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Allowing Sadness Without Guilt

20 January, 2025

On reflection, I felt a lot of pressure to conform to fake happiness when I was a child – a girl child, Gen X, raised by boomer parents in a small community on a small island, Jersey. Statements from parents, their friends and even strangers such as “cheer up, it may never happen!” and “you’re pretty, but you’d be a whole lot prettier if you smiled!” were commonplace. I genuinely don’t know whether my aversion to plastering a socially acceptable face on despite my internal feelings was due to neurodivergence, or actual sadness. On even deeper reflection, and for various reasons that I won’t go into today, I was a very sad child. What all of this taught me is that sadness isn’t socially acceptable. Keep your sadness hidden. No-one wants to see that shit. It isn’t something to share, it’s something to mask, to deny. Sadness is wrong, happiness is the goal. Even if it’s fake happiness, fake it to maintain social harmony. Get that smile on your face. How am I? I’m fine, thanks! *beams*

As a 40-something adult, I like to think I’ve left the struggles of childhood far behind and that I’m a strong, confident, rebellious woman stridently making my own way through life, ironically laughing in the face of such social pressures. The truth is, I’ve come to realise, I still feel like I should at least seem happy all of the time. That I shouldn’t make people concerned for me, that they have enough of their own worries, that they don’t need me piping up with my sad feelings or to see me with my real, unsmiling face. So, I’m a good girl; I smile at everyone I walk past when I’m out of the house, I laugh and I joke with friends and acquaintances no matter what’s happening in my life, and upon being asked how I am, I smilingly declare that I’m fine. Everything is fine, thanks. How are youuuuuuuu?!

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am going through something of a metamorphosis lately. Triggered in no small part by the onset of perimenopause, and never one to do things by halves, I’m experiencing ‘the change’ in a literal way. Looking back over my 40s so far, I have changed, and I’m proud of the positive changes I’ve made in my life. I’ve stopped drinking entirely and I’m loving the sober life. I’ve taken responsibility for my own health issues, such as making myself get my cervical smear tests, battling for access to HRT, being brave enough to try the Mirena coil and prioritising myself by getting the specialist hearing aids I need. My attitude towards fitness and food has changed, moving away from an unhealthy obsession with numbers – calories, weight, dress size – and embracing a psychologically & physically healthier lifestyle, being kind to myself instead of enduring daily punishment. Therefore, when I thought about my relationship with sadness, and I mean really thought about it, I was surprised and disappointed to realise that I still fake happiness in many ways and for a variety of reasons.

Where is this pressure to seem happy all of the time coming from? I’ve given this question a lot of thought.

There is the pressure we put upon ourselves. It’s tempting to only see a negative impact of sharing internal sadness, that it would spread the sadness and that nobody would be able to fix it anyway, so why bother saying anything? As if sadness is a virus to be caught by other people, and instead of breathing it unkindly upon others we should mask up with a smile and prevent the spread.

I want to be a good person, a nice person. A nice friend, member of the community, wife. If there is an option not to add to other people’s worries, then I will take it. This ongoing desire not to add to others’ sadness by revealing my own results in hiding my sad feelings when in company. Even lying that I’m happy and fine. No-one involved has meant for it to happen, but this is undeniable pressure to maintain an outward appearance of happiness. It doesn’t feel socially acceptable to openly share feelings of sadness.

Speaking of social, let’s turn our attention to social media for a moment. Social media is a constant window into millions of people’s lives – or at least, what they want you to believe their life is like. It’s very easy to present a happy life on social media through its deceptive filters. We see others’ edited photos, of their face, body, home, activities. We open up the apps to view glamorous snippets of lives we perceive to be better than our own, but which are really just edited showreels which never show the gritty, diverse reality of life with all its ups and downs, its moments of sadness, anger and disappointment as well as those shiny highs. It’s understandable to feel like you’re the only sad person in your social group, that there must be something wrong with you and your life, because everyone else seems happy and satisfied with their beautiful lives, with perfect homes, jobs, hobbies, partners and families.

Comparison really is the thief of joy – and if you’re not feeling all that joyful to start with, scrolling through everyone else’s seemingly happy lives on social media just compounds your sadness.

Then there is the rise of toxic positivity. Memes shared on social media which, on the face of it, kindly encourage positive thinking and a happy mood. They are often shared by well-meaning types to try and spread ‘positive vibes’ and boost others’ mood. When you give these memes a bit more thought, the pressure to suffocate and deny your own feelings, to dismiss and pretend, and to invalidate any expression of unhappiness, becomes apparent. This is toxic positivity. The message is, “seem happy at all times regardless of your actual feelings otherwise you are bad, selfish and wrong”. Toxic, unhealthy and unkind.

stay positive toxic positivity memes — ugh

Next time you read a well-meaning but ultimately toxic meme which instructs you to stay positive, which reminds you that it takes as much effort to be positive as it does to worry, or otherwise guilts you for your perfectly natural expression of the entire range of human emotion, tell it to fuck all the way off.

This isn’t the article I meant to write when I sat down and thought about feeling sad. It’s mid-January right now, and TV and internet ads are full of supposed fast-routes to happiness. Lose weight, join a gym, renovate your home. Blue Monday is said to be the most depressing day of the year, so why not book a summer holiday to look forward to? Oh, the same Blue Monday that was dreamt up by the PR team of a travel company 20 years ago to sell more holidays? How interesting.

So yes, I was going to write a post covering ways to cheer yourself up when you’re feeling sad, with January and its supposed Blue Monday in mind – but you know what? Just be sad. Allow yourself to feel sad, and if you’re brave enough, share your feelings of sadness with someone close. Validating and giving voice to your sadness is an act of rebellion in a world which glorifies and rewards the maintenance of a fake perma-smile and insistence that, no matter what, you’re HAPPY.

With all the terrible things happening around the world, that in this digital age we are able to see happening in real time every time we open our phones, a feeling of sadness and even hopelessness is understandable and valid. It’s easy to think, when comparing our often-privileged lives to those suffering war, repression and devastation in other lands, that our everyday struggles should be borne with a smile. That our personal and yes, admittedly often small-scale (in comparison) sadnesses aren’t valid and we don’t deserve to acknowledge our sadness because our life ‘isn’t that bad’. Therefore, we dismiss our sad feelings, stuff them back down and try our best to ignore them until we’re left with nothing but a bitter aftertaste of guilt and shame for daring to think we could allow ourselves to feel even an iota of genuine sadness.

Today, give yourself the gift of allowing yourself to feel. Burn the blanket of guilt you tightly wrapped around the locked box of sadness you buried deep. Open the lid and face exactly what’s inside. Validate your feelings instead of dismissing them. If possible, share your sadness with the person you love or a trusted friend, explaining that you need to let your feelings out. Crying can be cathartic, so sob it all out if that’s what you need to do. Instead of constantly trying to fix what is, after all, a perfectly valid feeling in any and every situation, open up and face your sadness. Identify it. Confront it. Accept and respect it. Allow yourself to sit with and feel your feelings – all of them, no matter what they may be.

This year, as part of my ongoing focus on mental as well as physical health, I’m feeling my feelings, no matter what they are – instead of denying and hiding them. Will you be a rebel with me and face the reality of your sadness?

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