When sadness invades our brain

Sadness is one of the most basic emotions of human beings. It is that feeling that overwhelms us for infinite reasons, that turns us off and forces us to look towards our own introspection in search of reasons and explanations.

It is often said that it is precisely storms that make the roots of trees grow. Hence Those moments of sadness are often justified as the true craftsman of knowledgethere where we learn about ourselves and where we emerge stronger after having overcome a process from which we have obtained knowledge to move forward, to harden that armor that life offers a little more and where we must know how to protect ourselves to respond.

But what happens in our brain in those moments? Why do we feel that way when sadness settles in like a spider web?

When the brain wants to cry

According to experts in psychiatry and psychology, The brain is more prepared to deal with this emotion than any other. If we realize, it is precisely a saddened face that provokes the most empathy, we recognize it immediately and we tend in some way to support those people who go through this sensation.

Sadness is understood and has its own language. In addition, tears also act as a defense and relief mechanism, it is a way to release the tension that that particular emotion causes in our brain. But let’s see what other factors determine it:

Sadness affects the brain

The body and brain require more oxygen and more glucose during these emotional processes.. You feel stressed and overwhelmed with sensations and emotions, hence you need more “fuel” to be able to function… a state that, given this energy expenditure, causes us more fatigue.

sadness exhausts and when we are very tired we cannot even let tears fall. No one can cry for an entire day, it is an act that can be done in small episodes, but not continuously.

Loss of sweet tooth

It is a curious fact, but when we go through these processes of sadness, the brain stops receiving the sensation of sweetness with the same intensity. The number of receptors on the tongue decreases and people do not fully capture the flavor, That’s why we tend to eat more, we look for more sweet things because we can’t find the same pleasure as before.

Low serotonin level

When we experience these periods of marked sadness, the brain stops producing serotonin at a level that is considered adequate. AND A deficiency in this neurotransmitter means that the dreaded depression may appear in the medium or long term, compulsive obsessions and even small violent attacks. The brain is a complex machine that, in situations of stress, anxiety, fears, etc., alters its production of neurotransmitters, and this always affects our behavior.

Learn from sadness

Sadness allows us to learn from what we have experienced, and that is the main value. The brain is a magnificent organ that in the long term is capable of self-regulation on its own. It also has several defense mechanisms through which it protects us, keeping memories in our memory through which we can learn, situations to which we can anchor ourselves to help us get out of the tides of sadness.

According to psychologist Joseph Forgas (2011) When our mood is negative we become more lucid when processing information. Forgas and his research team experimented with subjects who induced states of sadness and concluded that they became more rational and skeptical, at the same time their memory also became more agile and they were less conditioned by prejudices related to race or religion.

The explanation given by the authors is that when we are sad we tend to search more exhaustively for new information from the environment. Something that, according to them, does not happen in the same way when we are satisfied, since we base our decisions on our learning history and our experiences, so we do not consider new alternatives. However, Sadness activates us, makes us more alert and pushes us to look for new ways out of new situations and we are more attentive to external information..

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