Why Sadness Can Feel Safe?
As a licensed clinical social worker, Alexia Eller, LCSW, has dedicated her career to helping individuals heal from trauma and navigate mental health challenges. Her extensive work with first responders and crime survivors gives her blogs a unique perspective on resilience and growth.
Sadness can feel safe for a number of psychological and emotional reasons. Although sadness is often viewed as an uncomfortable or negative emotion, it can create a sense of safety and familiarity for some people. (4)
John Gottman, from The Gottman Institute, talks about how being emotionally available with others can create an emotional connection that provides safety (2). When you are vulnerable, it is the start of feeling the acknowledgement of love, courage, empathy, accountability and authenticity. When an individual shares their sadness with another, it can cause some uncomfortable spaces but could create a “trauma buddy” to experience the repeating cycle you are unsure if you want to get out of, the acknowledgment of safety and not wanting to leave.
Here are some reasons why sadness can feel safe for others: (2)
Familiarity and Comfort in the Known: Sadness is often a recurring emotion in people’s lives, especially if they have experienced difficult situations, loss, or disappointment. Over time, it can become familiar and predictable. When something feels familiar, it can provide a sense of comfort, even if it's painful, because it’s known territory. For some, the uncertainty of happiness or other emotions might feel more unsettling or harder to handle.
Avoidance of Change: Sometimes, people experience sadness because it allows them to avoid confronting other emotions or situations. For example, staying sad may feel like a way to protect oneself from the anxiety or fear of making changes or facing new challenges. Sadness can create a kind of emotional "stasis," where there’s less pressure to engage with the world in ways that might bring discomfort or risk.
Self-Protection: Sadness can feel like a protective barrier. If someone has been hurt or disappointed in the past, feeling sad can be a way to shield themselves from further hurt. It can create emotional distance from potential threats or overwhelming situations, providing a feeling of control over how much they engage with the outside world.
A Sense of Identity: In some cases, people might develop an attachment to sadness because it becomes a part of their identity. They might identify with being the "sad" person, and that identity can provide a sense of stability. This can be especially true if they've been socialized to expect or validate sadness as a response to life's struggles, making it feel safer than challenging that narrative.
Reduced Expectations: When feeling sad, people may lower their expectations of themselves and others. This can relieve pressure and provide a sense of safety because they are not anticipating failure, disappointment, or unmet needs. Sadness allows them to operate in a state where they expect less, and this lowered expectation can feel protective.
Emotional Regulation: In some situations, sadness helps people regulate their emotions. Instead of spiraling into more intense feelings like anger or despair, sadness may serve as a kind of emotional "soft landing." It can feel like an emotion that is more manageable and less destabilizing, especially in response to grief, frustration, or loss.
In essence, while sadness is often an uncomfortable and painful emotion, it can offer a sense of safety due to its familiarity, its role in emotional regulation, and the way it helps people manage their emotional experiences.Ways to combat sadness or feelings of depression can be addressed in therapy with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) with a trained professional. If you are interested in learning more about these modalities and how to address your sadness, reach out to a therapist at our Arlington, TX office. (1)
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