do? We purposefully drift from our joy in order to “take another walk on the dark side” … we begin to wonder when our “good times” will pass, we return to worrying about our future, we choose to turn towards the television to watch our favorite drama, or soak up a tragedy in the theater, or read a favorite author’s latest pulp-saga of turmoil & despair.

How ironic that we try so hard to feel more alive by indirectly immersing ourselves in others’ daily downfalls;

… that we try so hard to feel better by focusing on others who are feeling worse;

… that we try so hard to be happier by choosing to vicariously experience another person’s sadness.

And why is this so? Why is that so many of us have abandoned real Joy in favor of pursuing brittle “happiness”? Why is it that so many of us have deserted deep-seated inner Peace in favor of returning again & again to the gloominess that is mourning the future with our worry, mourning the present with our disappointment, and mourning the past with our regret?

Well, science might just have an explanation.

It has been estimated that the average human being entertains 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts every day – 95% of which are the same or very similar to thoughts he or she entertained the day before.

Even more poignantly, it has also been estimated that around 80% of our habitual thoughts are negative in nature, with Dr. Daniel Amen, a renowned psychiatrist and brain imaging specialist, calling them “automatic negative thoughts” – or “ANTs”.

Essentially, it looks as though we as a species are conditioned to constantly identify the things in our surroundings that are “broken” or “bad” or “dangerous”, so that we can then prosper by fixing, bettering or avoiding those things.

On its face, this strategy that makes total sense, and yet one of the side effects of this “negativity bias” is sadness.

The National Institute of Health recently performed a study that measured the blood flow in the brain, and determined – unsurprisingly – that these negative thoughts (35,000+ of them each day) stimulate the areas of the brain responsible for producing feelings of anxiety and depression.

In addition, it is no accident that we experience our sadness addictively … for our sadness is actually physiologically addictive.

Indeed, every wave of sadness we choose to experience releases a potent cocktail of dopamine and norepinephrine into our bloodstream – highly addictive substances that bring with them feelings of exhilaration and increased bursts of energy (along with waves of anxiety & fear). These two neurotransmitters also serve to radically lower the levels of seratonin in the blood, which can lead to an almost irresistible fixation on the source of our sadness.

And our sadness is psychologically addictive as well. We humans are “herd animals”, beings who gain a great measure of calm and comfort from being surrounded by others who accept and embrace us. As such, when any of our relationships are lost or weakened for any reason (death, departure or dissolution), we experience a deep sadness – a wave of unpleasantness that encourages us not only to bond more strongly with others, but also reminds us to maintain those ties at all cost. As such, sadness plays a role in keeping our “herd” together, and thereby in keeping us feeling “safe” and “prosperous”.

“But I don’t have a problem with my sadness”, you might respond.

And to this claim, I will humbly acquiesce.

Chances are, you probably don’t regularly deal with extreme lows in your life. While most folks do engage such “demons” at least once at some point in their lives, I will joyfully admit that most people do not experience acute sadness most of the time.

AND YET this article is not addressing only our extreme moments of sadness – the chronic depressions, the manic melodramas, the bouts of hysterical sobbing, but is rather focusing on illuminating the many other ways that sadness has very quietly infiltrated our seemingly “normal” existence.

RECOGNIZING our ADDICTION to SADNESS

While crying is one clear indicator of feeling sad, and while “feeling down” is yet another, there are many far more subtle ways that sadness steadily & silently dismantles our sense of calm and contentment. And we cannot hope to cleanse our lives of this melancholy – and thereby return to a life of true Joy – unless we first have the courage to identify where such sadness has taken hold.

To engage this important first step, consider honestly answering the following questions:

Do you believe that it honors the dead to mourn their passing?

Do you think that grieving a loss is a healthy thing to do?

Do you see no third alternative to either expressing your sadness or “holding it in”?

Do you enjoy watching war movies or reading war stories?

Do you enjoy watching TV-dramas or seeing dramatic movies?

Do you use the words “terrible”, “awful”, “horrible” or “bad”?

Do you use the phrases “what a shame” or “what a pity” or “that’s too bad”?

Do you enjoy “dark humor”?

Are you dissatisfied with the direction your life has taken?

Off the top of your head, can you list the three saddest moments of your life?

Do you cry more than once a month?

Do you withdraw from others (by either not going out in public, or by hiding behind alcohol when you do go out)?

Do you regularly read the daily news or watch the nightly news?

Do you ever feel tired “for no reason”?

Do you have difficulty making decisions?

Do you wish you were happier?

Do you read “self-help books”?

Do you go to church to be comforted?

Do you experience insomnia or have restless sleep?

Do you experience unexplained aches & pains or illnesses?

Do you experience stomach pain &/or digestive troubles?

Do you drink coffee as a regular “pick me up” or alcohol as a regular way to “unwind”?

Do you find yourself regularly fantasizing or daydreaming?

Do you sometimes joke about being “ADD” or “ADHD” or “OCD” or “Bipolar”?

Do you eat sweets more than three times a week?

Do you experience guilt, shame or embarrassment more than once a month?

Are you ever “really, really tired”?

Are you hyper-focused on your physical health &/or your physical appearance?

Do you engage in adrenaline-inducing hobbies, “dangerous” activities &/or reckless behaviors?

Do you have difficulty concentrating on the “task at hand”?

Do you have a dampened empathy for others’ pains & problems?

Do you sometimes feel simply “empty”?

Please avoid getting down on yourself if you answered a few of these questions affirmatively. After all, it’s tough enough dealing with the sadness in our lives without making ourselves feel sad about feeling sad!

Just remember that these queries do not identify your “areas of weakness” – nor do they identify your “faults”. You are not in any way “inferior” or “less than” for succumbing to these subtle manifestations of melancholy … You are simply a human being responding quite reasonably to eons of fear-based programming.

That having been said, sadness is a rather devastating addiction – one that definitely needs facing — and cleansing — if we are to ever live a life of deep-seated Meaning & Contentment.

The CONSEQUENCES of our SADNESS ADDICTION

I think most of the consequences of feeling sad are common knowledge to most of you, so I won’t go into detail about the increased risk of illness and injury and irritability that melancholy always brings.

I will, however, remind you all of one critically important – and often overlooked – consequence of allowing sadness to creep into your life:

As long as you choose to be sad,

…. you will never choose to be Happy.

“You can’t keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.” ~ Sharon Creech

“Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

Filed under: Licking the Razor's Edge (freedom from hidden addictions) by Scaughdt