Sadness feels like sinking. A lot of times the sadness starts in my stomach and feels like it’s dropping. I feel a desire to push sadness down or away because I often cry when I feel sad and at times when I feel sad I am around other people. Have you noticed how many people feel uncomfortable with crying? If a few tears slide down our cheeks we feel compelled to apologize or attempt to hide them. We can worry that we are burdening others simply by feeling something authentic.
The message of sadness is that we require an emotional release. Tears are the body’s way of releasing stressed or denser energy. As we cry, tears flood our eyes and cortisol levels decrease. We feel relief or a cleansing. Your body is working in the way it is supposed to when you feel overwhelmed or have experienced an emotional trigger. We may be releasing something recent or something that is coming up again from our past after an attempt on our part to push it away. I notice that a lot of emotions that were buried from childhood come back up for healing. Why does this happen? My guess is that we were not always allowed to feel or were not soothed when we felt sad or overwhelmed. It doesn’t take a terrible childhood for us to want to bury our feelings. All it takes is the perception that we were feeling something that was not acceptable to those around us in a moment.
The release of sadness requires comfort. We can comfort ourselves by engaging in self soothing. We can ask a trusted person for help. We can choose self soothing behaviors that helpful or unhelpful. In the past I would engage with eating sweet treats as a way to numb my feelings and stop feeling discomfort. Binge eating, reaching for substances, binging television shows, compulsive gaming, and spending hours on social media are similar types of self-soothing. These ways of self-soothing are effective in the immediate moment, but often results in the emotion coming back stronger the next time. If we engage in these unhelpful and immediate self-soothing techniques for the long term, we often build new avoidance behaviors and risk our health and relationships. These days, I am practicing self-soothing that allows me to feel my feelings without getting overwhelmed. Here are some ideas:
Positive Self Soothing for Sadness:
Change your environment. People struggle with leaving an environment as they believe they have to "push through" or do not have the time to take a few moments for themselves. Try going outside and focusing on nature for 5 minutes. Find a painting or a quiet little corner of your building to physically separate yourself for a few moments. Allow yourself to find something pleasant on which to focus.
Stretch your body to remove any excess or blocked emotional energy. Particularly if we have heard upsetting news or have felt a shock of some kind, touching our toes, a few trunk twists, full neck rotations to both the right and the left, or hip flexor bends can help shift anything that feels stuck.
Take a warm shower or bath. Soothe yourself with calming scents that you love like lavender, jasmine, vanilla, or ylang ylang. You can use candles, incense or essential oils to help you experience the pleasing nature of the scent. Allow yourself to visualize a healing light in the water that cleanses your sadness.
Engage with soothing images. What pictures help you to feel calm? Some people like to look at candles burning, others pictures of loved ones or favorite places. You could read and post inspirational quotes or affirmations where you can see them.
Soothing music. Listening to anything that relaxes you can help you shift out of a dense or a sad feeling. I listen to soothing music, energy healing music, forest sounds, ocean waves and sound bowls to help lift my energy after feeling low.
Self compassion. Speak to yourself with kindness. Listen to yourself as you process what it is that triggered your sadness. If you do not know what triggered your sadness, that’s okay, too. Often we don’t know exactly where the feeling came from but we can be on our own side about feeling it. We don’t need to know the origin of a feeling to release it. Other times allowing ourselves to feel a feeling and then tend to it will get us back to a place in which we can be curious again about where it came from.
An easy self compassion practice I use is to simply think about what I would say to my daughter if she was feeling sad and didn’t know why. You can substitute this technique with a partner, parent, sibling or friend. Pretending we are talking to some one we love dearly is the only inspiration we need. I practice saying things like, “I hear you. You feel sad. It’s okay to feel it and this feeling is temporary. I am here for you. What do you need right now?”
Sometimes a hand on my heart feels like a hug and I give myself that, too.
I hope this helps. Sending you comfort.

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