We are sad and we no longer hide it under a mask of imposed happiness.

And we have reason to be.

The pandemic, before, and the war in Ukraine, now, have installed us in a

permanent uncertainty

in which even things as routine as planning a 'simple' summer vacation seem almost impossible.

As much as we insist on 'moving forward' as if nothing had happened,

our lives have changed

and not wanting to see it is a kind of 'bread for today and hunger for tomorrow' that will end up taking its toll on us.

Suddenly, without realizing it,

we cannot repress the desire to cry

in situations that, until recently, barely affected us.

"We are faced with a permanent conflict of

contradictory internal demands between desires and fears,

which are influencing our state of mind, and which are expressing themselves in symptoms or behaviors that we did not have before or, at least, not so frequently. Our reality which began almost two years ago, has made us experience

fragility, vulnerability and a deep sense of loss

so much.

real and symbolic.

All this has given us an affective hypersensitivity that is expressed more easily by crying and sadness," explains Soraya Bajat, head of Mental Health at the Sanitas La Moraleja University Hospital and of the Psychology service at La Zarzuela.

Looking the other way is of little use when the wounds are much deeper than we had calibrated and are still not closed.

"The pandemic and its consequences are affecting us more than we can believe a priori, because it has meant an

existential uprooting

in the world at all levels (social, economic, health, political, cultural...). Everything that we have lived and continue to live, it has meant a break with our way of acting before the pandemic and has forced us to change in almost all our areas of operation, a change to which we are still adapting and from which we are still learning".

It has affected both negatively and positively, this psychologist emphasizes, because "not everything has been negative, but it has been a change that implies an

adaptation process

that is not always easy."

Our way of relating to others is no longer the same: "Our

social relationships

have changed a lot, both in frequency and in the affective expression during encounters. Spontaneous physical contact and the expression of affection have decreased. Also, they have lost occasions of social contact both due to restrictions and fear of contagion or teleworking, which has generated a

feeling of loneliness, isolation and emotional loss

with the feeling of sadness that this entails".

So far, the story of some events in which we are all participants, but

what symptoms should we deal with / worry about

?

"If they are symptoms of very intense discomfort; if they are moderate but persist over time or if they produce significant changes in our emotional well-being, they should be reason enough for us to try to do something to solve it and not wait any longer for them to disappear by themselves. alone."

In this complicated scenario in which we all walk with emotions on the surface, is it normal

to cry with a television commercial or a song

(to give two silly examples)?

"In these cases, normality must be contextualized individually, evaluating the experience according to its intensity or duration and the previous tendency of the person to have this behavior. Stimuli such as advertisements or songs are a form of communication expressly designed to activate cognitive, affective and behavioral responses in us. Hence, crying can be a completely normal reaction because some move or revive memories of affective plot".

The abnormality of this reaction, he continues, manifests itself when there is "an

emotional hypersensitivity and lability

(lack of control of emotional states) in the face of those stimuli that usually did not generate that response so easily or so frequently and/or intensely."

Because it is useless to deny it.

We are sad.

And we have reason to be.

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Know more

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War Ukraine - RussiaHow to protect ourselves from Putin's 'psychological missiles' 4,000 km away: "The worst is uncertainty"

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