Many of us will think that the big events in life, the big kind of greeting card events like marriage or having a baby 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 anti climax. We feel guilty. Often there is shame attached to it. Doctor talben shahar from harvard coined the term arrival fallacy to describe this anticlimax,. You get to the top of that mountain, it doesn't feel the way you hoped. It's very hard to remember that in normal life.
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.
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