Speaker 1: Pushkin. I try to be a fairly honest person, but
Speaker 1: there's one situation in which I'm often tempted to lie.
Speaker 1: It's when someone asks me that innocent question, how are you?
Speaker 1: My default answer feels pretty automatic, I'm fine, how are you? Now?
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong. A lot of the time I
Speaker 1: am fine, But there are also days when I'm really
Speaker 1: down about something, and when people try to check in
Speaker 1: on those days, my first instinct is to keep whatever
Speaker 1: sadness I'm going through to myself, kind of like a
Speaker 1: stiff upper lip thing. Not mentioning it when we're feeling
Speaker 1: low seems like what we're supposed to do, but the
Speaker 1: science shows that when it comes to emotions like sadness,
Speaker 1: the reflex to put on a happy face is actually
Speaker 1: making us feel worse. Our silence about feeling blue also
Speaker 1: means that we're missing out on opportunities to make meaningful
Speaker 1: connection with the people around us, whether they're close friends
Speaker 1: or even total strangers. So in this episode in our
Speaker 1: series on Difficult Emotions, we'll say to heck with a
Speaker 1: stiff upper lip mantra, we're going to start talking about sadness.
Speaker 1: We'll find out what our everyday sorrows are trying to
Speaker 1: tell us, and we'll learn what we can do to
Speaker 1: feel sad better. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with me,
Speaker 1: Doctor Laurie Santos. Our guide today into the world of
Speaker 1: sadness is journalist Helen Russell. Helen is the author of
Speaker 1: a recent book entitled How to Be Sad Everything I've
Speaker 1: Learned about getting happier by being sad Better. Before Helen
Speaker 1: got into the sadness beat, she spent a lot of
Speaker 1: her journalistic career writing about happiness. She penned a lot
Speaker 1: of magazine articles that made achieving happiness sound like a
Speaker 1: holy grail. I bewauque in women's magazines for about twelve
Speaker 1: years at this point, and every feature, in some way
Speaker 1: or another, was really at its core trying to look
Speaker 1: at how we could get happier, and it felt as
Speaker 1: though that was something we were all aiming for, but
Speaker 1: none of us were quite getting there. And I was
Speaker 1: living in a big city, you know. It was a big,
Speaker 1: stressful job and a stressful life and living at a
Speaker 1: fast pace, as many people do in cities. So this
Speaker 1: idea that there could be another way of life was
Speaker 1: really haunting me. So back when we could travel and
Speaker 1: I would give talks or go to book events, and
Speaker 1: people would ask, how can I be happy? And this
Speaker 1: was often at times in their life when really, really
Speaker 1: tough things had happened. So I had someone who'd recently
Speaker 1: lost a loved one, people who'd been made redundant or
Speaker 1: been made homeless, or suffered a bad break up, and
Speaker 1: still there was a sense of, well, how can I
Speaker 1: be happy? And it just struck me that there seemed
Speaker 1: to be no bandwidth there to say, actually, maybe we're
Speaker 1: not supposed to be happy right now. Maybe sadness is
Speaker 1: what we're supposed to feel when we experience loss or disappointment.
Speaker 1: But this seemed culturally inacceptable, or at least not what
Speaker 1: people wanted, and I became fascinated by this. I'd just thought,
Speaker 1: that can't be. It can't be that we shut down
Speaker 1: one big swathe of our emotions. And I've done it
Speaker 1: myself over years of pursuing happiness and trying to find
Speaker 1: out all I can about it. There is this real
Speaker 1: reluctance to be sad. And I just found that really
Speaker 1: interesting and wondered where that had come from, what effect
Speaker 1: it had on us, and how we could be living
Speaker 1: a little better and in a happier way, ultimately by
Speaker 1: embracing our sadness too. Although this was something that you
Speaker 1: personally struggled with a wire, I mean, if you're comfortable
Speaker 1: sharing it, I'd love to hear your story of the
Speaker 1: very bad thing that really affected your whole life up
Speaker 1: to me. All right, yeah, of course. So growing up
Speaker 1: it was me and my mom and my dad and
Speaker 1: I had a baby sister, and then just before I
Speaker 1: turned three, my sister died of sudden infant death syndrome,
Speaker 1: and nobody really talked about it. This was in the
Speaker 1: early eighties. There was still this idea of almost keep
Speaker 1: calm and carry on. What you don't talk about can't
Speaker 1: hurt you. And nobody talked about it. No one talked
Speaker 1: about it to my mom, No one talked about it
Speaker 1: to me. My parents split up just a few months after.
Speaker 1: Nobody really talked about that either. Suddenly my dad wasn't
Speaker 1: there anymore, and within the space of three months, I'd
Speaker 1: lost my sister, I'd lost my dad. Nobody talked about it.
Speaker 1: We all just tried to be cheerful and just to
Speaker 1: carry on, and really we tried to sort of get
Speaker 1: our validation from outside. I went to school and tried
Speaker 1: to be a massive people pleaser and just tried other
Speaker 1: ways to make my mum happy, and we all just
Speaker 1: carried on using all of the crutches that you might
Speaker 1: imagine to anesthetize that pain and to distract ourselves. And yes,
Speaker 1: it took a long time, through all of my research
Speaker 1: into happiness and trying to understand from a journalist perspective,
Speaker 1: just digging into the different fields and the science out
Speaker 1: there to really come to terms of the fact that
Speaker 1: I had been running away as well from sadness, and
Speaker 1: that I also had this massive reluctance, and digging deeper
Speaker 1: into that, I came to understand that actually that loss
Speaker 1: really early on, and that inability to properly grieve that
Speaker 1: loss has impacted on so many different areas of my life.
Speaker 1: And this just feels like something I don't want anyone
Speaker 1: else to have to go through. There's a way that
Speaker 1: we can get better about talking about this kind of
Speaker 1: thing than we should. So the first step in talking
Speaker 1: about it, I guess, is to define it. And you know,
Speaker 1: how would you define this idea of sadness? What is sadness? Well,
Speaker 1: I would say that sadness is the temporary emotion that
Speaker 1: we feel on occasions we've been hurt or something is
Speaker 1: wrong in our lives. It's like a message. It can
Speaker 1: tell us when something is wrong, that sort of niggling feeling,
Speaker 1: but we do have to listen. If we don't listen,
Speaker 1: it's more likely to tip into something more serious, and
Speaker 1: also it's more likely to stay with us for longer.
Speaker 1: So depression is a chronic mental illness that needs help,
Speaker 1: and spoiler alert, I've experienced that as well, but sadness
Speaker 1: can be awakening. So I want to do really clear
Speaker 1: on the distinction between sadness and depression. And of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: depression you're going to need help, But normal sadness we
Speaker 1: will all experience that at some time or another, and
Speaker 1: if we don't know how to handle it, then it's
Speaker 1: going to feel very isolating. And I think the idea
Speaker 1: that what we don't talk about can't hurt us is
Speaker 1: really problematic because we know now from studies that actually
Speaker 1: suppressing negative thoughts doesn't work. It can make us feel worse,
Speaker 1: and experiencing this temper very sadness, counterintuitively can make us happier.
Speaker 1: We have a greater retention to detail, increased perseverance when
Speaker 1: more generous, when more grateful for what we've got. And
Speaker 1: actually it's quite a creative time. When everything's fine, there
Speaker 1: is no impetus almost to do anything different. We'll do
Speaker 1: that same thing again because it made us happy. But
Speaker 1: when we are sad, it's almost a problem solving type
Speaker 1: of motion. We're thinking about our next step. So it
Speaker 1: really serves a purpose as well. And yeah, I'm here
Speaker 1: to rehabilitate sadness. I love this idea of rehabilitating sadness.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to get to another misconception about sadness
Speaker 1: that I think so many of us have, which is
Speaker 1: that it only comes during awful circumstances. You know, so
Speaker 1: a sibling dies, your parents get divorced. But one of
Speaker 1: the things I loved about your book is that you
Speaker 1: often talk about cases where good things are happening and
Speaker 1: sadness can come up, you know, So tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about this arrival fallacy that you talk about
Speaker 1: in your book. Yes, so, I love this idea. I
Speaker 1: think many of us will think that the big events
Speaker 1: in life, the big kind of greeting card events like
Speaker 1: marriage or having a baby, that these the times we're
Speaker 1: supposed to feel happiest, and often when we get there,
Speaker 1: we perhaps don't, and then we feel a sense of
Speaker 1: anti climax. We feel guilty. Often there is a shame
Speaker 1: attached to it. So doctor Talben Shaha from Harvard coined
Speaker 1: the term a rival fallacy to describe this anti climax
Speaker 1: or almost like summit syndrome. You get to the top
Speaker 1: of that mountain, it doesn't feel the way you hoped.
Speaker 1: And I spoke to you mountaineers and adventurers and extreme
Speaker 1: athletes and many people who are setting themselves these challenges
Speaker 1: and they'd reach their goal, they'd get to the north
Speaker 1: pole and look around and feel, oh, it looks a
Speaker 1: bit surety, it looks a bit shabby, and it never
Speaker 1: quite measures up, which makes sense, you know, from a
Speaker 1: scientific point of view. The dopamine is in the chase,
Speaker 1: and when we get the thing we want, we feel nothing.
Speaker 1: It drops off. But it's very hard to remember that
Speaker 1: in normal life. So I think a rival fallacy was
Speaker 1: originally coined to talk about things perhaps in a work context,
Speaker 1: or these big goals, but it can just as easily
Speaker 1: apply to things like marriage or becoming a parent, or
Speaker 1: being in a long term relationship or getting that promotion.
Speaker 1: The more typical things that many of us will experience
Speaker 1: in our life that we think will bring us happiness
Speaker 1: but actually can make us feel quite flat and aren't
Speaker 1: all they seem so. I certainly experienced this when, after
Speaker 1: years of infertility, I finally managed to get pregnant, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, now all my problems will go away
Speaker 1: because now I got the thing I wanted. It will
Speaker 1: be the sound of music forevermore. And of course that's
Speaker 1: not the case. Being a new parent is hard. I
Speaker 1: was very steep deprived. My small child shouted at me
Speaker 1: a lot. So although I was very grateful, there was
Speaker 1: a real sense of shame, thinking, well, why aren't I happy?
Speaker 1: This was what I wanted, I got it. Why aren't
Speaker 1: I happy? And the same with relationships. Relationships are hard,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really helpful to talk about these
Speaker 1: things so that we don't feel that shame and that
Speaker 1: guilt and feel so alone. We're all experiencing this, and
Speaker 1: so this is I think the trickiest thing about sadness.
Speaker 1: Right when awful things happen, we're sad. Sometimes when we
Speaker 1: get what we want, we wind up sad. And in
Speaker 1: all these cases, we don't really like being sad. We
Speaker 1: kind of he did, but you've really argued that we
Speaker 1: can be sad well, that our current approach to negative
Speaker 1: emotions is not working. Talk to me a little bit
Speaker 1: about why the current approach isn't doing for us what
Speaker 1: we needed to do. So. The Harvard psychologist Daniel Wagner
Speaker 1: famously led the thought experiment in nineteen eighty seven, where
Speaker 1: subjects were told not to think about white bears. This
Speaker 1: was inspired by Dostoyevsky, the Russian writer, who wrote, try
Speaker 1: to pose for yourself this task not to think of
Speaker 1: a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed
Speaker 1: thing will come to mind every minute. And so he
Speaker 1: started doing these tests that if you asked someone not
Speaker 1: to think about something, they will think about it more,
Speaker 1: and found that actually trying not to think about difficult
Speaker 1: emotions can backfire spectacularly. So it's not just that we
Speaker 1: perhaps don't want to feel sad. There's no point resisting
Speaker 1: that sadness because it will pop up somewhere, there's no
Speaker 1: getting away from it. The New University of New South
Speaker 1: Wales have found these positive things about allowing for temporary sadness.
Speaker 1: It's also an emotion of connection. It's often when we
Speaker 1: feel closest to each other, and there's value in it.
Speaker 1: You know, Darwin denied the usefulness of tears, but actually
Speaker 1: studies now show that when we cry, we lower our
Speaker 1: levels of cortisol, we are soothing ourselves, we're expressing our emotion.
Speaker 1: So it all has a value. And I think culturally
Speaker 1: we can learn a lot from the way other cultures
Speaker 1: handle their sadness. So you say, we don't want to
Speaker 1: feel sad, but actually that's a particularly American point of view.
Speaker 1: That Americans are outliers in their desire to minimize and
Speaker 1: avoid sadness at all costs, whereas in other cultures there
Speaker 1: is more of an acceptance of sadness. In East Asian culture,
Speaker 1: for example, it's more accepted that you can feel happy
Speaker 1: and sad at the same time. There is more nuance,
Speaker 1: more ambiguity, more granularity. I spoke to researchers in Russia,
Speaker 1: where actually there is real value placed on being sad.
Speaker 1: It's considered quite a positive thing. The Russian professor Yulia
Speaker 1: chensover dotton the idea that being sad makes you a
Speaker 1: better person. In Russia, so I think that's really helpful
Speaker 1: to remember. We've all read the research that you happier
Speaker 1: people are healthier, But actually again that's in the US,
Speaker 1: where people experiencing lower positive emotions have perhaps higher BMI's,
Speaker 1: less healthily blood lipid profiles. I'm from the UK, where
Speaker 1: it's a similar approach to the US, but if you
Speaker 1: look at Japan, it makes no difference. You can feel
Speaker 1: sad and be absolutely fine. So it's a cultural things
Speaker 1: how we feel about being sad that impacts that being
Speaker 1: sad only makes you sick if you're terrified of being sad.
Speaker 1: When we get back from the break, we'll hear more
Speaker 1: about what we tend to get wrong when it comes
Speaker 1: to sadness and how we can all be sad a
Speaker 1: little better. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Experiencing
Speaker 1: sadness is uncomfortable, sometimes really uncomfortable. It's one of those
Speaker 1: negative emotions that we just don't like to tolerate. It's
Speaker 1: not just that we hate being sad, it's almost like
Speaker 1: we're afraid of it. But other Helen Russell says that
Speaker 1: our phobia of sadness is pretty backwards, so much so
Speaker 1: that at sometimes times astonishes her. I find this absolutely
Speaker 1: fascinating is I think it all goes back to childhood.
Speaker 1: When we're scared growing up, we're often told there's nothing
Speaker 1: to be afraid of, or when we hurt ourselves, we're
Speaker 1: told to be brave, or we're told don't cry, and
Speaker 1: we are educated out of our emotions. Many kids, one
Speaker 1: of the first things they'll taste after milk is some
Speaker 1: sort of pain killer, some sort of pain relief, and
Speaker 1: often that's prescribed ahead of vaccinations, for example, as a
Speaker 1: prophylactic as this idea of just in case. So the
Speaker 1: idea that you should never experience or tolerate pain if
Speaker 1: you can avoid it starts from zero, and it means
Speaker 1: that we don't build up that resilience, we don't learn
Speaker 1: to tolerate that discomfort and that pain and those difficult
Speaker 1: parts of life. And this plays out in adulthood where
Speaker 1: many of us really struggle to have difficult conversations, something
Speaker 1: we've had to have more of in the last eighteen months,
Speaker 1: and I think that's really problematic. There's also something to
Speaker 1: do with the way children are raised in term of
Speaker 1: risk and freedom to rome, for example, and freedom in general,
Speaker 1: where you see that compared to the nineteen seventies. Children
Speaker 1: are not allowed to run wild in a forest and
Speaker 1: climate tree and fall down and hurt themselves. We are
Speaker 1: much more fearful of strangers. We're much more fearful of
Speaker 1: letting our children roam free, and this can have a
Speaker 1: detrimental effect as well. Studies from all Whose University in
Speaker 1: Denmark and from Norway show that if we let children
Speaker 1: indulge in risky play or play in nature and not
Speaker 1: talking juggling knives, although they pretty much do that with
Speaker 1: the vikings, but we're talking like climate tree, fall down,
Speaker 1: cut your knee. That's really helpful in terms of building
Speaker 1: resilience and reducing psychiatric problems in later life. And it's
Speaker 1: something that is sort of minimized, does not really taken seriously. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of the mollycoddling of the American mind.
Speaker 1: We see that in action in every playground around the
Speaker 1: US and in the UK right now. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: one of the issues is that we're a phobic about
Speaker 1: being sad, but another one is that we kind of
Speaker 1: feel guilty about it. There's this idea that we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be able to fix sadness. I think it ties
Speaker 1: into what you were just saying about the fact that
Speaker 1: we start medicating things really early on. But I guess
Speaker 1: in lots of parts of our lives there's just this
Speaker 1: idea that if something feels bad, you just fix it.
Speaker 1: But that kind of doesn't work with sadness. You've argued, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you sort of have to sit with it.
Speaker 1: And I guess there's no business case in that. It said,
Speaker 1: there's no one's going to make money from that. There's
Speaker 1: no commercial gain in that. It's purely you're just going
Speaker 1: to have to sit with it for a while. And
Speaker 1: I'm not talking long term things where you are feeling
Speaker 1: really low and you are meeting criteria for depression. I'm
Speaker 1: talking normal sadness. It is uncomfortable and we do have
Speaker 1: to sit with it. But as you say, there are
Speaker 1: things that we can do that will help. So music.
Speaker 1: We know that music has been shown to reduce stress
Speaker 1: and depression and anxiety, but actually music can be a
Speaker 1: really good companion in our sadness. So we're not trying
Speaker 1: to minimize that sadness or ignore it or numb it
Speaker 1: out or push it away, but we can feel less alone.
Speaker 1: And I think the same is true with books as well.
Speaker 1: You have that empathy. You're reading about a character that's
Speaker 1: going through something perhaps similar or perhaps completely different, but
Speaker 1: you're also putting yourselves in their shoes and feeling their sadness.
Speaker 1: So that can be a really helpful thing. When we're
Speaker 1: feeling sad, we're not pushing it away, but we're going
Speaker 1: with it with a companion of sorts. I love that idea.
Speaker 1: So a third thing that can sometimes happen when we're
Speaker 1: feeling sad is that we experience sadness and we feel ashamed.
Speaker 1: We tend to view sadness like we're a total failure
Speaker 1: and this was something that you experienced after your fertility treatments.
Speaker 1: Correct that there's this idea it's not just kind of
Speaker 1: shameful in this odd way to go through that, but
Speaker 1: it's also shameful to be sad about it. Yes, I
Speaker 1: mean to be fair, I was also having my legs
Speaker 1: in stirrups naked from the waist down about three times
Speaker 1: a week for fertility treatments. And so shame is such
Speaker 1: an interesting one because it makes sense. Shame has a
Speaker 1: purpose in terms of encouraging us not to do things
Speaker 1: that will mean we are ostracized from the group. It's
Speaker 1: a social thing. I have been socialized not to be
Speaker 1: naked from the waist down with my legs in the air.
Speaker 1: That has helped me get through many things in life. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I had to go through it at that point to
Speaker 1: have the babies, which society was also telling me I
Speaker 1: should have. So I felt shame about that as well.
Speaker 1: But it's a really difficult one. And then, as you say,
Speaker 1: shame about feeling our emotions, I think is really problematic.
Speaker 1: I spoke to lots of people who'd experienced tough things
Speaker 1: in their lives, and I spoke to a woman who
Speaker 1: had lost a child, and she described telling someone she
Speaker 1: hadn't seen since she'd lost her baby and having to
Speaker 1: almost support this woman, this sort of well meaning woman
Speaker 1: who was just so sad to hear about what had happened,
Speaker 1: but then she became embarrassed, and so having to apologize
Speaker 1: for feeling sad and feel a sort of shame around
Speaker 1: it just seems an extra burden at the very time
Speaker 1: when we really don't need anything else to be dealing with. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: shaking off a shame and not apologizing for our sadness
Speaker 1: by all means apologize if you've done something wrong, but
Speaker 1: no one should apologize for feeling So I think something
Speaker 1: we can all be aware of and watching ourselves and
Speaker 1: other people as well. And so these are the kinds
Speaker 1: of ways we get sadness wrong. You know. We feel guilty,
Speaker 1: we feel ashamed, we're scared of it. But you've argued
Speaker 1: that with the right strategies we really can be sad better.
Speaker 1: I wanted you to share the story of your mom
Speaker 1: that you shared in the book the idea of the
Speaker 1: washing machine breaking, for what it tells us about social
Speaker 1: connection and how that can help us be sad better. Yes,
Speaker 1: so my mum was feeling very alone. She had lost
Speaker 1: her daughter, she had lost her husband, and there was
Speaker 1: almost this idea that her grief was contagious, so the
Speaker 1: other mums would barely speak to her, and she just
Speaker 1: felt completely alone, stuck with me with a little three
Speaker 1: year old at home. And she told me years later,
Speaker 1: in a very matter of fact way, well, of course,
Speaker 1: that's why I ended up talking to the whirlpool man,
Speaker 1: and I've seeing it. Sorry, what was that, she said, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know the whirlpool man. I had no idea what
Speaker 1: she was talking about. And she said, well, after your
Speaker 1: sister died, I didn't know who I could talk to.
Speaker 1: Nobody wanted to talk about sad things. I was expected
Speaker 1: to just carry on. And so at the time she
Speaker 1: had a service contract with the washing machine and it
Speaker 1: broke down and the guy had come to fix it.
Speaker 1: This one service guy had come whilst she had been
Speaker 1: pregnant with my sister, when my sister had been tiny.
Speaker 1: He'd had to hold her while she made a cup
Speaker 1: of tea or popped to the bathroom or something. And
Speaker 1: she just felt she needed to speak to somebody who
Speaker 1: had met her, who had known her, however fleetingly, and
Speaker 1: so she got a stick and broke the washing machine
Speaker 1: to get him back. So she really gave that drum
Speaker 1: a good poke to just get him back there and
Speaker 1: talk to him. And to his credit, bless him, he did.
Speaker 1: He listened to her and listened to her pain and
Speaker 1: drank tea with her. And I think she did it
Speaker 1: a couple more times as well, and the washing machine
Speaker 1: worked in the end. But also she was able to
Speaker 1: have someone to talk to, which part of me my
Speaker 1: heart breaks it that was all she had. But also
Speaker 1: the kindness of strangers, I mean just warms my heart
Speaker 1: this idea that this guy with no connection to our
Speaker 1: family just really helped my mom when she was at
Speaker 1: her lowest EBB. I will be forever grateful to him.
Speaker 1: And I think we all know someone like that. We
Speaker 1: all have a whirlpool man of one kind or another,
Speaker 1: someone a stranger, kind person who has helped us when
Speaker 1: we're feeling at our most low. And once I'd heard
Speaker 1: this from my mom, I started speaking to psychologists about it,
Speaker 1: and they shared as well that especially with the lack
Speaker 1: of access to talking therapy for so many people, that
Speaker 1: really the important thing is speaking to somebody who will listen.
Speaker 1: They don't have to be a professional. It's speaking to
Speaker 1: somebody who will listen without interruption, without judgment. So for me,
Speaker 1: that really cemented the idea of everybody trying to get
Speaker 1: a buddy, and we haven't got a support network perhaps
Speaker 1: where we feel we can talk to family members or friends.
Speaker 1: Just having one person and it may be the kindness
Speaker 1: of strangers. We often tell strangers our secrets, and there's
Speaker 1: lots of research into that it's just the person who's there.
Speaker 1: But having someone we can talk to just feels so important,
Speaker 1: and that VIDs with so much of the research that
Speaker 1: shows the power of social connection from boosting happiness but
Speaker 1: also for helping us overcome negative emotions too. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the connections. I've been really struck during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: You know, we know that power of these weak connections,
Speaker 1: but how much we miss those when they're gone. It
Speaker 1: takes much more effort, I think, to dial someone up
Speaker 1: on a zoom call than to pass them in the
Speaker 1: street and shoot the breeze for a little bit. So
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that my mom had that and I
Speaker 1: try to encourage more of that in my life and
Speaker 1: the people I care about life. Just having people that
Speaker 1: you see often and that you can connect with. But
Speaker 1: facing up to the guilt, shame, and loneliness that a
Speaker 1: company's sadness is just the first step. When we get
Speaker 1: back from the break, we'll hear more of Helen's simple
Speaker 1: Strategies or how to be sad Better. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: will be back in a moment. Author Helen Russell is
Speaker 1: on a mission to make us all be sad better.
Speaker 1: She wants us to start talking about what we're feeling,
Speaker 1: to challenge the guilt, shame, and loneliness that sadness can bring.
Speaker 1: But more than anything, Helen wants us to commit to
Speaker 1: start fighting our sadness. It's a lesson that she learned
Speaker 1: the hard way. Many of the things that we do
Speaker 1: to try and fight sadness are actually ways to avoid feeling,
Speaker 1: and it's a numbing out, which doesn't really help. If
Speaker 1: we attempt to deny or block out a spectrum of
Speaker 1: our emotions, we can dissociate from ourselves, and if we're
Speaker 1: taught that being sad is bad, we dissociate from that feeling.
Speaker 1: And there's the strong links between dissociation and addiction because
Speaker 1: we try to anesetize ourselves or numb out our feelings.
Speaker 1: So for me as a teenager, it was business in school,
Speaker 1: and then it was alcohol, and then it was not
Speaker 1: eating enough, and then it was exercising too much. You know,
Speaker 1: I was dogged in my determination to self destruct because
Speaker 1: it was just this sort of I cannot stop, because
Speaker 1: if you keep yourself busy to avoid pain, the moment
Speaker 1: you stop, the sadness will come flooding back. And I
Speaker 1: did not let that happen. But it doesn't go anywhere,
Speaker 1: So it builds and it will peek through when you're
Speaker 1: at least expecting it. So, yes, my teenage years and
Speaker 1: my twenties are somewhat of a blur. And I was
Speaker 1: the journalist at the Swan Song. I'd say of the daytime,
Speaker 1: drinking big long lunches, a lot of money and publishing.
Speaker 1: It's not like that anymore. But yeah, I would go
Speaker 1: on press trips and it would just be partying hard,
Speaker 1: which I'm a small woman, and it did not go
Speaker 1: well and I was not able to cope with that
Speaker 1: at all. Even sometimes coping strategies that seem good on
Speaker 1: the surface are really bad. You know, you mentioned this
Speaker 1: with business in school. You know, this is one that
Speaker 1: I definitely have. I think, you know, the times that
Speaker 1: I'm experiencing the most sadness, the most other negative emotions
Speaker 1: tend to be the time that I become like most workaholic,
Speaker 1: Like I'm just pouring my energy into like work, work, work.
Speaker 1: But you know, even there is problematic, right yeah, which
Speaker 1: is strange because we are often rewarded for it. Right.
Speaker 1: Rest is not valued in our society activity. It's prized
Speaker 1: over the inactivity. But actually we need rest is the
Speaker 1: time that we restore ourselves to factory settings, and I
Speaker 1: think we don't measure productivity by how many acres we
Speaker 1: harvest anymore, so the amount of time we spend working
Speaker 1: becomes a proxy. And I grew up in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, you know, under Margaret Factory. It was
Speaker 1: all sort of aim higher and Gordon Gecko and Greed
Speaker 1: it's good and this idea of aiming higher and doing
Speaker 1: more all the time, and the cult of presenteeism, which
Speaker 1: we talk about in a work context. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I've been probably doing that since the age of thirteen,
Speaker 1: just you know, every extracurricular activity I could sign up for,
Speaker 1: and the idea of perfectionism was almost the one acceptable
Speaker 1: flaw that you could talk about on your CV or
Speaker 1: in a job interview. And any of us who grew
Speaker 1: up with that as a loadstar, it's really problematic and
Speaker 1: it's hard to shake off. And I certainly really struggled
Speaker 1: with that, this idea if I am a good girl,
Speaker 1: if I am perfect, then things will start going my way.
Speaker 1: Then I can be happy. But it doesn't work like that,
Speaker 1: and it Studies now show that perfectionism leads to anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, insomnia, indigestion.
Speaker 1: I think even early death so you know, really not
Speaker 1: a good thing. But this will come to me latterly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I've learned some of these lessons the hard way,
Speaker 1: for sure. And another lesson I think you talked about
Speaker 1: learning in the hard way was the third way that
Speaker 1: we can be sad better, which is that we have
Speaker 1: to fight this shame part. You've argued that we can
Speaker 1: do that by being a little bit more vulnerable. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting the moments when I have been most vulnerable
Speaker 1: and been most honest about how I'm feeling are the
Speaker 1: moments of deepest and bureus connection with the people who
Speaker 1: are close to me in my life and then with
Speaker 1: the people I interact with for work. So I hadn't
Speaker 1: really talked about experiencing depression much before, and then I
Speaker 1: did a TED talk in two nineteen and I just
Speaker 1: said it then, And it was really interesting that we
Speaker 1: like to tell ourselves that there isn't a stigma around bereavement,
Speaker 1: around depression, around all of these things, but still there's
Speaker 1: there's so much resistance, and you know, it's the one
Speaker 1: in form many of us are going to experience mental
Speaker 1: health problems. It doesn't mean that we are less good
Speaker 1: at our job, If anything, it means that I get it.
Speaker 1: I know what works what doesn't, I know what it
Speaker 1: feels like. So being vulnerable and owning who we are
Speaker 1: is really helpful. We also need to fight this idea
Speaker 1: that we should be apologizing for feeling sad. You saw
Speaker 1: this with a friend at work in a kind of
Speaker 1: really sad way, right, Yeah, I mean people in my
Speaker 1: team would apologize. I had one guy who he was
Speaker 1: on a bike and he got run down by a
Speaker 1: car and his first words were, I'm sorry, you just
Speaker 1: got hit by a car. And then another colleague, her
Speaker 1: boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer and she was sort of
Speaker 1: apologized and I said, no, no, you go home, go
Speaker 1: be with him. And there was this idea of it,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry about this, and it becomes a
Speaker 1: verbal tick. But also I think we mean it. Often
Speaker 1: we are saying sorry for our emotion, for letting that awkward,
Speaker 1: leaky emotion come out of us when we feel we
Speaker 1: are sped to be this glossy, hard shell on the outside.
Speaker 1: So I think, yeah, we have to not apologize for feeling.
Speaker 1: We apologize if we've done something wrong, but not for feeling.
Speaker 1: And then, in addition to sort of making sure we're
Speaker 1: not kind of letting our shame week into all these apologies.
Speaker 1: You've also argued that we need to kind of do
Speaker 1: some work inside our own head. You've argued, we need
Speaker 1: to shut off what I think you lovingly call shit FM,
Speaker 1: and what is your shit FM? Oh so, my friend
Speaker 1: Jill and I she became my whirlpool man, somebody I
Speaker 1: was able to rely on as a regular body in
Speaker 1: the room who would listen without interruption, and I would
Speaker 1: do the same for her. But shit FM is what
Speaker 1: we took to describing that niggling voice. It's in your
Speaker 1: head that sometimes for a couple of days will be
Speaker 1: sort of tuned into a frequency that tells you, oh,
Speaker 1: things aren't going so well, or you're not really doing
Speaker 1: a good job there, or oh you really mess that up?
Speaker 1: What an idiot? And if shit FM's playing for more
Speaker 1: than a couple of days, then it's time to take action,
Speaker 1: and we will send a message and it'll be even
Speaker 1: just coffee emoji, and then you know that there's going
Speaker 1: to be a summit and there will be a meeting
Speaker 1: of minds and we will talk and not try and
Speaker 1: fix anything, but just listen. We all have a version
Speaker 1: of shit FM in our heads. No matter what it
Speaker 1: is that's your particular worry or the things that niggle you,
Speaker 1: there will be something. And I think if we are
Speaker 1: aware of that that it's not us, Our feelings are
Speaker 1: not us. It's just shit FM that sometimes comes on.
Speaker 1: And so the final thing that you've mentioned can be
Speaker 1: really powerful from being sad better is this idea of acceptance.
Speaker 1: What is acceptance and why is it so powerful? I
Speaker 1: think acceptance is really the fundamental idea that it's going
Speaker 1: to be a part of life. We've almost changed our
Speaker 1: definition of happiness. I spoke to the psychologists recently about
Speaker 1: differences between positive psychology and toxic positivity. But I think
Speaker 1: in the popular consciousness and perhaps in their media, this
Speaker 1: sort of idea of good vibes only, or it is
Speaker 1: all going to be okay, and sometimes it won't. And
Speaker 1: I feel like there are a lot of self help
Speaker 1: books about you just manifest this future where everything's okay,
Speaker 1: and then if it doesn't work out, that's probably your
Speaker 1: fault and you probably didn't manifest it hard enough. I
Speaker 1: think that's just so problematic and makes us feel shame again,
Speaker 1: as though maybe we have done something wrong, and there's
Speaker 1: so much structural and institutional inequality. I like the old
Speaker 1: Aristotle idea about a good life requiring us to also
Speaker 1: have a big dose of good luck. One of the
Speaker 1: seven things he thought we needed to have a good
Speaker 1: life was good luck, because even the best life can
Speaker 1: be rendered unhappy by a tragedy and that's not our fault.
Speaker 1: And I think that gets lost a lot, so that
Speaker 1: when bad things happen, it's not necessarily our fault and
Speaker 1: we have to accept them. And there may not be
Speaker 1: a plan, you know, I was raised in a religious home.
Speaker 1: I was raised Catholic, and I think for many of
Speaker 1: us there is this idea of it's God's plan or
Speaker 1: it's part of a plan or the universe or manifesting
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be for you and your belief system.
Speaker 1: I think acceptance that sometimes sad things happen and that
Speaker 1: is just really sad is helpful and it doesn't make
Speaker 1: us any lesser. Any tips for achieving that kind of
Speaker 1: acceptance because one of the things I love about your
Speaker 1: book is that you go through so many sad things,
Speaker 1: from your sister's death, to your parents divorced, to you know,
Speaker 1: the long infertility you've faced, but you've kind of come
Speaker 1: out on the other side, accepting that bad things are okay.
Speaker 1: I can feel sadness and it won't destroy me. I
Speaker 1: mean excessive drinking. That's not really going to help you
Speaker 1: on your way. I'll save you the trouble there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think for me, the perspective part was a big help,
Speaker 1: and that came in terms of thinking geographically and understanding
Speaker 1: more about sadness around the world and the different cultural approaches,
Speaker 1: and that the things that we think are a product
Speaker 1: of our education and the way we have been socialized,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that they are the be all and
Speaker 1: end all. And then also a historical perspective I found
Speaker 1: really helpful. At one point I was laid up on
Speaker 1: bedrest and I had to real deep dive into the
Speaker 1: history of sadness and the history of our emotions, which
Speaker 1: is really interesting as well, and you realize actually it's
Speaker 1: relatively recent ideas about happiness. And then for me, the
Speaker 1: reading and taking my culture vitamins and trying to just
Speaker 1: use these tools for emotional arousals. So if I feel
Speaker 1: on the verge of crying, then I will watch a
Speaker 1: film that will push me over the edge or listen
Speaker 1: to the piece of music that will feel like a
Speaker 1: companion in my sadness. And even when I felt like
Speaker 1: I was doing all the right things, when I was
Speaker 1: still working too hard, even though I was exercising and
Speaker 1: I was eating well and I was trying to talk
Speaker 1: about my feelings. If I was working too hard, then
Speaker 1: that was out of whack as well. This balance, which
Speaker 1: is not very exciting, but balance is important. And then
Speaker 1: I think the final piece of the jigsaw for me
Speaker 1: was doing something for someone else, which it feels like
Speaker 1: sort of an old fashioned idea of the do gooder.
Speaker 1: And you know in the Simpsons ned Flanders, no one
Speaker 1: wants to be ned Flanders. No one wants to be
Speaker 1: the do gooder. But actually it's really important. We see
Speaker 1: the science behind things like warm blow giving or help
Speaker 1: us high. It makes us feel better. We should do
Speaker 1: things for other people because it's the right thing to do,
Speaker 1: but also it will make us feel better. And if
Speaker 1: we are sad and we just do ourselves, the chances
Speaker 1: are will still be sad. So for me, a big
Speaker 1: part of the piece was trying to work with other
Speaker 1: families who've experienced baby loss, for example, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the people I interviewed in the book, actually through
Speaker 1: the course of their own sadness journey, they found a
Speaker 1: way that was specific to them to find a cause
Speaker 1: that they really cared about and find a way to help.
Speaker 1: And I think that really helps with the acceptance and
Speaker 1: how to be sad well, because we are doing something
Speaker 1: useful with that sadness. Not to say that things always
Speaker 1: happen for a reason, but if you're going to go
Speaker 1: through that suffering of any degree, there's no hierarchy of sadness.
Speaker 1: But whatever it is for you that you then understand it.
Speaker 1: You have that empathy and if you can share that
Speaker 1: with someone or do something useful with that, that feels worthwhile.
Speaker 1: And do you think that through finding sadness a little
Speaker 1: bit more useful, being less afraid of it, and maybe
Speaker 1: using it for the problem solving reason it evolved in
Speaker 1: the first place, that we can all be a little
Speaker 1: bit happier. Ironically by accepting sadness, I really do. I
Speaker 1: think it makes you more brave and fearless because the
Speaker 1: pursuit of happiness, there are moments of joy, and there
Speaker 1: will be moments where we will feel lifted, but there's
Speaker 1: always that niggling all, but make sure you stay happy
Speaker 1: because oh, if you feel sad, oh that's not going
Speaker 1: to feel good. If you're not afraid of sadness, it's
Speaker 1: incredibly liberating and you can live your life really and
Speaker 1: you're going to experience greater highs because you're not afraid
Speaker 1: of those lows as well. So, yeah, I do think
Speaker 1: it's the science bears out in my experience that actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: if we allow ourselves to experience sadness, we can be happier.
Speaker 1: To Hearing Helen describe all the ways we get everyday
Speaker 1: sadness wrong made me realize that I need to commit
Speaker 1: to dealing with sorrow in a more productive way. It
Speaker 1: gave me hope that we can all be sad better.
Speaker 1: After talking with Helen, I'm going to try to notice
Speaker 1: when I'm feeling sad and watch for those times when
Speaker 1: I'm using hyper business to block it out, and if
Speaker 1: I recognize that I'm feeling particularly avoidant, I'll see if
Speaker 1: I can commit to just gently sitting with my feelings
Speaker 1: for a couple minutes. I'm also going to try being
Speaker 1: more honest with the people around me when I'm feeling blue.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to open up more when one
Speaker 1: of my metaphorical whirlpool repair dudes provides a caring ear,
Speaker 1: and I'll remind myself that I can be the whirlpool
Speaker 1: repair gal for those I care about. I'll start by
Speaker 1: becoming more curious when I ask that standard how are
Speaker 1: you question? I might even offer a bit of a
Speaker 1: follow up, I mean, how are you really? I hope
Speaker 1: you've learned some strategies today that you can use to
Speaker 1: feel sad better, and I hope you'll come back to
Speaker 1: join me for the next episode of The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If you love this show
Speaker 1: and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
Speaker 1: and uninterrupted listening for only four ninety nine a month.
Speaker 1: As a special gift of pushkin Plus subscribers, I'll be
Speaker 1: sharing a series of six guided meditations to help you
Speaker 1: practice the lessons we've learned from our experts. Pushkin Plus
Speaker 1: is available on the show page and Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. The Happiness Lab is
Speaker 1: co written and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily Anne Vaughan
Speaker 1: and Courtney Guerino. Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver,
Speaker 1: with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by Evan Viola. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Milabelle, Heather Faine, John Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Brandt Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserved,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis. That Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and Nate Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts,