Sadness is one of the basic emotions that each of us experiences when an emotional bond with someone important, but also with ourselves, is in danger. Sadness is, in fact, the name of the basic and generic emotion that is normally expressed with the lack of a smile and a languid look.
We feel sad because one of our basic needs has not been satisfied and, normally, we do not like this emotion very much because it brings with it a state of discomfort. In reality, this emotion, like all others, can be experienced with different degrees of intensity and there is no single typology of sadness. In this Psychology-Online article, we will discover what the different types of sadness are, their characteristics and examples.
Distress
One of the types of sadness that refers to a state of psychological and physical suffering characterized by intense feelings of anxiety and depression, diffuse fear, experienced by insecurity and imminent misfortune, also accompanied by physical, endocrinological and behavioral symptoms. Distress may be associated with the following factors:
- A temporary sensation: will decrease when the same condition that generated it comes to an end;
- Existential: a situation that can last over time and is associated with a strong feeling of fear and a feeling of imminent catastrophe. In this article, you will find more information about .
When this lasts over time it leads to states of intense melancholy, up to true depressive states. Anxiety can be correlated with various problems, which, throughout our existence, have never been adequately addressed.
Pain
There are times when the true essence of what we feel seems to be wrapped up in pain. These are moments in which, in addition to the total absence of a possible way out, we perceive that we are no longer the same as before. We have difficulty concentrating, we feel tired, uninterested or irritable.
Many people react this way to psychological pain. Is a normal reaction to adverse life events such as mourning, failures or important losses: it is the way in which we experience sadness, pain and loss.
When can sadness appear? On the one hand, perhaps someone happens to spend a lot of time in the past, living off of it, perhaps remembering happy periods from a past life that will never return. On the other hand, they also compare themselves to others, as if it seems that they live a happier and more satisfied life than us. We are stopped and blocked by our pain.
Mourning
If you are wondering what the types of sadness are, mourning is one of them. A condition, both subsequent and anticipated, to the loss of a loved one, but it is not necessarily linked to death, since even the breakup of a romantic relationship can provoke similar feelings of abandonment and loss. Grief related to a job loss which can create depressive and anxiety-like feelings and thoughts.
However, it should be noted that mourning loss is a normal and inevitable reaction that has its own evolution divided into phases:
- Daze and confusion with disbelief.
- Anger and the search for the loved one.
- Despair.
- Acceptance of loss.
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Despair
Energies go out, hopes become weaker and weaker, leaving us defenseless and empty in the face of situations to which we no longer know how to give any response. Desperation refers to abandonment of hope for salvation. In psychoanalysis and psychiatry it is a component of many “syndromes” and indicates a tremendous combination of sensations: a strange desire for death, mixed with a disarming feeling of smallness and futility that presents itself as the same.
Desperation is like wanting to die to escape from unbearable feeling of becoming aware of how small and weak you are. These are feelings that are sometimes also experienced with the people who are asked for help, to the extent that urgency, helplessness and a sense of danger almost assume the form of solid objects.
Suffering
There are different types of sadness. Suffering is a pain condition, which can affect both the body and the emotional life of the subject. It may arise directly from trauma, physical or emotional, or it may be an expression of a deeper inner affliction, for which it may be difficult or impossible to find an objective basis.
In particular, when the suffering is linked to an internal condition of the subject and is prolonged over time, that is, its intensity is such that it inhibits or damages the subject’s normal emotional and practical activity. It is a symptom of a psychological disorder, for example, in the pathological context of depression. In this article, we show you.
lack of hope
Those who are hopeless expect negative events to occur and positive events cannot occur in their future. Besides, They believe there is nothing they can do to change. this gloomy scene.
What feelings can we have with sadness? This negative attitude towards the future is often found in some psychopathological conditions such as depression, but increasingly it is also present among those who do not have established psychological disorders. The hopelessness It is characterized by several components:
- Non-objective future thinking.
- Limited ability to imagine positive future events.
- Impotence: feeling of inability to produce any significant change in one’s life and to be protagonists of this change. Feeling of uselessness and inevitability of a negative outcome that makes you feel like you can’t make changes.
- Lock on the – The pursuit of your own goals is hindered by feelings of surrender. A common thought in these cases may be the following: “I will never get what I want and need, and that is really horrible.” In view of
Impotence
As we have seen, there are different types of sadness. In this case, learned helplessness or learned helplessness is a state of mind in which a living being, after having been exposed to frequent adverse stimuli, becomes reluctant to avoid the next encounter with these same stimuli, even if they are avoidable.
This happens presumably because he has learned that, despite his efforts, can’t control the situation. If this condition of helplessness continues to occur in more contexts or spheres of life, the brain may learn that in that particular situation or event, there is nothing we can do except wait for the outcome to be totally fatalistic.
Therefore, helplessness indicates a situation of extreme helplessness, the conception that, to the detriment of everything that can be done, the situation will never change. We are at the mercy of fate and neither I nor anyone else can do anything to avoid the inevitable. To overcome this situation, you will find this article on .
Resignation
If we talk about types of sadness, resignation is an ambivalent feeling. This attitude towards life helps to restart after a crisis. When it becomes a habit that we adopt in all areas of life, it can cut the legs of even the most promising situations.
Although we usually associate resignation with an idea of defeat, of the irreversible loss of hope, knowing how to live this feeling in some situations often proves to be a winning weapon.
The resignation It becomes a negative function when it is preventive, that is, when it is already present before facing something, or when it is immediate and arises at the first difficulty of a journey or project. Some of the typical phrases of a person with resignation are: “I know it’s going to go wrong” or “I knew it was going to happen.” A prejudice about oneself and about reality that extends to others or to all areas of life.
Distraction
In this case, we are talking about one of the types of sadness known as distraction, a state of extreme worry, nervousness and confusion. It is also identified as the quality of being disturbed or agitated by doubt, by mental conflict or by pain.
Excessive distraction can be a message that our mind is sending us to signal a moment of strong stress or stress. If this becomes chronic we run the risk of having real emotional exhaustion.
Discouragement
Discouragement is a state of the psyche and the physical parameters related to the asthenic pole of human self-consciousness, which is characterized by presence of apathetic mood and depression. Absolute discouragement is characterized by reluctance to do something and lack of interest in your position and life. It is accompanied by a serious breakup and is a concomitant moment of one of the emotional sphere.
This state is an example of sadness that is characterized by loss of sense of time, when there are no prospects for the future and the emotional moments of the past are gradually erased. Each one becomes madly similar to the previous one – not only all hope or passion, but also the very image of the person is lost in this monotony.
Disappointment
Another type of sadness that we can encounter is disappointment. When a person tells us something that we do not share, we can react in different ways, depending on our mood, the trust we have with them and our usual passive, aggressive or assertive style of behavior. The disappointment, then, is that feeling of disgust and sometimes, of irritation due to a sudden setback.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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