Why Are We Trying to Solve Sad?
If I’m being honest, it’s a point of pride when I say I practice what I preach. For the most part, it’s pretty easy. That’s not a brag. It’s just that I’ve been doing this kind of work for eons.
You can’t talk to people day in and day out about how our minds lie and distort things, about how anxiety doesn’t usually mean danger (just new or uncertain), and about how important it is to live your values despite whatever inside ick shows up, without internalizing those messages.
Despite that stuff sinking in, sometimes it still sucks. I mean really sucks.
I know because I just went through it.
After nearly 20 years, I made the decision to close my psychology practice.
It was the right thing to do.
It was also absolutely devastating.
How Can Something Be Both Right and Devastating?
It can be excruciating to make some decisions, to take some leaps. It’s tempting to think that knowing you’re doing the right thing will protect you from the pain, that it will be less scary or less sad.
But that is wishful thinking.
The quality of a decision—how logical or right or necessary it may be—does not preclude you from experiencing the natural emotions that arise from its fallout.
In plain English, sometimes the right thing is also the hardest thing emotionally.
I’ve been wanting to do a lot more public speaking and to write a couple more books, in addition to some other personal and professional projects, but it’s been difficult to fit everything in without becoming a complete workaholic, which isn’t how I want to live my life.
For me, I made what I know in my bones was the right decision, when I consider my values, my goals, and what I want my life to look and feel like.
At the same time, I made a decision that meant a lot of hurt for a lot of people, myself included.
Giving Up the Good Stuff
The therapist-patient relationship is a special one. I had the privilege of truly seeing so many beautiful individuals, knowing their deepest secrets, understanding how their minds tick, and holding space and cheering on their courage in the face of the hardest moments.
Any therapist worth her salt cares about her patients. Deeply.
I traveled a lifetime with some of them—5, 10, even 15 years.
And I chose to end it.
I wasn’t forced by old age or life circumstances. It was an active, thoughtful, intentional values-based choice.
And, in some ways, that made it even harder.
Hurting Other People with Your Choices Isn’t Necessarily Bad
As I went through weeks of breaking the news, followed by more weeks of saying one goodbye after another, it felt like going through a dozen breakups at once.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” didn’t soften it for anyone.
My brave and kind patients responded to the news with such understanding and support despite their own sadness and anxiety. In those final sessions, I could see my pain reflected in their eyes as we echoed what we meant to each other and our mutual dread of the upcoming change in our relationship.
It was a profound loss, for both of us.
But I was the one making it happen.
I was responsible for causing their pain, for causing so much grief, sadness, and anxiety. I don’t want someone I care about to hurt, especially not at my hands. But pain doesn’t mean wrong.
It means that my patients cared about me, and I certainly did them.
While my decision provoked those feelings for others, it wasn’t really my job to take it away, nor does it need to be taken away.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
I want to.
But the only way to not feel sad in this circumstance would be to not care, and that doesn’t sit well with me.
The only way to avoid sadness altogether would be for me to stay in practice, to sacrifice the future that I envision with enthusiasm and longing.
I want to speak. I want to write. I want to have adventures and fill my time in so many other ways right now.
But the path toward that future goes right through Sad Town. Unavoidably. Inescapably. Because in order to begin a new chapter, you must close another, sometimes amazing, one.
One Door Must Close
In the final weeks especially, I felt a deep aching sadness, beyond tears and beyond words. It showed up in sitting frozen at my computer, unable to muster the energy to write speaking proposals or emails.
It showed up in restless nights, unable to sleep solidly.
It showed up in low energy, weightiness in my body, and a loss for words.
One particularly tough night when I had just said a difficult goodbye, I felt an intense urge to numb. Grab the glass of wine, the gummy, the phone to call a friend for distraction. It was an immediate reaction, a subconscious “it’s too much.”
And then her words came back to me.
Why Are We Trying to Solve Sad?
On one of a thousand walk-and-talks with my dear friend, Amanda, an insightful therapist in her own right, she posed the question, “Why are we trying to solve sad?”
It resonated with me at the time, on a theoretical level.
Sad simply means I lost something I care about. It is a normal, 100% natural reaction to any number of situations in which something changes. We lose a person, a relationship, an ideal, a vision of the future, a role, a favorite bracelet. No matter how big or how small, if you cared about it and it’s gone, you will feel some degree of sadness.
In that difficult moment, alone in my house, that question arose, unbidden, in my mind. Why are you trying to solve sad?
Why are you trying to get rid of it? It is painful, yes. Hard to bear, sure. But it is not bad.
It is actually quite beautiful.
My sadness signaled a loss of something I care very deeply for: my practice and my patients.
I sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, breathed through the pain, and reminded myself of why I was doing this, why I was willing to experience this.
I am strong. And I am brave.
Strong enough to hold space for my sadness. Brave enough to endure it to get to what’s on the other side.
This is the price I pay to pursue this new chapter.
After a few minutes, the intensity began to soften. Sad didn’t go away, but it didn’t need to batter me with its message anymore. I honored it, and I moved forward with it.
I don’t like feeling sad. Who does? But what if we approached sad without trying to solve it or fix it? What if, instead, we recognized it for what it is: a sign of caring and importance and change or loss? We could hold each other and ourselves with kindness through it, making space for it without letting it be a barrier to living a life we love.
Sometimes sadness is just a part of life—of a good life, one of living and loving. We don’t need to solve it. We just need to be able to weather its storm.
“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
Are you ready to live a bolder, happier life?
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