What Is Sadness?
Whether it’s loneliness, disappointment over a loss, or existential despair, sadness has many faces. In general, we’re talking about a loss of joy, often coupled with a loss of energy and hope. Of course, that loss of energy has a flip side; sadness can have a relaxing or rejuvenating effect, and staying mindful of things we’ve lost can also generate gratitude for the things we still have. As such, sadness may feel unpleasant, but it also has deep therapeutic value.

Words We May Use When We’re Really Feeling Sad
low, down, stressed, disappointed, discouraged, bad, hurt, upset, blue, bummed, whatever, unhappy, numb, detached, uninterested, bored, apathetic, tired, sleepy

What Are Some Healthy and Unhealthy Ways People Show Sadness?
The movie Inside Out offered a great comedic portrayal of Sadness as lacking energy and motivation yet also serving as a powerful empath. The movie carries a potent message that, as much as we may try to avoid it, some situations desperately need sadness if we’re to have any sense of catharsis, closure, or growth. Getting to know our own sadness can be a huge asset when trying to help other people navigate their pain. I love this conceit of Inside Out that, while sadness gets a bad rap, we should embrace it and perhaps lean into it more.

21st Century America seems particularly sadness-averse, which is troubling given the amount of collective trauma we’ve faced from past and current violence, decades of war, a global pandemic, and so on. Acknowledging our sadness can help us process our experiences, while trying to numb sadness away can have a paradoxical effect of intensifying it. As we’ll see with all of these feelings, forcing them down usually just causes them to surface in other, more disruptive ways.

A Special Note on Depression which Turned into a Rant
I often hear “depressed” and “sad” used interchangeably, but the two are very different. In fact, I think it’s dangerous to conflate them. Clinical depression isn’t just an emotion; we’re talking about imbalances of chemicals in the brain (particularly serotonin) which often require medical intervention in the form of counseling, prescription drugs, and other therapies. Symptoms of depression may include not only prolonged sadness, but also persistent worry, restlessness, feelings of worthlessness, guilt, loss of joy and loss of interest in activities which once brought joy, withdrawal from loved ones, recklessness, fatigue, irritability, changes in appetite and sleep, difficulty concentrating, and (most famously and dangerously) thoughts of self-harm and/or suicide.

I’ve experienced depression off and on in my adult life, and it’s very different from the emotion of sadness. In my own experience, depression has been more of a numbing of my feelings than a focus on one particular feeling, and finding and embracing my repressed sadness or anger or fear has been crucial when navigating depression. “But Tom, you’re so upbeat and productive at work.” Yeah, again, depression isn’t sadness. My brain chemistry can be completely out of whack, and I can still put on a smile and pretend I’m functioning at full capacity. Authentic sadness involves inward and outward expression, and it can nourish us while depression only depletes us further. So if you read that symptom list in the previous paragraph and it felt more like a checklist, talk to your doctor and start a conversation with a few trusted friends or family members. Depression is a medical condition, and medical conditions require medical interventions.

Okay, I’m venting at this point, but bear with me because this is important. I wish we had better Christian literature out there about depression. I’ve cringed through books and blogs and sermons which encouraged trying to pray depression away. Worse still, I’ve encountered plenty of Christian thinkers who saw depression as some sort of spiritual weakness rather than a problem of brain chemistry. Listen, neglecting depression like this and trying to handle it with only spiritual resources usually makes things worse, not better. Prayer is an incredible tool, but God also created scientists and doctors and pharmacists to help us. Prayer and medication are NOT mutually exclusive. It is perfectly fine (even healthier in my opinion) to use both.
So there.

Next week, we’ll talk about sadness’s equal and opposite: joy.