The Positive Power of Sadness: How Good Grief Prevents and Cures Anxiety Depression and Anger (Psychology Religion and Spirituality)

Written by two clinical psychologists with nearly a century of combined experience this book explains how people who suffer from depression anxiety or undue anger can overcome these difficulties by allowing the normal process of grieving to occur.Sadness is generally characterized as a negative emotion yet experiencing sadness plays a positive and key role in achieving and maintaining mental health and in avoiding anxiety depression and anger. Indeed sadness can be understood as a normal and necessary feeling that always occurs when one loses something that is loved. The Positive Power of Sadness examines the experience of sadness taking into account the personal relational and neurological factors of sadness; explains the cultural reasons that many resist feeling sad and consequently displace sadness into secondary processes; and provides a practical and systematic way to overcome anger anxiety and depression by allowing the normal process of being sad to occur. This simple paradigm of love and loss causing joy and sorrow in tandem is founded on solid research carefully considered theory and extensive experience and will serve to stimulate further thought and writing. Professional therapists psychologists counselors teachers and clergy who work with people in various settings will find this enlightening reading as will general readers seeking self-help or possessing an interest in psychological functioning or relational difficulties.Provides a solid foundation for understanding anger anxiety and depression as well as a practical and solid approach for overcoming these difficultiesExamines the neurological factors associated with feelings particularly sadness and identifies the relational complications that arise when one experiences sadnessDescribes the cultural and personal resistance to the experience of sadness that often compels people to keep their sadness bottled upExplains how anger anxiety and depression can be prevented by accepting and experiencing sadness