Beautiful but sad feelings
In this post, I explain my relationship to enjoying feeling “bad” feelings. This is kind of a “why”, and I hope to soon write a “how” manual to be with me when I’m in this state.
Why Feel Difficult Feelings?
There are lots of “difficult” emotions: sadness, frustration, guilt, despondence, etc. People normally want to move past these emotions - not “wallow” in them - or figure out what to change to solve it. No one wants to feel bad. And often this works!
But, I find if I sit with an emotion, a kind of release happens, and the release feels good. Not just good, it feels profound, as in, it feels like there’s something beautiful and precious and delightful about it.
Another benefit is that I find the emotion also loses its sting. I feel more relaxed about the emotion and able to navigate the situations where the emotions come up. Whereas when I try to skip this phase, I often get stuck:
- The emotion keeps popping up (e.g. “I realise I’ve been feeling laziness/loneliness/jealousy/insecurity a lot recently.”)
- I keep getting into the same situation (e.g. “I struggle whenever my friends do Y even though I know I just need to X”)
- And I keep needing to remind myself whatever I had decided (e.g. “I need to remember to keep doing Z when I feel X”).
In this way, ironically, ignoring an emotion can lead you to wallow unproductively in it more; and not resisting it can be more productive. But that’s a second benefit.
The first benefit is what I want to focus on: The enjoyable and profound feeling of release that comes with a negative emotion.
Why Watch Sad Movies?
I think this is easier to understand by thinking about sad movies: Many people enjoy watching sad movies which make them cry. Why do you think they enjoy this?
I think at least part of it is the opportunity to experience a wide range of emotions (safely), feeling of empathic connection to someone else, recognition of what is precious or meaningful to you, and the emotional release from a good cry. PsychCentral appears to agree with this.
I think all of these things are available with emotions outside of sadness and outside of movies.
Examples of beautiful, difficult emotions
- L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. (song) - A song about the challenging lives that people live and the way they maintain hope and a lust for life. The YouTube comments speak to how this song helps people persist through death and sadness. I find it beautiful because it connects me with the pain throughout the world, and feel comforted by pain when I feel it.
- A Little Bit of Everything (song) - A song about the range of extreme emotions people experience over their life: hopelessness, regret, and love.
- Musicals like Next to Normal (e.g. the four songs from each family member You Don’t Know, I Am the One, Superboy and the Invisible Girl, and I’m Alive), Falsettos (e.g. What Would I Do), Fun Home (e.g. Telephone Wire) - Most musicals are great at evoking emotional catharsis - each of these has a character grappling with anger or sadness or resentment or giving in to toxic beliefs at something they’ve lost.
- The Sitter (book) - I am enjoying this book. One thing is it lets me sit with the horribleness of being a wife without the financial or other independence to live without one’s husband. And the general feeling of trappedness and loss of opportunity.
- Feeling guilty or embarrassed - The above are all others’ emotions being experienced vicariously/empathetically. But one’s own bad feelings like guilt are also a meaningful experience, and they too can be beautiful to notice the intensity of. I also find this can be the most effective way to overcome it (that “second benefit” described above).
- Gendlin’s Focusing - A bit harder to describe. The process is that you feel in your body and your heart what experience you’re having, and you try to find the perfect word which captures that “felt sense”. Once you have it, you experience a kind of release and relief and lightness.