Meta-physician on Call: Healing Through Sadness
Sadness is a universal human emotion, a part of every day living. Although many of us view it as a dark cloud that should be avoided and denied, I believe sadness brings a gift of healing. Acknowledging our own sadness can be a crucial step in the healing process itself.
I can assure you, this is not something I learned in my traditional medical training! In fact, physicians are encouraged to avoid emotions – ours, our patients, and their families — like the plague. However, time and experience — almost 30 years in medical practice — have taught me that sadness can be a doorway to transformation.
What is sadness, really? Is it a fact? Is it an emotion? Most of us have experienced it at one time of another – in times of illness, loss, fear, stress, disappointment – as an emotional state brought on by certain circumstances. There are some whose lives are on the perpetual edge of sadness. They feel it lurking around every corner, crouching in the shadows. Some wear sadness like a second skin, or at times feel it sweeping over them like a suffocating wave. Even among those who appear outwardly upbeat and happy, it is always present, a vaguely perceived mist off in the distance.
Healing means ‘to make whole” and sadness would seem to render one fragmented and frustrated. Especially since it can lead to a vicious cycle in which sadness leads to self-pity, further sadness, lack of equanimity or peace and ultimately to dis-ease.
Kabbalah provides a compelling metaphor that can be applied to daily life: All human beings are fragmented, incomplete – yet this is no accident. In fact the entire universe is imperfect, incomplete, fragmented