Sadness and Agony

We have all experienced it. It is universal from people in Papua New Guinea to Canada. It is a strong emotion that modifies our physiological and psychological self, effects behaviour and the memories we have access to. Sadness* is a long lasting passive emotion; in sadness there is a feeling of hopelessness and there is more resignation. Agony creates protest, which makes us try to deal nonstop with the source of the lost .After a period of agony it transforms into sadness which then turns usually into a dysphoric mood and with time the mood fades away.When thinking of sadness people don’t want to deal with it, they want it just to go away. There is an important purpose for sadness and it must be embraced so that we can be able to move forward using the emotions felt. When thinking of emotions you must keep in mind that they are there for a reason and it’s the way that we were able to adapt to survive. Sadness is a way that your mind is telling you that you have lost** something or someone and that you should find out exactly what you lost to be able to know what your next action should be; to get better and gain instead of letting yourself fill with emptiness.

Sadness behaviour

To understand someone`s behaviour when feeling sadness you must capture certain principles of emotional behaviour. The higher the stakes are, the more likely someone is going to behave emotionally. We just can’t help ourselves in high stake conditions so we let the emotions out. Emotions have always guided us during situations. It protects us from physical or psychological harm… emotion is very important for someone`s wellbeing and survival. Thus being said we do sometimes overreact and misjudge the situation we are confronted with; it causes us to realise afterwards that we shouldn’t have acted under the influence of emotions (in that particular event).In those situations we can do two things: first we must moderate our behaviour and secondly when moderating fails we learn from those mistakes. We must also understand especially when talking to someone behaving emotionally that there is a refractory period* so the stronger the emotion is felt the longer that period usually is. The time during the refractory period, access to logic and memories that would be relevant and helpful are blocked. An individual in refractory period will deny all Intel on the situation that contradicts the emotion felt.

Emotions are caused by the emotional triggers that an individual has,they were picked up during his lifetime and they are there so we can avoid being in a situation that is similar to ones that hurt us physically or psychologically. If they do not come from experience it is transmitted genetically from generation to generation. A perfect example is Frank and Al. (1970) who worked with rats. They found various interesting results including that if you trained rats to run through a maze by using particularly stressful negative reinforcement (like electrocution), then the rats' children would be able to learn the new maze much faster. They wondered if the parent rats might be leaving a scent trail, so they used duplicate mazes with the exact same design putting the children into clean mazes. The children of the adult rats who had already learned the maze continued to outperform the control rats - the explanation was not scent trails.

The death of one’s child is a universal trigger for sadness and agony. According to DR. Paul Ekman there are no other events that can provoke such intense, recurrent and enduring unhappiness; his experiment in Papua New Guinea proved that sadness is one of the six universal emotions that are expressed in the same way around the world. When someone is faced with agony created by the loss of a individual they may react in various ways. They might be angry at the person who died for abandoning them or might be angry at themselves for not being able to save the individual. Anger is one of many defence mechanisms against agony. In some instances it is actually the cure! During his time in Papua New Guinea, he met a woman that had just lost her baby. She took a long ride back to her village with Dr. Ekman and the hospital doctors and did not say a word; she did not seem to be affected by her loss. As soon as they arrived at the village she burst into tears and showed clear signs of agony. Was that real?The best way to describe this is by using psychologist Nico Frijda’spoint: ‘’Grief often does not emerge when one is notified of death or departure; such notification consists of words. Grief strikes when one comes home to the empty house.’’ Let’s analyse the previous example. The woman comes from a village with no electricity and no technological advancement, she was with two individuals that did not feel the grief she felt and who she was not able to relate to. The fact that she was in a hospital when told that her child had passed away seemed unnatural to her normal life style. She was most likely in a state of shock where she did not fully realise what exactly had happened. When she arrived at the village she saw her friends and family and only then was she able to understand what was going on. She felt that she was around people that could understand her and she would not be able to conceal such feelings. The fact that she entered the village made her realise what had just happened; she was there with her dead child in her hands entering the place where he would have lived his life with her.

Depression is a perfect example to look at what brutal effects emotions can have on an individual; it is not the length of the emotion that is important, it is that they impair us that is of great significance. In depression there is no more control over the emotions, they are there only to an extent that rules the life of a depressed individual. It affects his sleeping habits, his health, his work, his life. A depression caused by sadness will make the person not want any social interaction; he will act calm, he will feel helpless. If the depression is caused by agony it affects the same things (sleep, food, work, life) but it is not a calm depression; he will be agitated and he won’t feel helpless but hopeless. In both cases the emotion is so strong fundamentally that even easy task will be affected due to the lack of motivation.

We are the most intelligent beings in this world; our capabilities are almost infinite. Unlike animals, we are able to see and feel what we see; this is called empathy* which is a skill we have all developed, and it comes from childhood as shown by Alison gopnik’s “What do babies think?” TED talks presentation. She showed with her cracker and broccoli experiment that 15month old babies that hate broccoli would give crackers to the experimenter that acted like he liked broccoli. The surprising result lies with the 18 month old child who was able to feel empathy towards the experimenter and hand him the broccoli even if that was not his preference. This shows that we start feeling empathy at a very early stage of our lives and that with time and experience; I believe that we can improve this skill with practice and experience in the giant environment that our world is.

Through empathy we are able to spot people’s emotions even when they are trying to hide their true feelings. But one can practice on how to be able to spot the signs of sadness or agony. Important things to look at when trying to spot this particular emotion are the eye brows; they are one of the hardest movements to hide and a highly reliable sign of sadness. If you spot a line or even a horseshoe pattern in between the eye brows it is a sign of sadness, as well as raised cheeks and a wrinkled chin. A droop in the eyelids are a sign as well but less reliable since it can also be a sign of boredom or tiredness. Knowing this the best suggestion would be to get a picture of a sad individual and a control picture (no emotion) and look at them back and forth. With time you will be able to start noticing the differences in people around you.

Conclusion

We saw in depth what agony and sadness does and how it affects anindividual. In mild cases and in severe cases like depression, we saw together that instead of running away from this emotion we should embrace it and realise the beauty of the message the mind is sending us. You gain key tools on how to spot this emotion with the knowledge collected from reading and environmental experiences. You will be able to understand what others are feeling when showing signs of sadness and agony. There is one more important factor to know. When you feel like verbalising your concern for someone and empathize with them; it is not because you saw a expression or that you see signs of agony or sadness that the other individual wants to share what he is feeling with you… maybe you could just ask, are you ‘’OK?’’ to let them choose whether or not to let you in on what happened or what is upsetting them. Do you have the right to invade your friends or loved ones privacy?

Written by: Tarek Benzouak