Purposely making myself sad.

[WithLoveFromAlyssa]

Does anyone else purposely make themselves sad? I will listen to a bunch of sad music and i know it will make me hurt but i do it anyways.
Is that common with anyone else here...?

 

[TomCS]

Yeah, I do it all the time. I used to think that it was just pure masochism, but now I think that maybe there is some therapeutic value to it. Feeling the sadness which certain music brings up, helps me deal with the sadness from my past.

 

[Received]

I doubt you intentionally make yourself sad. It's more truthful to say that the sad "part" of you (the schema) has a life of its own and makes you want to be sad. It's important not to identify yourself with this part.

 

[WithLoveFromAlyssa]

You both are so right..wow.

 

[Received]

I wonder, when you made that realization, were you happy about it, or did a part of you kind of get down about it, maybe like you were putting yourself down?

 

[graciesings]

I do it.

Because it helps let the sadness out. Also because when I'm sad I don't always want to be happy: Often when I'm sad I feel like being sad so I do things that upset me..

 

[Received]

It helps let the sadness out, which feels good; because it feels good, it's more likely to be reinforced, so you naturally find yourself wanting to be sad more. Classic negative reinforcement: removal of a negative stimulus causes whatever behavior that resulted in the removal of this negative stimulus to be reinforced.

 

[Messy]

Does anyone else purposely make themselves sad? I will listen to a bunch of sad music and i know it will make me hurt but i do it anyways.
Is that common with anyone else here...?

Yes I used to do it sometimes, but some music is really bad and makes you feel worse. At one point I was just sick of continually pretending I was happy and let it out with music from Randy Newman. That was really healing to get honest. Miss you, LOL a song he wrote for his exwife he divorced a long time ago and losing you and after I let it out and let God heal me it got a lot better. I think you get depressed when you continually push your feelings away.