When I open my social media, I am bombarded with videos like; "tips to be more positive", "how to be more motivated", "how to be happier", and countless other titles that are constantly telling me to be happier.
While I think it is important to be happy, and a lot of these videos are great, I think they are sometimes damaging. This pressure to be happy only solidifies the thought that sadness is NOT normal and we should never be sad, angry, upset or negative. Sadness is always seen as the opposite of happiness, that they can't co-exist. If you are constantly told that sadness is not normal nor should we feel it, naturally people are going to feel even worse when they feel this way.
But I think we can all agree that negative emotions are common and honestly a big part of life. There have been so many times in my life where I was upset and felt hurt, but that is just a completely human reaction to what I was going through.
I just want to convey that it is NORMAL and OK to be sad, it lets us be happy after all. I think it is far more important to VALIDATE feelings of sadness, instead of trying to push people to completely remove this emotion altogether.
What are your thoughts?
