Who Are You Anger?
Anger.
For most of us, this is an easy emotion to understand and picture. Much of what people associate with anger are actually behaviours – things like yelling, becoming violent, name-calling, etc.
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We have all experienced sadness at some point in our lives. The death of a family member or pet, a difficult health diagnosis or missing out on an important event, sadness is part of everyone’s life.
As with the rest of our posts in the Who Are You Emotions series, let’s look at (1) externalizing sadness and (2) understanding what sadness communicates to us.
Have you ever watched the Pixar movie Inside Out? This movie explores the core emotions of the main character Riley and personifies each emotion inside of her brain.
Sadness is a blue character, wearing a thick cozy sweater, and thick-rimmed glasses. She is often hunched over, looking at the ground, and talking in a slow, deep voice.
When I think about externalizing sadness, I think about this character. What does your sadness look like?
If you have not watched Inside Out, it is a great movie to watch. More than just giving us a picture of what emotions look like, it has a great message about how we need all our emotions – including sadness. Sadness, like our other emotions, is communicating something important to us.
Sadness tells us that we have lost or are missing something.
Sadness wants to remind us that something that really matters to us is now no longer there. For a child, this might be losing their favourite toy or missing their best friend’s birthday party. Perhaps as an adult, a deteriorating relationship, a poor performance review at work, or the death of a family member.
Like all emotions, coping with sadness can be done using our three Rs:
We know it takes work to recognize, regulate and respond to emotions. If you need some help, reach out, we are here when you are ready.