Where does sadness originate?

Sadness comes from emotional pain of any kind or cause.

Sadness is an emotion that arises when a person perceives that their environment seems to be thwarting that person’s wants, needs and hopes for their future.

Interesting

I find any sadness I experience originates in my limbic system.

The sadness I experience comes from deepseated disappointment. I can’t speak for anyone else.

The need to feel love and for that human connection is a basic psychological need, so if that isn’t being fulfilled it would be understandable for people to have a reaction to that lack.

Society has changed too. While we may live closer (units/apartments) and be in proximity to other people, we may not actually connect with them. So people can feel lonely even if there are lots of people around. I was messaging with someone the other day and mentioned I don’t know any of my neighbours. I might know them in passing, but we don’t talk and connect. Yet in my youth, I knew all my neighbours. They were there to step in when my parent’s weren’t available. There were closer bonds with even those people who we weren’t in close relationships with.

I also think the mediated world we live in leads to discontent. It can create a sense of lacking something. A sense that we need stuff to make us feel happy. We see advertisements constantly for goods. We have credit pushed at us so we can buy more and more stuff. For some people this leads to the development of a feeling that they don’t have enough to meet their needs. Their friend has the new iPhone and if only they did, they would be happy. Or if only I had a nose like Angelina Jolie, perhaps someone would love me. We are surrounded by unreal and distorted images of ‘happy’ life and what it takes to be happy.

Along the same lines, I feel people are less able to delay gratification. They need that new car, house, furniture, dress, phone or whatever – now. When I was a child my parents saved to buy a new washing machine and it meant something because they worked, and scrimped to get that appliance. The same was true when I was first married. We had secondhand furniture and a small house but we were content with it and felt we were doing okay. Now some people seem to need a MacMansion for a couple with no children and have to fill it with designer furniture and have a new car in the garage to feel they have ‘made it’. Those people are going to feel sad and disatisfied if they can’t have those things ‘now’.

Perhaps in becoming so advanced and prosperous, we’ve forgotten what really counts in order to be happy.

Attachment.

Interesting question because yes, one can feel sad without food and water, but my deepest sadness comes from relationships that are failing around me. Some through death, some just because they went wrong. Even traumatic events carry less sadness than the deep pain I feel from lost relationships. Not only romantic ones.

I wonder if sadness is actually engrained in us because we are meant to be emotional beings. Why do we cry? I’ve heard some people say the reason we cry is a sort of manipulation tactic I guess like some animals have evolved with different ways to survive, I guess they think crying for us is like that. I don’t know if I believe that, but I have seen many people make a ton of noise and never shed a tear, children can do it often :/

I think sad is what you make it and happy is what you make it if you are mentally stable enough to do so. Unless like me you have bipolar, and I don’t know how to be happy or sad, I’m either way too “happy” or extremely depressed. I’m only in between because I am on a high side of mood stabilizer I guess.

In every slowly played piano from the singularity on.

When I’m sad, I have an empty, yet acutely painful, feeling in the pit of my stomach. Is there a physiological explanation for that?

from a bad situation

The best description I saw for the cause of sadness is that sadness always comes from some sort of loss. It could be the loss of a loved one, loss in a competition, loss of an aspiration or a decline in health, but there is always some loss involved. This is where sadness differs from depression. Depression may be triggered by a loss, but need not be.

@Bellatrix, very well put. You saved me the need to write a similar rant :-p

In the absence of @thorninmud’s input here, I am tempted to say that sadness in part comes from dukkha, the essential unsatisfactory-ness of life, and the imagination with which we are endowed as humans. If you are in a good situation, you are able to imagine its dissolution. If you are in a bad situation, that’s all you can focus on, and your attention amplifies it.

In a solitary “unlurved” answer, or at least the reason why :D

Sadness is an ancient primary emotion, that helped hunter gatherers form stronger groups and survive.

The other five primary emotions are fear, anger, disgust, surprise and joy.

In what way do you think sadness has survival value? Does it act as a negative incentive as something to avoid? Does it elicit a protective response from others?

@LostInParadise – Yes, it helps people care about each other and this is good for groups. Sadnes is key to experiencing empathy. Cold-hearted people have trouble experiencing sadness, which feels strange to normal people.

Healthy sadness is a mental resolution to undesired circumstances and is temporary. It’s like an emotional reset and we usually grow wiser and mentally stronger after it passes. Empathy is a core source and it’s got obvious advantages. Unhealthy sadness is a result of unrealistic expectations or little connection with reality and is long-term. This is not the same as depression although it can lead to depression. To stay happy stay in flux, explore life taking the good with the bad. Just don’t let yourself stagnate.