Good and Bad Sadness : How Can We Tell Them Apart?
Grief is often strongly correlated with incredibly deep feelings of sadness. We feel this internally with ourselves and share it within our immediate social group. This “sadness” is ultimately acknowledged within the broader society. Certain deaths such as those of famous people can cause entire countries to share in the grief. Anyone reading this post will have many personal memories of feeling sad. Taking these memories, it would not be hard to categorise them and place them on some sort of continuum. The least to most sad experience. Something similar occurs at the level of society where there appears to be “good” sadness and “bad” sadness.
Personal Sadness
Gauging how sad we feel comes through experience of comparing life events. There is a subjective assessment of sadness that all individuals must make for themselves as they are experiencing it. An example in the realm of romance could be the first time you were rejected by a girl or boyfriend compared to a spouse leaving you. Both experiences made you sad but one has the potential to change you as a person and how you view the world. You might even reflect on all the times you felt sad before and realise how little you knew of these feelings. From this we can see that there are levels of sadness that you must discover as you journey through life. At a personal level we start to realise we can accept feeling sad but want to avoid feeling sorrow.
Group Sadness
Within our social circles and society at large we do judge other people’s sadness by our own internal barometer. This comparison is often done without any questioning or discussion of how we are all feeling about particular events. We are often told people do not like talking about their feelings as it is too hard. Often it makes us feel vulnerable and open to criticism. That is one way of thinking about it. I believe trying to explain a feeling to someone else is incredibly hard, what words can you find to make a person understand what is going on inside you. So, it is hard to talk about feelings as they are almost impossible to quantify. This is why we respect artists and musicians so much as their art forms explain our feelings. It would appear there is some sort of common language that we can access to see our individual feelings reflected and explained. The problem is that it is purely qualitative and non-verbal.
I am often forced to think about how we collectively view sadness in society. How we judge what is and what is not sad. How do we come to establish a consensus? This moves from subjective to objective. From non-verbal to a verbalised understanding. As always information is lost in this process. I used the word “judge” deliberately because that is the other process that appears to occur. We start to judge other people’s sadness. There is good and bad sadness with multiple dimensions. Should a person feel sad about this subject matter, how long should they feel sad about it and should they be sharing their sadness about a particular matter. I am not immune to this judgement, and I will give an example.
The most loved Australian in the world
The singer and actress Olivia Newton-John died at age 73 in 2022. Originally from the UK via Australia, she moved to the USA to further her career in the 1970’s. From what I saw in the media over the years Newton-John appeared to be a decent human being and upon hearing about her death I felt some empathy for her family, friends and maybe some of her fans. The Australian media reaction seemed equivalent to a head of state passing away. Numerous celebrities appeared on TV in tears claiming to be devastated about Newton-John, who had not resided in Australia for decades. I made the judgement that the celebrities should not be this sad about this woman’s passing. I could not validate all this sadness. Conversely for most people it was ok to excessively emote about Newton-John's death, to them this was good sadness. According to reports on mainstream media she was the most loved Australian in the world. The reaction highlighted a stark contrast in how society perceives different types of grief. This raises the question of what factors influence our collective response to grief.
Choosing your audience but not their reaction
I do have some minor insight from several years ago. I gave a speech at my son’s school whilst presenting an award in his name at their annual awards evening. The auditorium was full of teachers, parents with their children and several guests. It was always hard to do, I managed to speak without becoming emotional as I recanted the story of what happened to my son. The audience listened quietly and as I finished my speech and presented the award the audience politely clapped. I returned to my seat and watched the rest of the ceremony. Finally, the Principal of the school presented his award. In his speech he spoke about a sad event from his childhood. I believe he had struggled academically and was not supported by the education system at large. At one point he got slightly emotional and told the audience how he had been humiliated by a particularly unpleasant teacher. There was an audible murmur of empathy from the audience and a loud show of the audience’s appreciation as this award was presented. I liked the school Principal, he and the staff had been very supportive of my family. I also felt some empathy for what sounded like an unnecessarily tough time in school. I hope that anyone reading this will not think I was a little upset at having been upstaged; as this was very far from the case. I felt completely disconnected from people and maybe something of an outsider. It was just very strange; akin to being tolerated in the room by the group. This is when I started to realise that for groups there is “good” sadness and “bad” sadness. Sadness we choose to indulge in as a group and sadness that we will detach from as a group. Sadness that has resolution with a happy ending and sadness that is still sad no matter how it is framed
Sadness versus Sorrow
I think I had made the mistake in believing that losing a child could be acknowledged publicly as the deeply sad event it was, however, it cannot be acknowledged as this with certain groups. It may be because as a society we just do not want to hear about these things. Do we just want to live in a state of denial or is it too sad to comprehend? Maybe we can share sadness as a group but not sorrow. Sorrow is unrelenting and maybe asks too much of us as individuals trying to be part of a larger group. I had no answers to these questions, but I had learnt something very important. You can never predict how a room full of people will react to a sad story. If it is “good” sad you may feel the warmth of empathy in a room, or it is “bad” sad you may feel like nothing from the room or maybe even a mild impatience for you to get on with your story.
Why share?
Humans have always told stories. It is how we learn. Some stories you share, and others are only to be shared with the appropriate audience. Sharing your sorrow early on in any grieving process is important for individuals who are attempting to come to terms with it. This is probably best done with people who will be able to cope your story. Sometimes it may contain too much sorrow for a particular audience and if shared you may be very disappointed at the group reaction. As time goes on the need to discuss grief, and sorrow does abate and your ability to select your audience will improve. You will also become use to most group reactions, good and bad.