I woke one Saturday morning with sadness overtaking my whole body. My brain had not registered the arrival of morning, nor that I was awake. I simply opened my eyes and experienced myself as a sack of sadness. Wow! This was interesting! Not pleasant, but certainly interesting. I wondered, “Had I dreamt of a great loss?” but could not remember a dream. The intensity and pervasiveness of the sadness demanded my attention. At a younger age, I would have been frightened and alarmed, but now, in my late-60s, sadness is known to me, perhaps not as suddenly and surprisingly as it appeared on this morning, but known, nevertheless. I decided to take the day to allow myself to fully feel and be present to this emotion as it came and went. I was fortunate to have the time and space to allow myself this opportunity. I turned my phone off.
The truth was sadness was the totality of my initial experience that morning. There was no escape. No happy thought, no gratitude reflection, no favorite morning chai tea or upbeat music was going to resolve this. Sometimes distraction provides temporary relief but would not provide a solution, even a temporary one, this morning. I felt grateful for the many strategies I’ve learned to address unpleasant emotions over the years and began calling upon them. “Bring your attention into the present moment and feel what you feel. Let go of the storyline and rest your awareness in your body. Allow the emotion to move through you like a river through a riverbed” are familiar invitations. Where once these concepts would never occur to me, now, with a small amount of effort, they arise in my mind and orient me in a healing direction.
One consistently useful approach I call upon is to drop the “I feel” from my self-talk and take a deep breath. For example, we may commonly say to ourselves “I feel sad.” An alternative strategy is to reflect, “Sadness is present” or “Sadness is arising,” then “Sadness is welcome.” The latter becomes a practice of unconditional love, opening the heart to everything that arises. When I say to myself “I feel sad,” my mind becomes narrow, and I experience my sense of self caught up in or identified with the emotion. Whereas, when I say to myself, “Sadness is present” or “Sadness is arising” my mind becomes more open and spacious and not identified with the emotion. It’s not so personal. “Sadness is welcome” brings in an open heart. Taking a deep breath and opening my heart helps prevent the emotion from escalating.
“You can’t heal what you refuse to feel” and “What we resist persists” are common mantras when it comes to dealing skillfully with emotions. Accepting an emotion is a healing choice however, it takes time and experience to become familiar and comfortable with the wide range of human emotions, especially when they can be strong and seem to come out of nowhere. I continue to train with unpleasant emotions when they are mild which can be a support for when things become more difficult. For example, if I miss a green light on your way to an appointment and feel slightly frustrated, or I’m in a long line at a coffee shop and feel a little impatient. I can experience the emotion and quietly comment to myself “Frustration is present.” or “Impatience is arising.” And take a deep breath.
Joys and sorrows co-exist. Although it is understandable to want to avoid unpleasant, unwanted emotions, if we constantly turn away from them, we limit our capacity for compassion and cut ourselves off from the full experience of our humanity. Living in fear of parts of ourselves, we undermine our potential for peace. I would not describe myself as a naturally emotionally stable person. It has taken time, deliberate effort and a lot of practice to gain some ability to apply these skills to unwanted, unpleasant emotions. And I still work on it and learn. I am inspired by my niece, a social worker, who calls this “open hearted living.”
On this day, I was present with the sadness as it came and went. Sometimes it felt strong and tears would accompany the bodily sensations. I could rest my awareness with the simple sensation of tears running down my face. Other times sadness was a mild feeling of heaviness in my heart or was accompanied by a sensation of my shoulders being hunched and slouching, even when I made the effort to have good posture. Over the course of the day, the intensity increased and decreased and gradually diminished. “This is normal to feel sad,” I would tell myself and choose self-kindness and compassion. I would also remind myself, “Just like me, other people all over the world are feeling sad. I hold myself with compassion and send compassion to everyone else feeling sad today.” I love this “Just like me” practice because it enables me to use what is difficult in my life to lean toward wisdom, recognizing the universal human experience in my own struggles.
The next morning, when I awoke, sadness was not present. This does not mean it might not return later in the day or show its face in the future, but for that waking moment, it was not present.