Sadness - Coping Mechanisms

Coping Mechanisms

'The single mood people generally put most effort into shaking is sadness...Unfortunately, some of the strategies most often resorted to can backfire, leaving people feeling worse than before. One such strategy is simply staying alone'. Ruminating, and "drowning one's sorrows", may also be counterproductive. Being attentive and patient with sadness is one way for people to learn through solitude.

Two more positive alternatives have been recommended by cognitive therapy. 'One is to learn to challenge the thoughts at the center of rumination and think of more positive alternatives. The other is to purposely schedule pleasant, distracting events'.

Object relations theory by contrast stresses the utility of staying with sadness: 'it's got to be conveyed to the person that it's all right for him to have the sad feelings' – easiest done perhaps 'where emotional support is offered to help them begin to feel the sadness'. Such an approach is fuelled by the underlying belief that 'the capacity to bear loss wholeheartedly, without pushing the experience away, emerges...as essential to being truly alive and engaged with the world'.