’Why am I sad if my life is going well?’

Why do many people feel persistent sadness despite having a good standard of living?

It is possible to be sad for no apparent reasonIt is a more common feeling than we think and, therefore, we should not feel guilty about it. Having everything is not a sufficient reason to be happy.

Sadness is a basic emotion that we can feel when some aspect of our environment or some internal state affects us, generating in us an unpleasant feeling. But this does not mean that it is not functional or that we should avoid it, since it can help us to know what is happening to us and thus be able to work on it and deal with it. Allow yourself to be sad and don't feel bad about it.

In this article we will describe what is meant by sadness and what its functions may be, and why many people reach a situation in which they wonder: "why am I sad if my life is fine?".

What do we understand by sadness?

Society marks us some goals or some achievements that we must reach to be happy, but... Is it really what we want? In the same way, we live an accelerated life that hardly allows us to have time for ourselves and to value what we have. We are taught to always want more and never reach a level where we are emotionally satiated.

Sadness is one of the six basic emotions.This term refers to the fact that it is an emotion that has its own characteristics, different from the others and that everyone knows how to identify when they perceive the expression of sadness. This leads to a state of apathy, lack of motivation; anhedonia, lack of sensation of pleasure; decreased hunger... which, as expected, generates an unpleasant sensation in the individuals who suffer from it.

But contrary to what might be expected, we will not consider it a maladaptive emotion. All emotions, whether they are considered positive or negative, are functionalThey are functional, that is, they act as a signal of how our environment is and how we are inside. In other words, they help us to realize how we are, what positive or negative aspects surround us or how we feel inside.

Thus, it is very important not to confuse sadness with sadness, it is very important not to confuse sadness with depressionThis confusion is very typical in the society in which we live, since we tend to use indistinctly, as synonyms, one term or the other, "I am depressed" and "I am sad". Actually these do not refer to the same thing, because unlike sadness, which as we have seen is a basic emotion and can be functional, depression is considered a disorder, and as such, it can present sadness as a symptom, but it must also meet the criterion of non-functionality, of affecting the subject's life.

Thus, it is very important not to confuse the terms, sadness is a necessary emotion that will help us to know how we feel and to know what we like and what we do not like, what makes us feel good and what makes us feel bad... On the contrary, depression is not functional, it affects the well-being of the individual and is therefore considered a pathology.

If I have everything... Why am I sad?

Thus, sadness can act as a signal that something is wrong, but it can also appear without there appearing to be an apparent reason, with no visible or clear cause.without there being a visible or clear cause that generates it.

So the causes of being sad can be multiple and sometimes these are not so clear. For example, it may be that what generates sadness are events that happened long ago and we have not overcome or healed well or events that at the time did not affect us but from which the discomfort has developed some time later.

The appearance of sadness does not respond to a simple mechanism of cause-effect nor does it have a determined duration; this means that it is possible that an unpleasant or negative event happens to us and sadness does not show up right afterwardsTherefore, the duration of sadness can vary according to the individual who suffers it or in the moment of life that presents itself, it can vary.

In the same way, in many occasions we tend to value only what we have or how we are externally without taking into account how we are inside. That is to say, sadness can be produced as much by external events as by internal ones.So it can happen that we have everything, work, home, partner, friends ... but we feel sad, because the problem may be due to the fact that we are not well internally.

In this way, if we are not well with ourselves we cannot be at 100% even if externally we are not lacking anything.

Another point to evaluate is if really "having everything" is what makes us happy. Often, what people consider to be having it all depends on a social construction and the culture to which they belong, i.e., what is socially valued as an achievement and a goal to reach. and the culture to which they belong, that is, what is socially valued as an achievement and as a goal to reach.

From an early age we grow up surrounded by beliefs that influence us, the world in which we live sets goals that we must achieve if we want to be happy, such as finding a partner with whom we can have children and start a family, getting a stable job, becoming independent and owning our own home, among many others. But, what if really what we have been told that brings happiness is not what makes us happy, what if I am a woman and I do not want to have children, what if I want to be single?

These are considerations that we must take into account, since we tend not to question things. we have a tendency not to question things and to accept them as they are told to us.Even if we have everything that is supposed to make us happy, we may feel sad because it is not what we really want but what society has established or set for us.

Another factor that could be generating sadness is the lack of enjoyment of the situation; we may have everything we really want and would make us happy, but we do not take the time to value it and enjoy it. but we do not take the time to value and enjoy it.. We live accelerated, with a pace of life that does not let us rest, society constantly requires us to be doing things to achieve our achievements, without being able to enjoy what we already have, we continually think about the future, we act to achieve something but we do not stop to live in the present, to be happy with what we already have.

Thus, it is not strange that we lose interest when we have already achieved a goal, that we stop valuing what we have to focus all our efforts on achieving what we do not have. As we have said the society demands us to obtain things, never being enough, propitiating that what we have loses value and we only want what we do not possess.

How to deal with the feeling of sadness

To be able to handle and to confront the sadness it will be necessary that we stop, that we stop centering the focus in the outside and we look at ourselves, in the interior, in what is it that keeps us from being well or what we really want?.

Human beings like or need to have the feeling that we control everything and that we can know the cause and reason for everything that happens. But there are events, facts, sensations that do not have such a clear explanation that it does not depend on us whether they occur or disappear. They influence factors that we cannot modify, as for example the genetics, there are people who have more predisposition to have a type of sensations, since they present certain features. In the same way, there can also be Biological deregulations in hormones, neurotransmitters... that affect how we feel.

So, not everything depends on us and, therefore, we should not blame ourselves for it. We tend to blame ourselves when we are sad for no reason, causing us to enter into a loop of blame and sadness, since the more we blame ourselves the sadder we will feel and, as a consequence, the more we will continue to blame ourselves for it.

Therefore, it can help to take time for yourself, it can help to dedicate time to yourselfThe main goal is to listen to yourself, to know yourself, to know what you really want and to value what you have, to live in the present and not to be continuously thinking about the future, to reach new achievements.

In the same way, allow yourself to feel sadIt is a functional emotion that we should not avoid. Do not try to deny or feel bad or guilty for being sad, as this will only make the situation worse and you will be worse, without allowing you to face and manage the situation properly. We must learn to destigmatize sadness, it is not bad and it is impossible and dysfunctional to be always happy.

Finally, we can always ask for professional help if we see that we cannot cope with the situation and we notice that it is beyond us. To conclude that it is time to go to psychotherapy is not a failure; the psychologist can give us more specific tools and strategies and take better control of our situation.