The Power of Feeling Sad

Posted on February 02, 2023 by Emily Wood, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Often when people travel, their trips are portrayed as wildly fun adventures, and a lot of them are. However, there can be moments, days, or even weeks when things seem to fall apart.

Why don’t we show the times that we fall apart? When things go terribly wrong? Why do we only show the good times? Are we afraid to show other emotions besides the happy, and positive ones?

I’ve observed that many people are afraid to be vulnerable, and specifically afraid of being sad. If sadness comes up, they push to get things back to happy state as fast as possible. In their attempts to comfort they make comments such as, “think of all the good things that are going on in your life,” “focus on the positive”, or “there’s others who have it worse.”

These comments are incredibly unhelpful, but why?

Can you imagine being sick to your stomach, and telling your body it doesn’t have permission to throw up, to clean out the thing that’s harming your body?

Not to get gross, but what are you going to do when it needs to come up and out? Are you going to keep it living in your mouth? Ew. It’s acidic, and toxic to your health.

It’s the same with your emotions.

Don’t swallow your emotions, feel them. When people make comments like the ones mentioned we hear what the overall message is, “don’t feel sad.” So we try not to feel sad, we push it down, we ignore it, or we cover it. We pretend it’s not there. and it continues to fester.

Because these comments come from people we love, we try to follow what they say. We want their love, and maybe deep down we believe that by following their advice we’ll earn their love. That’s not how love works, but that’s for another post.

Clearly, there’s some fear around feeling our feelings. Maybe we think the situation, and emotions won’t hit us as hard, or will go away if we don’t feel them. That’s simply not true.

What does happen is it builds a mountain of fear, anxiety, and depression, And it keeps growing until we decide we’re going to address it. Yes, maybe you can avoid it, maybe you can choose to live around it.

I see people who choose to live around their mountains instead of facing them. I see them choosing to stay home, and not venture outside. I see them changing their faces, and bodies to fit what the world wants them to look like. I see them throwing darts at others, and blaming them for their mountains instead of owning them.

I see people living in fear from one moment to another. One of the worst parts of this is that by avoiding the sadness, we subconsciously avoid the happiness. If we’re not allowed to feel sadness to its fullest, than we’re not allowed to feel happiness to its fullest.

Think about it, because it’s the same fear.

Fear to feel sad is rooted in the fear to feel. When happiness comes, and the sun is out we fear that one sad rain cloud may be just around the corner, just behind the mountain. We are never fully present.

Recently, I had a excruciatingly long trip from the furthest place from home I could get. It was a total of 38 hours of travel, which began with a redeye flight. Everything went smoothly for the most part. That is until I got to my last leg of my trip.

I was in LA, and had just arrived from my longest international flight of the trip. The airline had booked my next domestic flight too close to my arrival. I missed the flight because I wasn’t able to recheck my luggage. They got me on another airline, which would actually put me home sooner than it would’ve originally, as it would be a direct flight.

I was ecstatic! It was my brother’s birthday celebration that evening, and it would mean that I’d get there even earlier. I could shower, take a nap, and have a fun evening with my family.

I was wrong. That’s not how it turned out.

I waited in line for an hour to check my bag. I missed checking it in by 10 minutes.

I was exhausted, I was livid, I was disappointed, and above all I was sad. I was surrounded by so many people, and at first I tried to push my tears back, and down.

Then I had a thought. “Why am I afraid to cry? Are people going to judge me? Are they going to think I’m acting like a child? Ok, what if they do? What then?”

I reminded myself that I get to decide what I think of me, and that there is power in vulnerability. There is power in feeling.

I gave myself permission to cry, I gave myself permission to feel.

So I cried. I let the tears well up and over my cheeks. I felt the disappointment that I wouldn’t be home for my brother’s birthday celebration. I felt how livid I was for the airline’s inability to take care of their customers in a timely manner. I felt the exhaustion of a long trip home.

Then what happened?

Well, I still felt physically fatigued, and maybe a little more so because of the tears. I wasn’t immediately happy or anything like that, but I was able to surrender.

I surrendered to the situation, and I was ok. I was ok standing in line, unsure when I would be able to get home. Later, I was ok sitting in the airport waiting for my late flight.

I knew I was ok, because I was taking care of me. I was feeling, and would to feel whatever emotion came my way, and I would surrender it.

That felt like freedom. Emotions don’t control me, I feel them and surrender them.

By doing that I felt present, and surprisingly I could then choose what I felt. I decided to feel grateful. Grateful for a reminder of the power I have when I feel sad.