What is that sad feeling?

[AnonyMouseToday]

You know, a kind of weird empty feeling when you just feel sad for no reason? I have it now. My son gets it sometimes. There doesn't seem to be a reason. I'm not actually feeling sad about anything. It's more a physical sadness.

Do u ever experience this and know what I'm talking about? Could there b a physical reason? Like low iron or blood sugar or something?

I hate it!!

Psychodynamic theory would probably suggest that there is some sort of repression going on, uncomfortable thoughts are being suppressed however the feelings are “leaking” into your conscious. There maybe some unconscious memory linked to the feeling, the tricky bit is working out what that memory is. When the feelings are intense, some say it is unhealed trauma, a wound that needs to be heard, processed, and healed.

It’s to do with dopamine

@OwlDoll that is spooky as that is exactly how it first started with me! I can remember as a child lying in bed in the dark at bedtime listening to the cars on the road. I'd be overwhelmed with emotions of sadness, dread and lonliness. It was even worse if I heard the whine of a motorbike engine or the road was wet. I felt completely cut off from the world even though my parents were downstairs. It lasted about a minute.

I still get the feeling sometimes if I am sleeping in a room near a road and wake during the night. I also get it if I rise very early, say 5am, a feeling of utter bleakness which lasts about 30 seconds. I am relieved to find I'm not the only sufferer. I thought it was just me!

I'd be interested to know how many of you have/have had depression? I did experience major clinical depression in my 30's but recovered. For me, the sad wave seems to be connected to a feeling of isolation.

@teaandtoastwithmarmite I very well remember that post festival feeling ! And it wasn’t a hangover / come down…..just being the last one home after everyone else had peeled off in various directions. The word ‘saudade’ in Portuguese is very appropriate (and title of a great album by Thievery Corporation)
I am now a foreigner adapting to a completely different culture / language from UK, I have been welcomed and wholeheartedly embraced…it’s not homesickness, I can deal with that, just sometimes I cannot shift this dread / emptiness. Even when the sun is merrily beating down and music drifting over from wherever. Exercise definitely helps, or a spell on the bed with the cats just letting it wash over me. 💐

@Arghh1234 that’s very insightful. And not the first time it has been suggested to me. It is so out of the ‘blue’ tho !

Melancholia.

I get it. I think everyone gets it.

I often have had this since childhood too, Always worse in the evenings when house is quieter.

Its like a visceral, painful emptiness, a fearful feeling of being completely alone in the world, and a desperateness to go ‘home’. Probably like ET felt!

My father left when I was young and my mother singled me out for abuse (family scapegoat) so I always felt like an alien in the family and never had any comfort or affection when growing up so I’ve always put it down to that. I too was sure I was adopted as a teen but unfortunately not. My therapist thought it probably stemmed from childhood too. It’s a remembered feeling iukwim.

I’ve also had this feeling since childhood, and never spoken to anyone about it. The fleeting feeling of intense longing and deep loss, but not for anything tangible, it can be completely overwhelming.

I had it on Christmas Eve night last year. Despite a lovely, fairly chilled out day, my three little children tucked up in bed, presents for the next day were all sorted, the house was tidy and sparkling with the promise of Christmas morning, we had a lovely, non-stressful day ahead planned… and it hit me like a physical force, this feel of sheer isolation and sadness and almost despair. I had a lovely childhood, and am generally a content/happy person, so for me I don’t think it’s depression. It’s so helpful to read other people’s experiences of this.

For me: hormones! Week before my period it doesn't take much to feel blue or angry. That won't account for your son mind!

💛

Homesick describes it perfectly for me, the phrase 'I want to go home' actually goes through my head when I feel like this even though I'm usually at home when it happens! No idea what causes it but think it must be physiological because I'm not actually sad about anything tangible, it comes from nowhere.

@blackberrybat yes, as a fellow welshie, I was just about to post about Hiraeth! Longing, a homesickness ❤️

Mine is also a feeling of ‘Wanting to go home’ I live abroad, so always thought it was homesickness, but much more intense, reading comments from people who are at home feeling this doesn’t explain that though! Could it be a yearning to return to childhood/safety, I don’t know…interesting how it’s how prevalent for many at Christmas too. Christmas night is the worst, such a strange feeling

@PandoraRocks

I’ve got depression and anxiety. Had it for years. I hate the feeling. I’ve been told mine comes from my dad dying when l was 7. Apparently this is one of the reasons people drink a lot, to escape it.

For me, medication manages it. I can tell it’s there in the edges, but it doesn’t hang around.

To me, this is very like what my depression feels like. It’s a relief not having to deal with it.

@user1481050140 your description of saudade is so poetic, thank you

I think I know this. I've had it since I was about 4 or 5, can remember sitting on the floor in my room and getting this weird feeling for the first time, and then had it regularly throughout childhood. Less so know, but maybe once a year or so.

As a child, I remember actually saying to myself 'I feel like I'm adopted' (i am not). It's this weird feeling of being misplaced. I felt utterly vulnerable and exposed and awkward and different. I used to feel like I'd been unclothed or something. It felt a bit like embarrassment, loneliness, fear, desolation, mortification, shame - all rolled into one.

I always thought it was because i miss my parents and my childhood home. I feel the pull of it a lot.
But its as if im missing a childhood i never had

Such an interesting post

I used to do amateur theatre and we'd all get 'post show blues'. The Sunday after the final saturday night show, everyone would feel so low. It's as if the body has used up a week's worth of happy hormones in one night so you feel flat for a few days until the hormone top ups reach the right level. I wonder if that is why you felt that way after a festival (if you had good fun) and why people often feel flat after getting married or coming back from honeymoon to ordinary life.

I get this feeling after long travel. I sit down tired, next to my also tired husband who's occupied with other stuff and feel incredibly lonely, empty, like some piece is missing. I also feel it on Christmas late evening, like many of you. Instead of feeling cozy and content, I feel like dust in the wind. Weird.

I used to feel this as a child, about 7 years old. I would gaze at the moon and feel such emptiness, such loneliness. As if "something" were missing but I couldn't articulate what. I was trained to always smile, be grateful, be perfect - it felt like I was constantly performing for others.

As an introverted adult, I believe that I mourn who I should have been. The life I should have lived. I often feel like a fraud, as if I have faked my life away.

When I feel melancholy, I hide in daydreams, where I am myself, and finally free.

This is it for me too! I have found myself uttering this phrase recently yet upon reflection there is no exact place at “home” I’m wanting to be at.

I think in part it’s due to all of our family being elsewhere…

I know exactly what you mean but have never heard anyone else mention it before.
I have felt it since childhood but not really recently. This thread has taken me back to feeling it in the kitchen of my family home when I was about 11.
I have always thought of it as a yearning for something unknown.

For me it's a wave of intense 'otherness' and dissociation, of not feeling connected to any place, time or people, of feeling essentially alone in the world and that life as we live it has no real meaning, value or purpose. A deep existential angst with the sadness of 'knowing' anything we humans do is basically pointless. All underpinned by a deep yearning for those connections, that meaning & purpose to exist.

It can be set off in busy bustling happy environments or quiet introspective ones. From the middle of a noisy birthday party or sitting quietly alone. Street lights shining on a dark deserted, wet winter road can definitely set it off. Totally random.

Lucky it doesn't last long as living like that all the time would be very difficult.

It's clearly very common. And I don't think linked to depression which is a very different feeling, nor hormones as otherwise why would men feel it?

This makes perfect sense...what goes up, must come down! I went to a theme park on Monday with my DD and some friends and had The Best Day. I was tired and low and blue for two days afterwards. I think the holiday thing is the same, you've had all the intense excitement of planning a land packing and travelling and when you get there, your brain thinks...now what?