RELEASING THE SHAME OF SADNESS

The phone is ringing and it’s your best friend, but you don’t answer it. It’s a gorgeous morning, and you are wide awake, but instead of getting up to go to yoga, followed by breakfast with the girls, you lay in bed like a half eaten carcass, praying that the sheets you’ve cleverly managed to cocoon yourself in, will somehow magically disappear all of your problems. To say that you are not feeling so well, would be a ridiculous understatement. The truth is, you’re totally bummed out! You can’t snap yourself out of it and you are now doing the only thing you know how to do when you’re sad – locking yourself in the dungeon.

I have yet to (personally) meet a human being who can honestly tell me they have never experienced being sad and yet (with the exception of being at a funeral), most people are still very uncomfortable expressing sadness or having others see them when they are sad. Why?

We don’t want others to know or see when we are sad because:

1. We fear that we will be perceived as “negative” or being someone who spreads “negativity”.
2. We fear that we will be perceived as “weak” or less appealing to others.

So the question is, who said that being sad means that you are being negative or spreading negativity? And who said that being sad when others can see you means that you are not as strong as someone else or less attractive?

Do you really want to know the answer to this question?! The answer may shock you, but it really is quite simple. The answer is… We did. Yes my beauties, we did.  You see, sadness in and of itself is not bad or negative. But we, have somehow collapsed being sad, with being negative. Said another way, we feel feelings of sadness, and then we say to ourselves (or allow others to tell us) that it is bad or negative to feel that way.

This is the old, traditional, lock yourself in the dungeon way of viewing and dealing with sadness. But what if there was a way to be one with, harness and generate what I like to call soular power with raw unfiltered sadness? What if there was a new, cutting edge, soul-rich, performance enhancing approach to experiencing sadness? Well I’m here to tell you that there is.

Here is how I see it. Sadness is neither good nor bad. Sadness is sadness. Taking it a step further, myself and the women I work with, use sadness as a tool and an opportunity for us to tell the truth, free ourselves from the unrealistic prisons of perfection and be completely vulnerable. And we stand on the edge of reason, where there is nothing wrong or negative about longing for someone, some dream, some way it used to be or how you wish things could be. We are human, and the moment we allow ourselves to be human, we immediately have the privilege of experiencing life at the deepest level of being human.

Now just to be clear my intention in writing this piece was not to convince you that the soul-rich way of experiencing  sadness is better than the dungeon way of experiencing sadness. If I fulfill on my intention, by the time you finish reading this you will feel free to express sadness, without thinking that you are negative or weak.  And you will feel free to choose (if you wish) to express sadness in more ways than one.

In working with hundreds of people over the years, what I now know is:

1. How people perceive you when they see you sad, has very little to do with the fact that you are sad, but how you feel about yourself, see yourself and interact with others when you are sad.
2. When people are feeling sad, they wish that they did not have to pretend not to be.

If you are sad about something, you don’t have to hide. Try something different. Try telling the truth. Answer that phone call and share. Text a friend and share. Write a blog about it and share it. 9 times out of 10 not only will you will feel better, but others around you will thank you. You are not alone. None of us are alone. Let’s all stop pretending that we are.

Love Renee

“When you are weak and weary from the pain, when you feel you cannot carry it anymore, rest your head upon my shoulder, lay your hand upon my heart. I will help you carry it. I am always by your side. This is what it is to be a friend. This is the story of our lives. You are not alone.” – Renee Mullings-Lewis