Metaphors for dealing with sadness
A couple years ago, when I was pretty new to trauma therapy, I began to identify that I felt sad. All the time. Even when I was laughing, my gut felt sad. I came to picture this sadness as a deep, terrifying well of sadness that lingered below the public-facing aspects of my person.
I was afraid to look too long at it, lest I discover sea monsters in the depths. I shied away from the shore, preferring to work with the parts of myself that were smaller, discrete, more manageable.
I thought the well had always been there.
I thought the well would always be there.
I didn’t have much experience with a life in its absence.
I accepted the sadness as normal, when I even thought about it. Like the feel of hard pants on my legs when I’m used to wearing them, it was an unremarkable sensation. But therapy, using tools like IFS and EMDR, helped me actually look inside and notice the sensations. Once I began to pay attention to the sadness, I could no longer ignore it..in the same way that a pandemic spent in leggings followed by the switch back to jeans and dress slacks made me pay attention to the constriction of the seams. Made me breathe deeply into my stomach and notice the tightness of the waistband.
As EMDR work desensitized and reprogrammed some traumatic memories, and as IFS work unburdened the wounded parts of myself that carried the hardest and most uncomfortable emotions, I began to experience moments without sadness, here and there. I felt more relief and lightness and space inside.
The well of sadness began to drain.
I was living in a situation that was continually adding to the sadness, but I didn’t realize that while I was there. It was only when I got free and felt the lightness that I could look back and see the murky water.
I continued processing trauma and pain in therapy, and one day I realized I was happy. I looked inside to the depths where I hadn’t peered in a while and was shocked to see that the well of sadness was dry.
I didn’t realize that my healing work had been bailing it bucket by bucket. I didn’t notice I had emptied out the entire thing until it was gone.
Life has had difficulties this year. I’ve felt frustrated, impatient, confused, unsure, irritated, and discouraged. But I haven’t really felt sad. The emotion that I assumed would always be there…wasn’t.
This past week, I noticed a sadness part of me who seemed new. I asked who she was — I didn’t understand why I had such a sad part since the well of sadness is dry. She said, you’re right, it is gone. She was the memory of sadness. She was there to remind me what it felt like to be sad. I realized she was protecting a wounded part of me that was stuck in a memory of a year and a half ago, when the sadness was the deepest. She was carrying sadness and she wanted my attention.
So I finally listened to what she wanted to tell me, and she asked, “Why won’t you let me grieve?”
I had been enjoying the happiness so much that I kept pushing away the lingering sadness in these memories. I wasn’t ready to process them. Until I was.
Which is now, I guess. I have enough distance that this part is ready for me to remember, to remember the sadness, and finally let go of those last drops as well.
What does sadness feel like for you? Do you notice it often?
