Sadness to Hope
Sadness to Hope
Understanding Loss and Moving Forward
This article is the third in a series of four dealing with emotion during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Imagine you are in a room about the size of a regular bedroom. It has a nice carpeted floor, a soft light shines from the ceiling, and walls are freshly painted light gray. It’s clean and you feel safe for the most part. There is a door for when you are ready to leave. You notice a couple of oddities, however. This room has no windows and two chairs are the only things in it. No pictures on the walls, no lamps or tables, just the two chairs facing each other. You are one occupant of a chair. Sadness sits in the other.
The purpose of sadness is to inform us of a loss. The loss is usually of a thing, a person, or the loss of hope (L.S. Greenberg, personal communication, August 5, 2015). Sadness comes when attachments have been severed and exists on a continuum from nostalgia to complete despair (Greenberg & Watson, 2010). Often, sadness gets a bad reputation as a weakness. When we cry because we are sad, we may be embarrassed because of the stigma that comes with those tears. Crying can give a sense of relief from the loss and is possibly an internal cue to engage in managing the internal distress (Sharman et al., 2019; Vingerhoests et al., 2001). Whatever the case, we cannot ignore what sadness is trying to tell us. There is a loss.
At some point, we all will face a loss due to the current world crisis. Some already have. The loss may be as sobering as that of a loved one, others a job, economic status, or maybe a simple routine. Whatever it is, sadness will be sitting across from you as a reminder of that loss. Who would want to stay in that room, but many times, that’s exactly what people do.
For some, the sadness is insurmountable, especially if the loss is of a loved one. Sadness just sits there, constantly reminding you of that painful loss. As you can imagine, if someone stays in that room, the sadness can lead to depression and despair. Allow me to pause and clarify some things about this room. First, sadness is not depression, depression is only a result of someone staying in their sadness, shame, or fear for an extended amount of time (Greenberg, et al., 2010). Second, we are to feel sadness. We are to have a time in this “place,” but we are not meant to stay there. We must face our sadness so we understand what it is trying to tell us. This helps us to move forward in a healthy way. Lastly, sadness does not just remind us of a loss, it has one more job. It leads us to hope.
It has been my experience that the opposite of sadness is not happiness but hope. We sit in that room and listen to the voice of sadness reminding us of our loss. Then sadness seems to begin a new message, one we may not expect to hear. Sitting there in that room, feeling down, or maybe even depressed, sadness asks an unexpected question that seems to come from nowhere, “Why are you still here?”
“What did you say?”
“Why are you still here? Do you really want to stay in this room for the rest of your life?” Hope may be lost in here but there is hope outside that door.”
“But it is so hard to get up and walk over to the door. My loss is such a burden, I’m not sure I can even stand.”
“You must. You are not meant to stay in this room for a long period of time. It only can lead to depression and despair. Hope for THIS circumstance is lost, but there is hope on the other side of the door.”
Grief is the process of getting up out of the chair and walking to the door. As we do this, we are letting go of the hope that our loss will return and reaching for a new hope as we open the door and walk through the doorway.
In the end, these remain, “faith, hope, and love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). We know the greatest of these three is love, and we are assured of God’s love and the love of others will get us through any circumstance. We must remember that hope moves us. It brings us out of difficult, sad times to places we could never imagine.
Dr. Troy Backhuus is the director of Missionary Care with One Mission Society, Greenwood, Indiana. He has been a licensed professional counselor for over 18 years and has taught in higher education for the same amount of time. He holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Education and Supervision. One of his specialties is in Emotion-Focused Therapy.
References
Greenberg, L. S. & Watson, J. C. (2010). “Emotion-Focused Therapy for Depression” (3rd printing). American Psychological Association.
Sharman, L. S., Dingle, G. A., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., & Vanman, E. J. (2019). Using crying to cope: Physiological responses to stress following tears of sadness. Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000633.supp
Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., Boelhouwe, A. J. W., van Tilburg, M. A. L., & van Heck, G. L. (2001). The situational and emotional context of adult crying. In A. J. J. M. Vingerhoets & R. R. Cornelius (Eds.), Adult crying. A biopsychosocial approach (pp. 71–90). Brunner- Routledge.