Why It's Important To Make Time To Be Sad

Many times feelings that manifest in one area, are just an expression of a deeper issue. Often I will come home from work, feeling pissed and angry at all the craziness of the day or carry out anger to people I care about because some unjust incident happened to me at random. It is in these cases that I will mostly desire to throw everything out of the window and quit while opening a candy-shop in some exotic place where I can spend my time instead. But how many times have I really delve into the deeper issues, to acknowledge what is really going on? Instead of speaking about them or dealing with what bothers me effectively, I will just take my sit on the couch, watch a show on TV or Netflix and end my day numbing myself out. I mean this is the normal way for an adult man to deal with it, no?

In reality, this behavior is the standard way of avoidance we employ in our lives when it is only masquerading the problem and pushes it in a little corner as if it doesn't exist. And it is only a matter of time before this little beast grows up little by little and manifests itself as anger, depression, or anxiety without realizing where it actually came from. It is those smaller things that accumulate and weigh on us over time that actually cause these issues to manifest at a later stage, as we declined to pay attention when we had the chance to do so.

Funny enough, many of the things we immerse into daily, are actually tackling these feelings directly or indirectly, and have evolved to be part of our activities, because of the service they are offering through it. Psychoanalysis, vibing with our friends, art either through its creation or the consumption, offers ways to deal with these untapped emotions through its process of adopting a different perspective, and sensitizes us to view the world through a different set of lenses. All of these are techniques to raise awareness of our hidden emotions and help us to be more attuned with what is going around us.

If you ever had to take a bold move to achieve a certain goal you probably went through feelings of denial first as they usually accompany these endeavors. Maybe your mind was telling you that the time is not right, or that you should wait a little bit longer till the right opportunity arises. I know I was going through it every time I would have to deal with a stressful situation like making a presentation or having a tough conversation with my boss. But there is a certain technique that I actually learned about at some point, that gave me the boost to take all these cases much more lightly. It is the "Worst case scenario" technique and it goes as follows.

All it takes to follow along is to take a comfortable chair and start projecting. You need to visualize yourself, making whatever action you are planning to take, and imagine the worst-case scenario happening. You need to actually see the process of going through it and failing miserably in whatever way it makes you the most uncomfortable. Your boss disses you for making a bold move and asking him for a raise, the presentation fails, making everybody yawn while looking into their phones till the whole thing ends. Imagine yourself later on after the events finished, having to deal with all the embarrassment and the bad feelings it would all entail. Make sure you take your time to think of the little intricate details of the situation and go into the things that you are actually afraid of the most. This is the most efficient way to actually lighten your shoulders in the fastest possible way as you are dealing with the core of an untapped emotion. Fear.

This technique works in a spectacular fashion for one reason and one reason only. It reveals the hidden emotion of fear that lies inside, unwraps it in its full glory, and deals with it in an extremely efficient way by making you accept the actual end result. You get to realize that even if everything else fails you still get to chose what you do with your life and you can give props to yourself for at least trying. It is a great way to deal with worries you may have and never realized, and you can feel the difference as you go by your doings in a much lighter way.

All these emotions are there for us, trying to notify us of things we should be worried about. This fear is awakening us into the possibility of failure and being expelled from the 'group' the way this archaic emotional machinery works. But as is evident, most of our emotional mechanisms are old and rusty. They didn't have the necessary time to catch up with the latest developments and so we need to carry out our lives with them while the world advances at a different tempo.

The 'eating the frog' philosophy

At some point, Mark Twain proposed an interesting way to navigate the hardships of life. He said all you have to do to feel good is actually 'eat a frog' every morning and then everything else will feel easy in comparison.

"Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day." --Mark Twain

There are many modern variations of this saying, and it has been used many times as an example of doing the hardest thing first, in order to avoid procrastination. But the way it was originally used it had a different meaning. It actually denoted a way of numbing your self towards the inevitable hardships of life in a graceful way. Do the most revolting thing you can think of and then there is nothing else to stir you up anymore for the rest of the day. Nothing will be as tough as this little one thing you did and so you can get by your life, free of the dreadful emotions.

This is in a way how stoicism deals with life's adversities as well. Imagine a world where everything is unstable and fast-moving like the ancient one. People could lose their lives in the battle or through some disease, without any notice. Bads would come and go one after the other constituting a chaotic environment. Through all these happenings, stoicism taught self-control, fortitude, and avoidance from every emotion. They proposed a way of turning internally when the external world was swirling around like a storm. It is in a way similar to numbing yourself in an uncertain environment that you have little to no control at all.

It is through this way that we still try to manage our inner world today, distantiating from our feelings and pushing them on the side. Of course, everything has its place and stoic philosophy had a tremendous influence on the world's thinking by showcasing how we can always choose where to focus our minds and how it would always be better for us to focus on the things we can control rather than those we can't.

Yet there are many things in today's world that are radically different and it would be much more advantageous to actually delve into them than denying their existence. Residues of the 'tough man' mentality continue to swamp our societies with their dictation to push feelings aside but experience has shown how much damage this philosophy can do and how it can lead an individual to an eventual deadlock.

What is needed instead is to respect these emotions and give them the necessary attention they require from you to be released. This is the reason emotions are so sticky in our body, clenching our muscles and creating little knots. They are staying there till they make sure we take action. There is no better way to release an emotion than actually writing down on paper your course of action in a situation. You are declaring to your unconscious that you are willing to take the necessary steps towards it and this way they can leave you alone in peace.

And that is why many times setting up reminders to your notebooks on things you need to do can be so powerful. Emotions, are a natural mechanism that you are going to remember to take action, and sometimes just making sure you won't forget is all it takes for them to be released.

There is a trend lately with apps and quotes about death and dealing with the fear of it more gracefully. This is actually another part of the stoic philosophy and how they preached to accept the thing that is eventual to happen yet we devote so little time to make peace with. Fear of death can also have great repercussions on how we navigate our lives and being in a position to experience it to its fullest. And that is why in a way horror films can help us soothe our anxiety in a safe way. They teach us how to regulate emotions of anxiety and fear in an environment where we still keep control in our hands.

"Horror films can 're-set the thermostat' for people so that things that had seemed intimidating may be easier to deal with in the future." --Katherine Brownlowe .

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