Is Your Attachment To Sadness Keeping You Stuck?

Photogrph by Fernando Cabral on Pexels

Sometimes I think the sad songs I listen to don’t help my mood.

There is some science that says it’s cathartic and I feel that sometimes, but most of the time I just think I’m digging myself a hole listening to the same songs that recounts the same stories of trauma, loss, hopeless love, and identity crisis. Whilst sad music has it’s catharsis, it can also worsen depressive symtpoms, studies show.

I sometimes think about deleting the sad songs but when I go into my 2500 song Spotifly playlist, I look at my beloved sad songs and think, “I don’t want to let you go!”, and so I don’t.

I’m like Golumn in Lord of the Rings, holding on to the One Ring like it’s life or death, even though I’d probably feel better if I let the wretched thing go and took a walk outside or something.

But I can’t let the sadness go, because I’m attached to it — just like Golumn.

A Sad Identity: The Devil We Know

I guess there’s a comfort and sense of familiarity with what we’ve always known. If sadness has been a consistent emotion in our childhood, our identity can grow around it.

Here, we get used to feeling sad, and even make peace with the reality of that we’re just a sad person. We might even find advantages to…