On Sadness and Crying

I use babies as an example of how we are naturally built to just feel feelings and how they do not harm us.

If a baby feels sad, they just cry.

They don’t have any story about the sadness or the crying and we can see that far from damaging them, it helps return them to balance.

In the very next moment they can be peacefully sleeping or smiling and laughing.

Babies haven’t yet learned a story that sadness is to be avoided, or that it means we are not okay or not tough enough.

NOT feeling sadness when it’s there makes us less, rather than more, resilient. It’s really hard to access new ideas about how to move forward when we are using our energy trying to avoid an uncomfortable feeling.

When we have learned a story that feelings like sadness are not acceptable, we are going to use any way we know to avoid feeling them.

Guess what happens then?

The feeling just gets stuck.

And, as I share with children participating in the Resilience for All programme, stuck feels yuck!

It’s where we end up irritated and acting out – and this is true for children as well as adults. It’s like we’re trying to hold a beach ball under water and it gets more and more difficult.

The beauty and connection that comes from allowing our children to cry when they need to, rather than stopping it because WE feel uncomfortable about it, builds trust and pays dividends for the child, the parent, the relationship between them and, in my opinion, the world. And it’s never too late to start.