Happiness and the right to be sad

“It's okay, don't be sad, come on, wipe your tears and smile... It seems that this way the problem ceases to exist, at least for others.

Our western culture insists that well-being or happiness is the absence of discomfort, frustration, sadness.. Therefore, these types of emotions are not given rise to when associated with personal failure, and therefore they tend to be hidden.

• Related article: "10 daily habits that improve your emotional balance"

Happiness is not the denial of sadness

It is common to hear: but if you "have everything", why are you sad? It is true that if we do not cover our basic needs, it is difficult to build rewarding experiences, but what I usually find is that Well-being for most people is associated with having rather than being; And it is natural because we have learned it since childhood: such a person is happy, even though he does not have much money; or such a person is unhappy even though he has a lot of money, as if one aspect were conditional on the other.

What is it like to have it all?

This is when the premise that if I have a good economy and health "I should be happy" is blurred., because paradoxically many people, in such favorable circumstances, refer to a feeling of "emptiness", whose meaning is the "absence of" and that is when the question arises: Absence of what? The answers are usually linked to those aspects to which we minimize importance: absence of relationships significant, absence of self-love, absence of a goal or a meaning that is not linked to having something material.

Having it all, then, could be directed towards those aspects that "fill or give fullness" which They have more to do with the relationship we establish with ourselves in relation to the interpretation of the world and of others.

Listen in the void

Many people who come to the consultation report that they do not feel heard, that as soon as they try to talk about their pain their speech is interrupted with advice so that they are not sad, or with phrases like "let's not talk about sad things", which would not be bad if it were said after having given rise to the expression of sadness freely and widely, but whoever is often interrupted suffers. And that's when the problem arises: condemns himself to sadness and it continues unexpressed with all its emotional intensity within the person.

Sometimes there is relief only in sharing the sadness, even if the listener does not give the great advice or the solution, because when speak it and feel heard, the psyche of the person organizes the cognitive content and can have an impact on better management emotional.

But, on the other hand, there is listening to ourselves in silence, without fighting, without condemning us with thoughts of the type "again, me feeling bad"... rather listening to what the symptom of sadness or "emptiness" wants to tell us. When it appears, it usually has a function, it tells us about something that we could use to observe, change or strengthen.

It can be related to our habits, to our relationships with others or with ourselves, with forgiveness, with the absence of meaning. It is difficult to listen to it because it is not pleasant, but if it were, it would not lead us to ask ourselves about what to change, just as if we did not feel pain in our hands over the fire, many of us would have them roasted and useless.

That is why it is important to give rise to sadness naturally and without condemnation. Of course, it is worth clarifying that the depression, which requires another type of analysis that I will surely write on another occasion.

What is happiness then?

I think this concept is very diverse and has to do with individual motivations and characteristics, but if there is a common denominator that I could observe, it is that it is related to the way we manage or self-regulate our emotions.

So is happiness the absence of sadness? Not necessarily, it has more to do with the intensity of sadness and the place we give to it. Sadness needs to be expressed and pain also, because they fulfill a liberating function, transformative, and even creative; sometimes discomfort leads us to make decisions that generate a change that makes us feel good, although sometimes the path is not very comfortable.

If happiness were the absence of negative or sad feelings, it would deny our human nature, and the key is the direction we give to those negative feelings: the we accept, we express them, we understand what they mean to us and we act, or on the contrary we hide them, we deny them, we condemn them and we let them appear in a burst by not give place to them... those outbursts, when they carry a very high burden from having denied them for a long time, become important problems related to the state of cheer up.

Well-being or happiness, then, is based on emotional management that has little to do with hiding or denying negative affect, or with a constant state of joy. Rather, it is about expressing, giving place and understanding the message that underlies the emotions without judgment, without guilt but with actions.