Dr Sibu Qhogwana

Sadness can be a challenging emotion to process, because it demands a lot from the system. As a result a natural response to sadness is to avoid it, because we want it to disappear as quickly as possible.  Instead of avoiding or denying sadness, we need to learn to process it as an emotion. After all, like all the other emotions sadness is also a thermometer for our mental health, as it provides us with useful feedback regarding our mental wellbeing.  We can learn to process sadness in the following ways: 1. Recognise and acknowledge sadness as an emotion: Locate it: How do you know that you are sad?  For example is your mood low?are you feeling drained? 2. Normalise sadness as an emotion: It is okay to feel sad and it is okay to express sadness. It is also okay to name it and it is okay to cry when you are sad.  3. Identify sadness triggers: Where is it coming from?What you have experienced, seen or heard or what have you been thinking about? How have you been think...

A starting point in managing emotions is to normalise and recognise emotions as part of our mind and body system. It is normal to feel and express emotions. Emotions affirm our humanity and can often be resourceful as they provide us with useful feedback that propel us into action or even change. Some emotions are challenging to process, because they demand a lot from the mind-body system, for example anger, sadness and anxiety. This does not mean that we need to deny or avoid these emotions, we also need to recognise them as part of mind-body system.  What we need to be mindful of is the extremes in how emotions are experienced and expressed and how these extremes affect our mental health and our actions. We then need to learn to manage these emotions. We discuss this more next time on the blog.