You should always be happy! There's no room for sadness in your life.
What's the point? No one wants to deal with you being upset!
Sounds stupid, right? That's because it is stupid.
It's stupid to say that no one should be sad, that everyone should be happy all the time and shake off the blues whenever they come along. The truth is, sadness is healthy, and I'll explain why later, but there are a couple of things I want to mention before that.
While growing up, no one really told us about how we should handle our emotions - not in school, not at home, not even amongst friends. To be honest, no one really spoke about their feelings. There seemed to be this mutual understanding that if you didn't hear other people talking about their emotions, than neither should you.
This affected me quite a bit during my early teen years. Being the sensitive adolescent that I was, I had a lot of feelings and thoughts I kept bottled up because I had no idea what to do with them! And when I did express my negative emotions, I was made out to be attention-seeking.
Everyone always said 'stay positive!' or 'cheer up!' - and sometimes even 'jeez, stop being so moody' - every time I looked less smiley than usual.
You know what I actually wanted to hear?
These 5 simple words: "It's okay to feel sad."
I know everyone has good intentions; at the end of the day, no one wants to see anyone upset. As bad as it sounds, we've all probably dismissed someone's low mood at some point, but we need to change the way we react to these situations.
Who know's what the person is going through? Maybe all they needed was to be told that it's alright to feel down and to remember that there are people - you for example - who will listen if they need to talk about it.
Here are a few reasons why it's okay to not be 100% okay:
You will go through tough times, no matter what that may be for you.
During these times, you'll end up feeling low and it will be hard to pick yourself up, so you can cry if you want to! It makes even less sense for you to go through rough times and be smiling 24/7. Ironically, this is when you know you're struggling with something. Remember that it's normal to go through rough patches in your life, so let your feelings out and tell someone. You might find they need to let some feelings out too.
Bottling up your negative feelings is worse.
Imagine your mind is a balloon and negative thoughts are air particles. Eventually there would be too much air for the balloon to handle and it'll burst! From experience, I know that if you suppress your unresolved feelings, you end up breaking down at such awkward moments, and mental breakdowns are the worst! You'd rather gradually let some air out than have it all bursting out, shattering the rest of your mind with it.
Sadness is essential to the balance of your life.
If you feel sad about something, there's obviously a reason why you're sad about it! You feeling sad about a situation just means there's something wrong or unsettling that's happening and you need some time to reflect on it. If us humans never got sad, we wouldn't know how to sympathise or empathise with others - we'd be robots! It's the balance of happiness and sadness that make us conscious of the right and the wrong and the good and the bad - VERY important things to be conscious of!!
It may be cliche but it's true - you really aren't alone.
Literally everyone gets sad sometimes, and that's a fact we all need to be conscious of. The more we accept that it's a human thing for us to feel bad as well as good, the more we can cope with our daily lives. A lot of the time people feel they can't vent is because they don't want to inconvenience others; if you're not okay with inconveniencing others, than why are you okay with inconveniencing yourself? If this is the case, ask if it's okay with them that you get some things off your chest. Just be wise about who you relay information to.
None of us are perfect. We don't live perfect lives, and that's okay. So when you feel down and a little bit under the weather, let yourself feel down. It's healthy to be sad once in a while, but never let it get the better of you.
There will always be someone there willing to help you.
If you ever need someone to listen to you, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. You can contact me on any of my social media links!
~ glessabella
xo.
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