You Can Cry If You Want To

Coke ads beckon you to “open happiness,” upbeat tunes like “Happy” top the charts, and the pressure to not be sad is everywhere. But life is punctuated by times of sadness, and research suggests that the wisest way to think about such feelings is to treat them as normal counterparts to more pleasant ones. Psychologist Brock Bastian and colleagues have found evidence that people are more likely to experience feelings of sadness and social isolation if they think others consider negative emotions unacceptable. (The researchers measured participants’ agreement with statements like, “People like me less when I feel negative emotions.”) To reduce the compulsion to “get over it,” Bastian argues, we need to collectively learn to accept the feelings we don’t like but cannot eliminate. “Emotional maturity is embracing the fact that we have a range of emotions,” he says, “and that we should value and appreciate all of them.”