Meditation for sadness

We might feel as if we need to avoid sadness in our lives. The pursuit of happiness is often an escape from sadness. We want to feel the good stuff, not the more challenging stuff. But sadness is a natural emotion. It can help remind us of what gives our life meaning, what matters, and what leaves us feeling “off.” Sadness can be a signal. For example, if you feel sad that you haven’t seen your close friend in weeks, you might realize how important that friend is to you, and be more motivated to reach out.

Through brain research, Doctor of Philosophy Joseph P. Forgas found that sadness can also improve our memory, increase our social judgment, and increase our motivation and perseverance with difficult tasks. What’s more, Forgas found that sadness can make us more thoughtful, attentive, and considerate towards others.

Mood and stress are more intertwined than you probably realize. Stress can suppress the immune system, mess with your energy levels, and impair your ability to sleep and to concentrate. Because you’re now tired and behind at work, you might miss practicing the things that keep your mood stable — for example, going to a workout class, reading before bed, or catching up with friends. Because you missed your self-care rituals and your body seems out of whack, you now feel even lower than you did before. As you can see, stress and feeling low is a cycle, but it’s a cycle you can break.

Using mindfulness meditation to break that cycle not only increases your well-being, it benefits those around you as well. Just 10 days of using Headspace for meditation has been shown to reduce negative emotions and sadness by 28%, and reduce stress by 14%. But how? Think of mindfulness meditation as an intervention that lets you retrain your mind. Becoming aware of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations in the moment helps to lessen negative thought patterns and foster a greater sense of calm and well-being.

In a 2018 study published online in Cell, researchers found that feeling down is correlated with increased communication between two regions of the brain: the hippocampus and the amygdala. The hippocampus is strongly linked with memory, while the amygdala is the part of the brain that handles the processing of emotions. It would make sense, then, that remembering painful or uncomfortable memories would trigger sadness. Likewise, sadness might cause you to start thinking about painful times in your life.

Lucky for us human beings, through a phenomenon called neuroplasticity, the brain and its flow of information is able to develop and change. Practicing mindfulness meditation has been proven to thicken the areas of the brain responsible for learning, memory, and emotion regulation. Additionally, mindfulness meditation can shrink the brain’s “fight or flight” center and significantly change the way different regions of the brain communicate with one another.

While sadness is a valuable human emotion, depression is a mental health disorder. If you’re suffering from depression, you will experience persistent feelings of sadness most of the day, nearly every day. You’ll likely lose interest in activities that you once enjoyed, feel a sense of hopelessness, and have low energy. When you’re depressed, other people might notice that your thoughts and physical movements are slowed down.

Depression is nothing to feel guilty about and it is not your fault — it’s simply a result of your mind and body not functioning properly. Depression happens in part because your brain can’t regulate your emotions effectively. When we are depressed, our brain goes into a state where it continuously reflects on our problems in a repetitive and negative way, yet we aren’t motivated to solve these problems through engagement with the outside world.

While practicing mindfulness meditation and reaching out to others for support can absolutely help increase positivity and lessen negative emotion, if you think you may be clinically depressed, you should speak to your doctor or a mental health professional about treatment. Not feeling motivated to pick up the phone? Text a family member, neighbor, or friend to make an appointment for you.

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