A person is in a state of sadness: how to determine?
Determining whether a person is in a state of sadness is not difficult. He becomes detached, withdrawn, withdraws into himself and his thoughts, and there is sadness in his eyes. At such moments it is difficult for him to be active, and he is not in the mood to do anything. There is no desire to communicate with people. I want silence and solitude. At such moments, life seems to slow down.
Often those around us try to help their neighbor, to get him out of the vicious circle of sadness. Is it necessary? Most often, a person just needs to get over the illness, allow himself to be alone, if he wants, to cry and throw out his feelings. If he does not want to share his experiences, his condition, it is better not to impose himself, but to provide support when he himself asks for it.
Word in the dictionary
The dictionary gives two meanings for the word “grief.”
The first of them denotes the emotional state of a person and is interpreted as deep, very strong sadness. (The grief of a woman who lost her beloved husband knew no bounds.)
The second meaning of “grief” speaks about the source of the specified emotional state, that is, about the event that resulted in it. (“Woe are you my onion,” said the mother to her overly naughty son).
Synonyms for the word are: misfortune, grief, sadness. They help us better understand what grief means. It came to Slavic languages from Proto-Slavic. So, for example, in Serbo-Croatian it means epilepsy, in Slovenian it means grief, crying. In ancient Indian there is a similar word meaning heat, flame, torment, grief, sadness.
Let's take a closer look at the first value.
Causes of the condition
A person may be sad for certain reasons: parting with a loved one, unfulfilled plans and dreams, a series of minor failures. Many things can unsettle your usual life. But all this is a consequence of the fact that life is not turning out the way we would like. These are symptoms that something needs to change. The one who has lost hope is very overcome by sadness. In order to regain faith in the future, sometimes you need to overcome several difficulties, in particular those related to internal changes. Changes in yourself and in life are very rarely easy and natural.
Sadness is a serious stage in life, overcoming which is considered a huge achievement. A serious reason for the occurrence of such a condition can be the passing of a loved one. In such a situation, only time can help. There is no point in trying to return a bereaved person to everyday life. Over time, the pain will subside, and he will plunge into the rhythm of normal life.
Annoyance is...
For example, a child decided to please his parents: he washed the dishes or tried to clean the apartment, but in the end his mother yelled at him because she was in a bad mood, and the baby did not do the job the way she wanted it. Of course, the child experiences a feeling of resentment or annoyance. Or, for example, a schoolboy spent the whole evening preparing for a lesson, but when he had to answer the next day, he got confused, forgot the material he had learned and received a “C”. Annoyance... Adults also experience this feeling when they make every possible effort to achieve something important, but in the end nothing works out. Didn’t get into university, didn’t get hired for a prestigious position... Feelings of frustration can accumulate over a long time and eventually develop into various complexes and disappointment in life in general.
The sadness has passed - the consequences remain
What happens inside our body when we are in a state of sadness? Depending on the temperament and the cause of sadness, a person can either experience it more or less calmly or fall into hysterics or stupor. But in any case, most often in this condition, blood pressure increases and the heart rate increases, which can lead to a heart attack. After losing a loved one, your risk of having a heart attack is 21% higher than normal. The adrenal glands produce more cortisol (the stress hormone), which can lead to insomnia and stomach problems. The immune system is greatly weakened and sensitivity to cold increases. The brain begins to work harder, because during sadness a person thinks a lot, analyzes, remembers, suffers and looks for reasons.
When sadness passes, especially if it was not just the autumn blues, but something serious, the consequences can manifest themselves in the body for a long time. Heart and stomach problems may occur.
What's the point?
A rare problem can be solved logically, but a relationship problem can never be solved. Most of our problems are somehow related to relationships, and therefore to the emotions that we experience in them. Therefore, the path to overcoming difficulties lies through understanding emotions. Emotions are the key to any problem.
Instead of trying to solve a difficult situation with logic (which men especially like to do), you need to ask yourself a simple question: “How am I feeling right now?” If it turns out to be a compensatory emotion - resentment or irritation, you need to try to find one of the suppressed basic emotions underneath it. Knowing which options are hidden under one or another compensatory emotion, all that remains is to listen to the sensations in the body, and then relax the tense muscles - and a feeling of true emotion will appear.
The next step is its awareness. It’s not enough to just notice what I feel, for example, anger. I need to understand in relation to whom and in connection with what I feel it. Each of our emotions always has a specific addressee and reason. Incredible, but true: as soon as we realize what exactly we feel, towards whom and for what reason, it immediately becomes clear how to solve the problem.
What to do if you are depressed?
The state of sadness and sadness can develop into depression if a person does not make any attempts to cope with his emotions. Only a qualified specialist can determine whether it is sadness or depression. But there are some symptoms that suggest that a person has become depressed:
- apathy, lack of interest in life and any activity;
- feeling of emptiness;
- excessive appetite or lack thereof;
- feeling of worthlessness;
- insomnia or drowsiness and hypersomnia – increased number of hours spent sleeping;
- thoughts of suicide;
- inability to concentrate;
- avoiding problem solving;
- a persistent feeling of fatigue even after sleep and rest;
- lack of motivation to do something.
If a person has at least five of the listed signs, he needs to see a psychotherapist.
How to get rid of it and is it necessary to get rid of it?
Whether you should try to pull yourself out of the bonds of sadness or leave everything as it is so that it goes away on its own depends on what kind of sadness has overtaken you and the seriousness of its causes. If this is the experience of losing a loved one, then only time can return a person to normal life. You can offer your help, but do not impose. A person must survive this and understand that life goes on, independently.
If a trouble in life occurs that is not related to the death of loved ones (problems at work, disruption of plans, deception and betrayal), then you can withdraw into yourself for a while. A writing technique can help: take paper and write down all the thoughts that are spinning in your head. You need to not keep your emotions inside, but give them a way out.
Well, if this is the influence of the weather, you can wrap yourself in a blanket for a while, brew delicious tea or cocoa and watch the rain dripping outside the window, or read an interesting book or watch a movie.
Sadness, despondency and sadness
Sadness
is a negatively colored emotion.
Occurs when a person is significantly dissatisfied with any aspect of his life. The concept of sadness is considered the opposite of joy and is close in meaning to such as sadness, melancholy, despondency, grief, melancholy. Sometimes these words are considered synonyms. In a clinical state, sadness turns into depressive states of the body. This can lead to constant bouts of melancholy, bad mood, and inability to do normal daily activities. Sadness is characterized by a weak, shallow and short-term experience. Unlike similar emotions, sadness is the least unpleasant experience. In some cases it can be pleasant (the so-called “light sadness”). Sadness is not necessarily the result of a strong shock or psychological trauma; it is often an ordinary, non-clinical phenomenon. Unlike stronger emotions, sadness does not disrupt a person’s normal performance, it only reduces his vivacity. Melancholy
Melancholy is the most powerful, intense and lasting feeling.
It is characterized by the greatest unpleasantness of the experience. Dejection
Dejection (Latin acedia), unlike sadness and melancholy, obviously does not have motivational power. If sadness and melancholy can be accompanied by a desire to change the situation for the better, then with despondency there is no such desire. Dejection is characterized by the greatest motor retardation and decreased performance. Dejection, unlike melancholy and sadness, is to some extent determined by a person’s predisposition to a bad mood. It can indicate long-term chronic bad mood. Wikipedia writes: “Despondency (Latin acedia) is a negatively colored mood, a depressed state of mind, accompanied by a general loss of strength. Severe sadness is characteristic of depression and can precede suicide.”
Sadness
Sadness is more vague in this aspect.
She occupies an intermediate position between melancholy, despondency and sadness, leaning closer to one or the other. Grief
Grief usually occurs as a result of the loss or loss of a loved one. Any loss, even the loss of something valuable, causes difficult feelings, but the greatest pain is associated with the death of a loved one and the loss of physical or mental capabilities - disability (Wikipedia).
Osho (Ocho) about sadness.
Depression is suppressed anger. The word depression is a telling word. Press means to press. When you suppress anger too often, it turns into sadness. Sadness is the negative aspect of anger. Sadness is more common in women. If you stop suppressing it, it will turn into anger. We were angry about something, perhaps even in childhood, but we didn’t express it in any way; hence the depression. Depression is not a problem. The real, true problem is anger. By continuing to condemn depression, we are fighting a shadow. Where does depression come from? We contain anger - towards our mother, our father, towards ourselves, towards the world around us. Since it is believed that anger is bad, from childhood we try to smile. We were taught this well. We put on a smile, we suppress our anger. Now we can't get rid of it - that's what depression is.
Give your anger an outlet. Once anger comes to the surface, depression will disappear. Have you ever noticed how good it sometimes feels after an angry outburst? Do anger meditation every day...20 minutes is enough. On the third day, you will begin to perform this exercise with anticipation. This will bring you great relief...you will see your depression disappear. You will truly smile for the first time. When you were depressed you couldn't smile, you pretended. Since a person cannot help but smile, he is forced to pretend - but this hurts very much. It doesn't make you happy; but it reminds you how unhappy you are. If you realize this, good. Everything that causes us pain brings benefit. People are so sick that even what benefits them hurts them. But it's good. A.S. Pushkin wrote: * * * “On the hills of Georgia lies the darkness of the night; Aragva makes noise in front of me. I feel sad and light; my sadness is light; My sadness is full of you, you, you alone... Nothing torments or disturbs my despondency, And my heart burns and loves again - because it cannot help but love.”
E.P. Ilyin in his book “Emotions and Feelings” writes: “Sadness
Sadness, according to S.I. Ozhegov’s Dictionary of the Russian Language, is a state of mental bitterness. It is well described by S. Yesenin:
It’s sad... Mental anguish is tormenting and tearing my heart, the boring sounds of time don’t even allow me to breathe.
You lie down, but the bitter thought still doesn’t go crazy... Your head is spinning from the noise. How can I be... and myself
My soul is languishing. There is no consolation in anyone. You walk barely breathing. It's dark and wild all around.
Share, why are you given! There is nowhere to lay your head, Life is both bitter and poor, It’s hard to live without happiness.
Sadness can be caused by separation, psychological isolation (the so-called feeling of loneliness) and failure to achieve a goal, disappointment, i.e., unfulfilled hope. The latter means nothing more than the loss of a dream. Thus, the main and universal cause of sadness is the loss of something significant for a person: direct psychological contact with a loved one or with other people (feeling of loneliness), loss of perspective in achieving the desired goal.
The role of sadness in a person’s spiritual life, in the formation of stable connections with people we value, is obvious (for example, the manifestation of sadness in the form of grief over the death of a loved one; see paragraph 7.8). True, although sadness is classified as a negative emotion, it can also accompany positive experiences and feelings of a person. No wonder one song says that “love is never without sadness,” because separation from a loved one leads to sadness. Quiet sadness can be pleasant to a person.
How about (2000, p. 201). The signaling role of the emotion of sadness is also important: by expressing sadness, a person shows other people that he feels bad, he needs help and support. Indeed, the expression of sadness evokes sympathy from others, even if this sadness is the sadness of a criminal (Savitsky, Sim, 1974).
With sadness, changes occur that are the opposite of those observed with joy: inhibition of motor skills, narrowing of blood vessels. This causes a feeling of cold and chills. The narrowing of the small vessels of the lungs leads to the outflow of blood from them, as a result, the supply of oxygen to the body deteriorates and the person begins to feel a lack of air, tightness and heaviness in the chest. Trying to alleviate this condition, he begins to take long and deep breaths. Appearance also reveals a sad person. His movements are slow, his arms and head are lowered; the voice is weak, and the speech is slow and drawn out. Sadness may be accompanied by crying or sobbing.
In a saddened person, the inner ends of the eyebrows are raised and brought together to the bridge of the nose, the eyes are slightly narrowed, and the corners of the mouth are lowered. It is characteristic that clearly facial expressions of sadness can be expressed only for a few seconds, but its experience can last a very long time. True, at the same time, some facial signs still remain: the face looks faded, lacking muscle tone, the eyes seem dull.
Characteristic of the experience of sadness is a feeling of heaviness throughout the body. Perceiving the world around him, a person sees only darkness and emptiness around him, life seems gray and dull to him. When there is intense sadness, a person experiences pain in the chest.
Sadness slows down not only a person’s physical, but also mental activity. The emotion of sadness underlies a mental disorder such as depression.
According to S.I. Ozhegov, hopeless sadness is despondency, and slight sadness is sadness. Dejection
This emotional state is understood by S.I. Ozhegov (1985) in two ways: as oppressive boredom and as hopeless sadness. It seems to me that this understanding of despondency is not entirely accurate from a psychological point of view. The understanding of despondency as boredom is rather everyday, which is illustrated, for example, by the stable phrase “dull landscape”, i.e. monotonous, boring. Let us remember A.S. Pushkin, who wrote about autumn: “A sad time! The charm of the eyes! Another thing is despondency as a person’s emotional state. Of course, to some extent, it may also contain boredom as a loss of interest in what is happening, but the main cognitive component of this emotion seems to be an assessment of the hopelessness of the situation associated with satisfying a need, desire, and achieving what is planned and desired. Despondency grips fans after their favorite team loses a match that was important for winning a prize. An applicant who received a low grade on the first entrance exam to the institute feels despondent, leaving him with little chance of overall success. Thus, despondency is associated with an unfavorable prognosis for the outcome of a process that has not yet ended, when there are still some chances of success and achievement of the goal. When a person is overcome by a feeling of hopelessness or the outcome becomes completely clear, other emotions arise - disappointment, despair, sadness, grief" (1, pp. 183-186). Literature: 1. Ilyin E.P. Emotions and feelings, St. Petersburg, Peter, 2008. 2. Osho. About feelings M.: LLC Sofia, 2010.
Sadness
Author N.I. Kozlov Sadness has many faces. This is regret, grief, melancholy, melancholy, despondency, pain, grief, grief, melancholy... - this is how one of the common negative basic emotions manifests itself, arising from a lack of satisfaction or loss of something. Whatever sadness is, it is always the opposite of joy. What is sadness at the physiological level of the brain? Subjectively, this is experienced as a decrease in mood, but in reality it is not the absence of emotion, it is not suppression or inhibition of neuropsychic processes. The inferior medial prefrontal cortex, which serves emotional intelligence, demonstrates persistent arousal in people experiencing sadness or depression. That is, from the point of view of neurons, from the point of view of the material substrate of the psyche, what we perceive as depression and lack of mood is in fact a very bright, strong, stable emotion, which also tends to go into a self-sustaining cycle. What is the meaning and inner benefit of sadness? Classic psychoanalysis on sadness creates very complex semantic constructions: “What is the work done by sadness? I believe that it is not a stretch to put it this way: the examination of reality has shown that the beloved object no longer exists, and reality dictates the demand to take away all the libido associated with this object. Quite understandable resistance is rising against this...” “Reality dictates”? - or does a person interpret reality in a certain way? “Resistance rises” - rises on its own? - or does a person begin to resist what does not suit him? — there are many questions about the concept of sadness outlined by Freud. If this is not physiology, but mental life, then in the free space of mental life nothing happens: everything is done by someone, for some reason or for some reason... In the synton approach, sadness is understood differently, namely as an author’s action, like a small murder of one's own vitality, a small mental self-mutilation. A child who did not like what his parents told him may well lower his shoulders unhappily, make an unhappy face with an expression of suffering and walk into the distance, barely dragging his feet and showing with his whole being how disgusting parents destroyed his joy and deprived him of his desire in this world to rejoice and live in general... This is a performance that is quite common and, as a rule, effective. Over time, it just becomes a bad habit of internal negativity. Sadness is an expression of ingratitude towards life. Instead of thanking life for what it has given you, the sad person reproaches life for what it gave you late or for a short time. Listen to the song of the group “Leisya, song!”: “Where have you been?” The man has finally found his love. His joy is huge, colossal! Which he expresses in melancholy - but why does he have this joy only today, and not since yesterday? Anyone who knows how and loves to be happy will find happiness in everything. For example, what should you do if the Lake of Sorrow is in front of you, and it pulls you? The normal majority dives into it and drowns. The sensible ones still remain on the shore and observe the Lake as just another natural object. And the most cheerful ones boldly dive into it - and splash in the sweet Sadness, enjoying its transparency. And when bathing time ends, he and Sadness say goodbye gratefully and calmly move on. The tendency towards sadness is fostered by works of art of the romantic wing, where sadness shows the sublimity of nature. For the Romantic, as an ethic type, the alternation of unfounded enthusiasm and unjustified sadness is very characteristic. With age, the amount of enthusiasm decreases, sadness becomes the predominant emotional background. In small doses, sadness beautifies life, like seasoning makes food tastier. If sadness becomes the main background of life, such a life becomes inedible, like a dish consisting of only seasoning. Active people are not prone to sadness, and if they don’t like something, they either leave the place that doesn’t suit them or look for an opportunity to change something there.
Psychological material Sadness according to Freud Comparison of melancholy and sadness
justified by the general picture of both conditions. The reasons for both diseases also coincide, boiling down to the influence of living conditions in those cases where these reasons can be established. Sadness is always a reaction to the loss of a loved one or an abstract concept that has replaced him, such as the fatherland, freedom, ideal, etc. Under the same influence, in some people, instead of sadness, melancholy sets in, which is why we suspect them of a morbid predisposition. It is also very remarkable that it never occurs to us to consider sadness as a painful condition and leave it to the doctor for treatment, although it entails serious deviations from normal behavior in life. We hope that after some time it will be overcome, and we consider intervention inappropriate and even harmful. Mentally, melancholia is characterized by deep, painful dejection, loss of interest in the outside world, loss of the ability to love, delay in all activities and a decrease in well-being, expressed in reproaches and insults directed at oneself and growing to delirium of expectation of punishment. This picture becomes clear to us if we take into account that sadness also has the same signs, with the exception of only one sign: with it there is no disturbance in well-being. In all other respects the picture is the same. Severe sadness - a reaction to the loss of a loved one - is characterized by the same suffering mood, loss of interest in the outside world, since it does not resemble the deceased, loss of the ability to choose some new object of love, which would mean replacing the one being mourned, refusal of all activities, not related to the memory of the deceased. We easily understand that this delay and limitation of the “I” is an expression of exclusive immersion in sadness, in which no interests and no intentions remain for anything else. As a matter of fact, such behavior does not seem pathological to us only because we can explain it well. We also accept the comparison that calls the mood of sadness suffering. The correctness of this will become clear to us if we are able to economically characterize this suffering. What is the work done by sadness? I believe that it is not a stretch to put it this way: the examination of reality has shown that the beloved object no longer exists, and reality dictates the demand to take away all the libido associated with this object. A completely understandable resistance arises against this; in general, one must take into account that a person does not easily leave libidinal positions even when a replacement is expected. This resistance can be so strong that a withdrawal from reality occurs and the object is retained through a hallucinatory psychosis that embodies desire... Under normal conditions, respect for reality wins, but its demand cannot be immediately fulfilled. It is carried out partially, with a great waste of time and energy, and before that the lost object continues to exist mentally. Each of the memories and expectations in which the libido was associated with the object is suspended, acquires increased active force, and libido is liberated on it. It is very difficult to point out and justify economically why this compromise work of demanding reality, carried out on all these individual memories and expectations, is accompanied by such exceptional mental pain. It’s remarkable that this pain seems understandable to us. In fact, at the end of this work of sorrow, the “I” becomes free again and freed from delays.
What are the next steps?
Sadness is not a reason to give up on yourself. From time to time, each of us has troubles: we break up with people, something goes wrong, the weather is not pleasant. Although you can give yourself some time for sadness, you need to stop in time, analyze the reasons, learn a lesson for yourself and move on, along the path to a happy life. No one but ourselves is responsible for our happiness. Therefore, the time will come when you need to pull yourself together, and if necessary, consult a psychotherapist.
Sadness teaches us that our life is a series of pleasant and not so pleasant events, that we need to overcome difficulties in order to become stronger for ourselves and our loved ones, so that at any moment we can provide them with the necessary support.
