The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Embracing Sadness in the Pursuit of Happiness

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

We react to sadness in a variety of unhelpful ways. We try to suppress it. We experience guilt over it and apologise to the people around us for feeling it. We assume it means we've failed. We even fear it.But sadness will touch us all - and to be happier and more resilient we need to accept the emotion and work with it to make our lives better. Journalist Helen Russell (author of How to be Sad: Everything I've Learned About Getting Happier by Being Sad Better.) joins Dr Laurie Santos to explain why our view of sadness needs to be rehabilitated.You can purchase her book, How To Be Sad at - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-to-be-sad-helen-russell?variant=33051661762594 - and follow her @MsHelenRussell on social media platforms.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. innocent question. How are you? My default answer feels pretty automatic. I'm fine. How are you? Now, don't get me wrong. A lot of the time, I am fine. But there are also days when I'm really down about something. And when people try to check in on those days, my first instinct is to keep whatever sadness I'm going through to myself. Kind of like a stiff upper lip thing. Not mentioning it when we're feeling low seems like what we're supposed to do. But of like a stiff upper lip thing. Not mentioning it when we're feeling low seems like what we're supposed to do. But the science shows that when it comes to emotions like sadness, the reflex to put on a happy face is actually making us feel worse. Our silence about feeling blue also means that we're missing out on opportunities to make meaningful connections

with the people around us, whether they're close friends or even total strangers. So in this episode in our series on difficult emotions, we'll say to heck with the stiff upper lip mantra. We're going to start talking about sadness. We'll find out what our everyday sorrows are trying to tell us, and we'll learn what we can do to feel sad better. You're listening to The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. listening to The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. Our guide today into the world of sadness is journalist Helen Russell. Helen is the author of a recent book entitled How to Be Sad, Everything I've Learned About Getting Happier by Being Sad Better. Before Helen got into the

sadness beat, she spent a lot of her journalistic career writing about happiness. She penned a lot of magazine articles that made achieving happiness sound like a holy grail. I've been working in women's magazines for about 12 years at this point. And every feature in some way or another was really at its core trying to look at how we could get happier. And it felt as though that was something we were all aiming for. But none of us were quite getting there. And I was living in a big city, you know, it was a big stressful job and a stressful life and living at a fast pace, as many people do in cities. So this idea that there could be another way of life was really

haunting me. So back when we could travel and I would give talks or go to book events and people would ask, how can I be happy? And this was often at times in their life when really, really tough things had happened. So I had someone who'd recently lost a loved one, people who'd been made redundant or been made homeless or suffered a bad breakup. And still there was a sense of, well, how can I be happy? And it just struck me that there seemed to be no bandwidth there to say, actually, maybe we're not supposed to be happy right now. Maybe sadness is what we're supposed to feel when we experience loss or disappointment. But this seemed culturally unacceptable,

or at least not what people wanted. And I became fascinated by this. I just thought, that can't be. It can't be that we shut down one big swathe of our emotions. And I've done it myself over years of pursuing happiness and trying to find out all I can about it. There is this real reluctance to be sad. And I just found that really interesting and wondered where that had come from, what effect it had on us and how we could be living a little better and in a happier way ultimately by embracing our sadness too. Although this was something that you personally struggled with a lot. I mean, if you're comfortable sharing it, I'd love to hear your story of the very bad thing that really

affected your whole life up till now, right? Yeah, of course. So growing up, it was me and my mom and my dad, and I had a baby sister. And then just before I turned three, my sister died of sudden infant death syndrome. And nobody really talked about it. This was in the early 80s. There was still this idea of almost keep calm and carry on. What you don't talk about can't hurt you. And nobody talked about it. No one talked about it to my mom. No one talked about it to me. My parents split up just a few months after. Nobody really talked about that either. Suddenly, my dad wasn't there anymore. And within the space of three months, I'd lost my sister. I'd lost my dad. Nobody talked about it. We all just tried to be cheerful and just to carry on.

And really, we tried to sort of get our validation from outside. I went to all just tried to be cheerful and just to carry on. And really, we tried to sort of get our validation from outside. I went to school and tried to be a massive people pleaser and just tried other ways to make my mom happy. And we all just carried on using all of the crutches that you might imagine to anesthetize that pain and to distract ourselves. And yes, it took a long time through all of my research into happiness and trying to understand from a journalist's perspective, just digging into the different fields and the science out there to really come to terms with the fact that I had been running away as well from sadness and that I also had this massive reluctance. And digging deeper into that, I came to understand that

actually that loss really early on and that inability to properly grieve that loss has impacted on so many different areas of my life. And this just feels like something I don't want anyone else to have to go through. There's a way that we can get better about talking about this kind of thing than we should. So the first step in talking about it, I guess, is to define it. And so, how would you define this idea of sadness? What is sadness? Well, I would say that sadness is the temporary emotion that we feel on occasions we've been hurt or something is wrong in our lives. It's like a message.

It can tell us when something is wrong, that sort of niggling feeling. But we do have to listen. If we don't listen, it's more likely to tip into something more serious. And also, it's more likely to stay with us for longer. So depression is a chronic mental illness that needs help. And spoiler alert,'s more likely to stay with us for longer. So depression is a chronic mental illness that needs help. And spoiler alert, I've experienced that as well. But sadness can be awakening. So I want to be really clear on the distinction between sadness and depression. And of course, yeah, depression, you're going to need help. But normal sadness,

we will all experience that at some time or another. And if we don't know how to handle it, then it's going to feel very isolating. And I think the idea that what we don't talk about can't hurt us is really problematic because we know now from studies that actually suppressing negative thoughts doesn't work. It can make us feel worse. And experiencing this temporary sadness counterintuitively can make us happier. We have a greater attention to detail, increased perseverance. We're more generous. We're more grateful for what we've got. And actually, it's quite a creative time. When everything's fine, there is no impetus almost to do anything different. We'll do that same thing again because it made us happy. But when we are sad, it's almost

a problem-solving type emotion. We're thinking about our next step. So it really serves a purpose as well. And yeah, I'm here to rehabilitate sadness. I love this idea of rehabilitating sadness, but I wanted to get to another misconception about sadness that I think so many of us have, which is that it only comes during awful circumstances. So a sibling dies, your parents get divorced. But one of the things I loved about your book is that you often talk about cases where good things are happening and sadness can come up. So tell me a little bit about this arrival fallacy that you talk about in your book. Yes. So I love this idea. I think many of us will think that the big events in life, the big kind of greeting card events like marriage or having a

baby, that these are the times we're supposed to feel happiest. And often when we get there, we perhaps don't. And then we feel a sense of anticlimax. We feel happiest. And often when we get there, we perhaps don't. And then we feel a sense of anticlimax. We feel guilty often. There is shame attached to it. So Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar from Harvard coined the term arrival fallacy to describe this anticlimax or almost like summit syndrome. You get to the top of that mountain, it doesn't feel the way you hoped. And I spoke to mountaineers and adventurers and extreme athletes and many people who are setting themselves these challenges and they'd reach their goal, they'd get to the North Pole and look around and feel, oh, it looks a bit shoddy, it looks a bit

shabby. And it never quite measures up, which makes sense from a scientific point of view. The dopamine is in the chase. When we get the thing we want, we feel nothing, it drops off. the chase and when we get the thing we want, we feel nothing, it drops off. But it's very hard to remember that in normal life. So I think arrival fallacy was originally coined to talk about things perhaps in a work context or these big goals, but it can just as easily apply to things like marriage or becoming a parent or being in a long-term relationship or getting that promotion. The more typical things that many of us will experience in our life that we think will bring us happiness, but actually can make us feel quite flat and aren't all they seem. So I certainly experienced this when after years of infertility, I finally managed to get pregnant. And I thought, well, now all my problems will go away because now

I got the thing I wanted. It will be the sound of music forevermore. And of course, that's not the case. Being a new parent is hard. I was very sleep deprived. My small child shouted at me a lot. So although I was very grateful, there was a real sense of shame thinking, well, why aren't I happy? This was what I wanted. I got it. Why aren't I happy? And the same with relationships. Relationships are hard. And I think it's really helpful to talk about these things so that we don't feel that shame and that guilt and feel so alone. We're all experiencing this. hate it. But you've really argued that we can be sad well, that our current approach to negative emotions is not working. Talk to me a little bit about why the current approach isn't doing for us what we need it to do. So the Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner famously led a thought experiment in

1987 where subjects were told not to think about white bears. This was inspired by Dostoevsky, the Russian writer, who wrote, try to pose for yourself this task not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute. And so he started doing these tests that if you ask someone not to think about something, they will think about it more, and found that actually trying not to think about difficult emotions can backfire spectacularly. So it's not just that we perhaps don't want to feel sad. There's no point resisting that sadness because it will pop up somewhere. There's no getting away from it. The University of New South Wales have found these positive things about allowing for temporary sadness. It's also an emotion of connection. It's often when we feel

closest to each other and there's value in it. Darwin denied the usefulness of tears, but actually studies now show that when we cry, we lower our levels of cortisol, we are soothing ourselves, we're expressing our emotion. So it all has a value. And I think culturally, we can learn a lot from the way other cultures handle their sadness. So you say we don't want to feel sad, but actually that's a particularly American point of view. Americans are outliers in their desire to minimize and avoid sadness at all costs. Whereas in other cultures, there is more of an acceptance of sadness. In East Asian culture, for example, it's more accepted that you can feel happy and sad at the same time. There is more nuance, more ambiguity, more granularity. I spoke to researchers in Russia where actually there is

real value placed on being sad. It's considered quite a positive thing. The Russian professor Yulia Chernsova-Dutton, the idea that being sad makes you a better person in Russia. So I think that's really helpful to remember. We've all read the research that, you know, happier people are healthier. But actually, again, that's in the US where people experiencing lower positive emotions have perhaps higher BMIs, less healthy blood lipid profiles. I'm from the UK, where it's a similar approach to the US. But if you look at Japan, it makes no difference. You can feel sad and be absolutely fine.

So it's a cultural thing. It's how we feel about being sad that impacts that. Being sad only makes you sick if you're terrified of being sad. When we get back from the break, we'll hear more about what we tend to get wrong when it comes to sadness and how we can all be sad a little better. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Experiencing sadness is uncomfortable, sometimes really uncomfortable. It's one of those negative emotions that we just don't like to tolerate. It's not just that we hate being sad. It's almost like we're afraid of it.

But author Helen Russell says that our phobia of sadness is pretty backwards, so much so that it sometimes astonishes her. I find this absolutely fascinating because I think it all goes back to childhood. When we're scared growing up, we're often told there's nothing to be afraid of. Or when we hurt ourselves, we're told to be brave or we're told don't cry. And we are educated out of our emotions. Many kids, one of the first things they'll taste after milk is some sort of painkiller, some sort of pain relief. And often that's prescribed ahead of vaccinations, for example, as a prophylactic, as this idea of just in case. So the idea that you should never experience or tolerate pain if you can avoid it starts from zero. And it means that

we don't build up that resilience. We don't learn to tolerate that discomfort and that pain and those difficult parts of life. And this plays out in adulthood where many of us really struggle to have difficult conversations, something we've had to have more of in the last 18 months. And I think that's really problematic. There's also something to do with the way children are raised in terms of risk and freedom to roam, for example, and freedom in general, where you see that compared to the 1970s, children are not allowed to run wild in a forest and climb a tree and fall down and hurt themselves. We are much more fearful of strangers. We're much more fearful of letting our

children roam free. And this can have a detrimental effect as well. Studies from Aarhus University in Denmark and from Norway show that if we let children indulge in risky play or play in nature, and not sort of talking juggling knives, although they pretty much do that with the Vikings, but we're talking like climb a tree, fall down, cut your knee, that's really helpful in terms of building resilience and reducing psychiatric problems in later life. And it's something that is sort of minimized, is not really taken seriously. So, you know, the idea of the mollycoddling of the American mind, we see that in action in every playground around the US and in the UK right now. Yeah. And so one of the

issues is that we're phobic about being sad. But another one is that we kind of feel guilty about it. There's this idea that we're supposed to be able to fix sadness. I think it ties into what you were just saying about the fact that we start medicating things really early on. But I guess in lots of parts of our lives, there's just this idea that if something feels bad, you just fix it. But that kind of doesn't work with sadness, you've argued. Yeah. I mean, you sort of have to sit with it. And I guess there's no business case in that, is there? There's no one's going to make money from that. There's no business case in that is there there's no one's going to make money from that there's no commercial gain in that there's it's purely you're just going to have to sit with it for a while and I'm not talking you know long-term things where you are feeling really low and you are meeting criteria for depression I'm talking normal sadness it is uncomfortable and we

do have to sit with it but as you say there are things that we can do that will help so music we know that music has been shown to reduce stress and depression and anxiety, but actually music can be a really good companion in our sadness. So we're not trying to minimize that sadness or ignore it or numb it out or push it away, but we can feel less alone. And I think the same is true with books as well. You have that empathy. You're reading about a character that's going through something perhaps similar or perhaps completely different, but you're also putting yourselves in their shoes and feeling their sadness. So that can be a really helpful thing when we're feeling sad.

We're not pushing it away, but we're going with it with a companion of sorts. I love that idea. So a third thing that can sometimes happen when we're feeling sad is that we experience sadness and we feel ashamed. We tend to view sadness like we're a total failure. And this was something that you experienced after your fertility treatments, correct? That there's this idea it's not just kind of shameful in this odd way to go through that, but it's also shameful to be sad about it. Yes. I mean, to be fair, I was also having my legs in stirrups naked from the waist down about three times a week for fertility treatments. And so shame is such an interesting one because it makes sense. Shame has a purpose in terms of encouraging us not to do things that will mean we are ostracized from the group. It's a social thing. I have been socialized not to be naked from the waist down with my legs in the air. That has helped me get through many things in life. Unfortunately, I had to go through it at that point to have the babies, which society was also telling me I should have.

So I felt shame about that as well. But it's a really difficult one. And then, as you say, shame about feeling our emotions, I think, is really problematic. I spoke to lots of people who'd experienced tough things in their lives. And I spoke to a woman who had lost a child. And she described telling someone she hadn't seen since she'd lost her baby. And having to almost support this woman, this sort of well-meaning woman who was just so sad to hear about what had happened.

But then she became embarrassed. And so having to apologize for feeling sad and feel a sort of shame around it just seems an extra burden at the very time when we really don't need anything else to be dealing with. So yeah, shaking off a shame and not apologizing for our sadness. By all means, apologize if you've done something wrong, but no one should apologize for feeling. So I think that's something we can all be aware of and watch in ourselves and other people as well. And so these are the kinds of ways we get sadness wrong.

You know, we feel guilty, we feel ashamed, we're scared of it. But you've argued that with the right strategies, we really can be sad better. I wanted you to share the story of your mom that you shared in the book, the idea of the washing machine breaking for what it tells us about social connection and how that can help us be sad better. Yes. So my mom was feeling very alone. She had lost her daughter. She had lost her husband. And there was almost this idea that her grief was contagious. So the other mums would barely speak to her. And she just felt completely alone, stuck with me, with a little three-year-old at home. And she told me years later, in a very matter-of-fact way, well, of course, that's why I ended up talking to the Whirlpool Man. And I said, sorry, what was that? And she said, oh,

you know, the Whirlpool Man. I had no idea what she was talking about. And she said, well, after your sister died, I didn't know who I could talk to. Nobody wanted to talk about sad things. I was expected to just carry on. And so at the time she had a service contract with the washing machine and it broke down and the guy had come to fix it. This one service guy had come whilst she had been pregnant with my sister. When my sister had been tiny, he'd had to hold her while she made a cup of tea or popped to the bathroom or something. And she just felt she needed to speak to somebody who had met her, who had known her, however fleetingly. And so she got a stick and broke the washing machine to get him back.

So she really gave that drum a good poke to just get him back there and talk to him. And to his credit, bless him, he did. He listened to her and listened to her pain and drank tea with her. And I think she did it a couple more times as well. And the washing machine worked in the end. But also she did it a couple more times as well. And the washing machine worked in the end, but also she was able to have someone to talk to, which part of me, my heart breaks that that was all she had. But also the kindness of strangers, I mean, just warms my heart, this idea that this guy with no connection to our family just really helped my mum when she was at

her lowest ebb. I will be forever grateful to him. And I think we all know someone like that. We all have a whirlpool man of one kind or another, someone, a stranger, a kind person who has helped us when we're feeling at our most low. And once I'd heard this from my mum, I started speaking to psychologists about it. And they shared as well that especially with the lack of access to talking therapy for so many people, that really the important thing is speaking to somebody who will listen. They don't have to be a professional. It's speaking to somebody who will listen without interruption, without judgment. So for me, that really cemented the idea of everybody trying to get a buddy.

We haven't got a support network, perhaps, where we feel we can talk to family members or friends, just having one person. And it may be the kindness of strangers. We often tell strangers our secrets, and there's lots of research into that. It's just the person who's there. But having someone we can talk to just feels so important. And that fits with so much of the research that shows the power of social connection for boosting happiness, but also for helping us overcome negative emotions too, right? Yeah. And the connections, I've been really struck during the pandemic. We know the power of these weak connections, but how much we miss those when they're gone. It takes much more effort,

I think, to dial someone up on a Zoom call than to pass them in the street and shoot the breeze for a little bit. So I'm really glad that my mum had that. And I try to encourage more of that in my life and the people I care about life, just having people that you see often and that you can connect with. But facing up to the guilt, shame and loneliness that accompany sadness is just the first step. When we get back from the break, we'll hear more of Helen's simple strategies for how to be sad better. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Author Helen Russell is on a mission to make us all be sad better. She wants us to start talking about what we're feeling,

to challenge the guilt, shame, and loneliness that sadness can bring. But more than anything, Helen wants us to commit to stop fighting our sadness. It's a lesson that she learned the hard way. Many of the things that we do to try and fight sadness are actually ways to avoid feeling. And it's a numbing out, which doesn't really help. If we attempt to deny or block out a spectrum of our emotions, we can dissociate from ourselves. And if we're taught that being sad is bad, we dissociate from that feeling. And there's strong links between dissociation and addiction because we try to

anesthetize ourselves or numb out our feelings. So for me as a teenager, it was busyness in school and then it was alcohol and then it was not eating enough and then it was exercising too much. I was dogged in my determination to self-destruct because it was just this sort of, I cannot stop because if you keep yourself busy to avoid pain, the moment you stop, the sadness will come flooding back. And I did not let that happen, but it doesn't go anywhere. So it builds and it will peek through when you're least expecting it. So yes, my teenage years and my 20s are somewhat of a blur. And I was a journalist at the swan song, I'd say, of the daytime drinking, big long lunches, a lot of money in publishing. It's not like that anymore. But yeah, I would go on press

trips and it would just be partying hard, which I'm a small woman and it did not go well. And I was not able to cope with that at all. Even sometimes coping strategies that seem good on the surface are really bad. You know, you mentioned this with busyness in school. You know, this is one that I definitely have. I think, you know, the times that I'm experiencing the most sadness, the most other negative emotions tend to be the time that I become like most workaholic, like I'm just pouring my energy into like work, work, work. But, you know, even that is problematic, right? Yeah, which is strange because we are often rewarded for it, right? Rest is not valued in our society. Activity is prized over inactivity. But actually, we need rest. Rest is the time that we restore

ourselves to factory settings. And I think we don't measure productivity by how many acres we harvest anymore. So the amount of time we spend working becomes a proxy. And I grew up in the 1980s and 90s, you know, under Margaret Thatcher, it was all sort of aim higher and Gordon Gekko and greed is good. And this idea of aiming higher and doing more all the time and the cult of presenteeism, which we talk about in a work context. But yeah, I mean, I've been probably doing that since the age of 13, just every extracurricular activity I could sign up for. And the idea of perfectionism was almost the one acceptable flaw that you could talk about on your CV or in a job interview. And any of us who grew up with that as a lodestar, it's really problematic and it's hard to shake off. And I certainly really struggled with that, this idea of if I am a good girl, if I am perfect,

then things will start going my way, then I can be happy. But it doesn't work like that. And studies now show that perfectionism leads to anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, insomnia, indigestion, I think even early death. So, you know, really not a good thing. But this has all come to me latterly. So, yeah, I've learned some of these lessons the hard way for sure. And another lesson I think you talked about learning the hard way was the third way that we can be sad better, which is that we have to fight this shame part. You've argued that we can do that by being a little bit more vulnerable. It's really interesting. The moments when I have been most vulnerable and been most

honest about how I'm feeling are the moments of deepest and purest connection with the people who are close to me in my life and then with the people I interact with for work. So I hadn't really talked about experiencing depression much before. And then I did a TED talk in 2019 and I just said it then. And it was really interesting that we like to tell ourselves that there isn't a stigma around bereavement, around depression, around all of these things, but still there's so much resistance. And it's the one in four. Many of us are going to experience mental health problems. It doesn't mean that we are less good at our job. If anything, it means that I get it. I know what works, what doesn't. I know what it feels like. So being vulnerable and owning who we are is really helpful. We also need to fight this idea that we should be apologizing for feeling sad. You saw this with a friend at work in a kind of really sad way, right? Yeah. I mean, people in my team would apologize. I had one guy

who he was on a bike and he got run down by a car and his first words were, oh, I'm sorry, you just got hit by a car. And then another colleague, her boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer and she sort of apologized. And I said, no it's fine you go home go be with him and there was this idea of i'm so i'm sorry i'm sorry about this and it becomes a verbal tick but also i think we mean it often we are saying sorry for our emotion for letting that awkward leaky emotion come out of us when we feel we are supposed to be this glossy hard shell on the outside so i think yeah we have to not apologize for feeling. We apologize if we've done something wrong, but not for feeling. And then in addition to sort of

making sure we're not kind of letting our shame weaken to all these apologies, you've also argued that we need to kind of do some work inside our own head. You've argued we need to shut off what I think you lovingly call shit FM. What is your shit FM? Oh, shit FM. So my friend Jill and I, she became my whirlpool man, somebody I was able to rely on as a regular body in the room who would listen without interruption and I would do the same for her. But shit FM is what we took to describing that niggling voice that's in your head that sometimes for a couple of days will be sort of tuned into a frequency that tells you, oh, things aren't going so well, or you're not really doing a good job there, or you really messed that up. What an idiot. And if Shit.fm is playing for more

than a couple of days, then it's time to take action. And we will send a message and it'll be even just a coffee emoji. And then you know that there's going to be a summit and there will be a meeting of minds and we will talk and not try and fix anything but just listen we all have a version of shit fm in our heads no matter what it is it's your particular worry or the things that niggle you there will be something and i think if we are aware of that that it's not us our feelings are not us it's just shit shit FM that sometimes comes on. And so a final thing that you've mentioned can be really powerful for being sad better is this idea of acceptance. What is acceptance and why is it so powerful?

I think acceptance is really the fundamental idea that it's going to be a part of life. We've almost changed our definition of happiness. I spoke to a psychologist recently about differences between positive psychology and toxic positivity. But I think in the popular consciousness and perhaps in the media, this sort of idea of good vibes only or it's all going to be okay. And sometimes it won't. And I feel like there are a lot of self-help books about you just manifest this future where everything's okay. And then if it doesn't work out, that's probably your fault. And you probably didn't manifest it hard enough.

I think that's just so problematic and makes us feel shame again, as though maybe we have done something wrong. And there's so much structural and institutional inequality. I like the old Aristotle idea about a good life requiring us to also have a big dose of good luck. One of the seven things he thought we needed to have a big dose of good luck. One of the seven things he thought we needed to have a good life was good luck, because even the best life can be rendered unhappy by a tragedy, and that's not our fault. And I think that gets lost a lot, so that when bad things happen, it's not necessarily our fault, and we have to accept them. And there may not be a plan. I was raised in a religious home, I was raised

Catholic and I think for many of us there is this idea of it's God's plan or it's part of a plan or the universe or manifesting or whatever it may be for you and your belief system. I think acceptance that sometimes sad things happen and that is just really sad is helpful and it doesn't make us any lesser. Any tips for achieving that kind of acceptance? Because one of the things I love about your book is that you go through so many sad things from your sister's death to your parents' divorce to the long infertility you faced. But you've kind of come out on the other side accepting that bad things are okay, that I can feel sadness and it won't destroy me. I mean, excessive drinking, that's not really

going to help you on your way. I'll save you the trouble there. But yeah, I think for me, the perspective part was a big help. And that came in terms of thinking geographically and understanding more about sadness around the world and the different cultural approaches and that the things that we think are a product of our education and the way we have been socialized. It doesn't mean that they are the be-all and end-all. And then also a historical perspective I found really helpful. At one point, I was laid up on bed rest and I had to real deep dive into the history of sadness

and the history of our emotions, which is really interesting as well. And you realize, actually, it's relatively recent, our current ideas about happiness. And then for me, the reading and taking my culture vitamins and trying to just use these tools for emotional arousal. So if I feel on the verge of crying, then I will watch a film that will push me over the edge or listen to a piece of music that will feel like a companion in my sadness. And even when I felt like I was doing all the right things, when I was still working too hard, even though I was exercising and I was eating well and I was trying to talk about my feelings, if I was working too hard, then that was out of whack as well. This

balance, which is not very exciting, but balance is important. And then I think the final piece of the jigsaw for me was doing something for someone else, which feels like sort of an old-fashioned idea of the do-gooder. And in The Simpsons, Ned Flanders, no one wants to be Ned Flanders, no one wants to be the do-gooder. But actually, itpsons, Ned Flanders, no one wants to be Ned Flanders. No one wants to be the do-gooder. But actually, it's really important. We see the science behind things like warm glow giving or helpers high. It makes us feel better. We should do things for other people because it's the right thing to do, but also it will make us feel better. And if we're sad and we just do ourselves, the chances are we'll still be sad. So for me me a big part of the piece was trying to work with

other families who've experienced baby loss for example and a lot of the people i interviewed in the book actually through the course of their own sadness journey they found a way that was specific to them to find a cause that they really cared about and find a way to help and i think that really helps with the acceptance and how to be sad well, because we are doing something useful with that sadness. Not to say that things always happen for a reason, but if you're going to go through that suffering of any degree, there's no hierarchy of sadness, but whatever it is for you, that you then understand it, you have that empathy. And if you can share that with someone or do something useful with that, that feels worthwhile. And do you think that through finding sadness a little bit more useful, being less afraid of it and maybe using it for the problem-solving reason,

it evolved in the first place that we can all be a little bit happier, ironically, by accepting sadness? I really do. I think it makes you more brave and fearless because the pursuit of happiness, there are moments of joy and there will be moments where we'll feel lifted. But if there's always that niggling, oh, but make sure you stay happy because, oh, if you feel sad, oh, that's not going to feel good. If you're not afraid of sadness, it's incredibly liberating and you can live your life really. And you're going to experience greater highs because you're not afraid of those lows as well. So yeah, I do think it's, the science bears out in my experience that actually, yeah, if we allow ourselves to

experience sadness, we can be happier too. Hearing Helen describe all the ways we get everyday sadness wrong made me realize that I need to commit to dealing with sorrow in a more productive way. It gave me hope that we can all be sad better. After talking with Helen, I'm going to try to notice when I'm feeling sad and watch for those times when I'm using hyper-busyness to block it out. And if I recognize that I'm feeling particularly avoidant, I'll see if I can commit to just gently sitting with my feelings for a couple minutes. I'm also going to try being more honest with the people around me when I'm feeling blue. I'm going to try to open up more when one of my metaphorical whirlpool repair dudes provides a caring ear. And I'll remind myself that I can be the whirlpool repair gal for those I care

about. I'll start by becoming more curious. When I ask that standard how are you question, I might even offer a bit of a follow-up. I mean, how are you really? I hope you've learned some strategies today that you can use to feel sad better. And I hope you'll come back to join me for the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. episode of The Happiness Lab is co-written and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily Ann Vaughn, and Courtney Guarino. Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by Evan Viola.

Special thanks to Mia LaBelle, Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Carly Migliore, Christina Sullivan, Brant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserve, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Dr. Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.