'Why am I sad if my life is going well?'

It is possible to be sad for no apparent reason; it is a more common feeling than we think and, therefore, we should not feel guilty about it. Having it all is not reason enough to be happy.

Sadness is a basic emotion that we can feel when some aspect of our environment or some internal state affects us, generating an unpleasant sensation in us. But this does not mean that it is not functional or we should avoid it, since it can help us to know what is happening to us and thus be able to work and face it. Allow yourself to be sad and don't feel bad about it.

In this article we will describe what is meant by sadness and what its functions can be, and why many people come to a situation where they wonder: "Why am I sad if my life is good?".

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What do we understand by sadness?

Society sets us goals or achievements that we must achieve in order to be happy, but... Is it really what we want? In the same way, we live a fast-paced life that hardly allows us to have time for ourselves and to value what we have. They teach us to always want more and never reach a level where we are emotionally satiated.

Sadness is one of the six basic emotions; This term refers to the fact that it is an emotion that has its own characteristics, different from the others and that everyone knows how to identify when they perceive the expression of sadness. Thus appears a state of apathy, lack of motivation; anhedonia, lack of pleasure sensation; decrease in hunger... which, as expected, generates an unpleasant sensation in individuals who suffer from it.

But contrary to what one might expect, we will not consider it a maladaptive emotion. All emotions, both those considered positive and negative, are functional, that is, they act as a signal of how our environment is and how we are internally. In other words, they help us to realize how we are, what positive or negative aspects surround us or how we feel inside.

A) Yes, it is very important not to confuse sadness with depression, since this confusion is very typical in the society in which we live, since it tends to be used interchangeably, as synonyms, one term or another, “I am depressed” and “I am sad”. These do not really refer to the same thing, since unlike sadness, which as we have seen is a basic emotion and can be functional, depression It is considered a disorder, and as such, sadness can present as a symptom, but it will also have to meet the criterion of non-functionality, of impact on the life of the subject.

So it is very important not to confuse the terms, sadness is a necessary emotion that will help us to know how we are feeling and to know what we like and what not, what makes us feel good and what makes us feel wrong... On the contrary, depression is not functional, it affects the well-being of the individual, thus being considered a pathology.

• You may be interested in: "The 6 differences between sadness and depression"

If I have it all... Because I am sad?

In this way, sadness it can act as a signal that something is wrong, but it can also appear without an apparent reason, without there being a visible or clear cause that generates it.

So the causes of being sad can be multiple and sometimes these are not so clear. For example, it may be that what causes us sadness are events that happened a long time ago and we have not overcome or healed well or events that did not affect us at the time but from which the discomfort has developed time after.

The appearance of sadness does not respond to a simple cause-effect mechanism, nor does it have a specific duration; this means that an unpleasant or negative event may happen for us and sadness does not show right afterBut after a while and in the same way, each person and situation is different; therefore, the duration of sadness can vary depending on the individual who suffers it or at the time of life that it occurs, it can vary.

In the same way, on many occasions we tend only to value what we have or how we find ourselves externally without taking into account how we are on the inside. That is to say, sadness can be caused by both external and internal events, so it can be the situation that we have everything, work, home, partner, friends... but we feel sad, since the problem may be that we are not well internally.

In this way, if we are good with ourselves we cannot be 100% although externally we do not lack anything.

Another point to assess is whether we really "have it all" is what makes us happy. Many times, what people consider to be having it all depends on a social construction and the culture to which they belong, that is, what is socially valued as an achievement and as an objective to be achieved.

Since we were little we grow up surrounded by beliefs that influence us, the world in which we live sets us goals that we must meet if we want to be happy, how it could be to find a partner with whom to have children and start a family, get a stable job, become independent and have a home of your own, among many others. But, what if really what they have told us brings happiness is not what makes us happy, and if I am a woman and I do not want to have children, and if I want to be single.

These are considerations that we must take into account, since we tend not to question things and accept them as they are told to us, and maybe even having everything that is supposed to make us happy we feel sad because it is not what we really want but what society has established or marked us.

Another factor that could be causing us sadness is the lack of enjoyment of the situation; we may have everything we really want and it would make us happy, but we do not spend time to value it and enjoy it. We live fast, with a rhythm of life that does not let us rest, society constantly requires us to be doing things to achieve our achievements, without in this way to be able to enjoy what we already have, we continually think about the future, we act to achieve something but we do not stop to live in the present, to be happy with what we already have we have.

Thus, it is not strange that we lose interest when we already achieve a goal, that we stop valuing what we have to focus all our forces on achieving what we do not have. As we have said, society requires us to achieve things, never being enough, causing what we have to lose value and we only want what we do not have.

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How to cope with the feeling of sadness

In order to handle and face sadness, it will be necessary for us to stop, to stop focusing on the outside and to focus on ourselves, on the inside, on what keeps us from being well or what we really want.

Human beings like or need to have the feeling that we control everything and that we can know the cause and reason for all things that happen. But there are events, facts, sensations that do not have such a clear explanation that it does not depend on us whether they occur or disappear. Factors that we cannot modify influence, such as genetics, for example, there are people who are more predisposed to having a type of sensation, since they present certain characteristics. In the same way, biological dysregulations can also occur in hormones, in neurotransmitters… That affect how we feel.

So, not everything depends on us and, therefore, we should not blame ourselves for it. We tend to blame the person himself when he is sad for no reason, causing him to enter a loop of blame and sadness, since the more we blame ourselves the sadder we will feel and as a consequence it will also make us continue to blame ourselves more for it.

Therefore, it can help to spend time with yourself: listen to you, get to know yourself, know what you really want and value what you have, live in the present and not be continually thinking about the future, about reaching new achievements.

In the same way, allow yourself to feel sad; it is a functional emotion that we should not avoid. Do not try to deny or feel bad or guilty about being sad, as this will only make the situation worse and make you worse, without allowing you to properly face and handle the situation. We have to learn to destigmatize sadness, it is not bad and it is impossible and dysfunctional to always be happy.

Finally, point out that we can always ask for professional help if we see that we cannot face the situation and we notice that it is over us. Concluding that it is time to go to psychotherapy is not a failure; the psychologist can give us more specific tools and strategies and take better control of our situation.