If you’re not a geek, that doesn’t make any sense to you. In plain English, though, that could be translated as: “fuck it, I’m gonna get drunk, ‘cause I feel like shit and I simply can’t stand that…”

If I could have a nickel for any moment in my life I said that to myself, and at least a dollar for all the situations in which I acted upon that, my financial situation will closely match whatever @dan or @ned are holding in their SP accounts now. Or, I don’t know, just pick a whale, any whale, and that’s the amount of money I could have, if all my “avoiding reality at all cost” moments would have been converted, somehow, into cash.

Why Isn't Healthy To Send Your Sadness To /dev/null

The bad thing about avoiding feelings of sadness is that - if you succeed at it, if you manage to numb it off - it makes you immune not only to it, but to all your feelings.

You know, your ability to experience emotions is not different based on them being “good” or “bad”. It’s not like you have a device for sadness and another device for joy. It’s the same thing you use for both. And if you try to shield a certain feeling, you end up silencing the entire device.

The end result: a flat line across your entire emotional spectrum, a nothingness which isn’t protecting you in any way. On the contrary, it rips your off of any chance to get the best of your short time here, on this planet.

And that’s the best case scenario. Most often than not, you can’t really get to the point where you can’t feel anything anymore; instead, you just throw the garbage under the carpet and then, when you’re least prepared, that pressure will explode in apparently unexplainable behavior, or, most likely, some form of illness. Pushing residue down your emotional system, without processing it, will eventually contaminate your physical body. When it gets to that point, it’s usually too late.

The Geek Cheat Sheet For Managing Sadness

It doesn’t really have to be that way, you know. There are ways. What follows is my short cheat sheet for managing sadness, in geeks lingo.

Code In A Safe Environment

When you feel down, try putting yourself in a safe environment. It’s like activating a temporary firewall, but not to protect you from the outside. This firewall is activated in order to protect the outside from you.

Sadness, frustration or depression can make you do or say things that you may regret later on. This whole “bad feelings processing thing” will move real shit inside you and that shit sometimes needs a way out. It’s better if there’s nobody around, or if there is, warn them somehow that your ping has some lag today. It's better if they know beforehand that you're not 100% functional - at least that’s my personal experience. When I’m feeling really sad, I just take a break. I let everyone know that I’m not ok and that I’ll be back as soon as the flood is over.

It works better than pretending I’m ok and then bursting off in flames at the smallest touch.

Plan For Multiple Routes

There’s no “one thing cures all” medicine for this. Sometimes talking a long walk will work better than napping (although napping is a very effective way to accept sadness). So, when you feel sad, instead of pretending you’re not feeling anything, just give yourself some room and let it express in any way you can. It’s like putting many conditional expressions in your code:

    if (long-walk === works){
        return;
    } else if (sleep-it-over === works){
        return;
    } 

You got the idea.

Clean Someone Else’s Code

When you spot another person from your entourage going through this, try to be helpful (don’t be too pushy, though, and only interact if you get clearance).

A sad person is not fun to have around, but practicing closeness and empathy towards someone else will grow your own “sadness managing muscles” as well. You will be better prepared to tackle it when it’s gonna hit you next time.

Commit and then Push

Ernest Hemingway said once:

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

Commit totally to your sadness, accept it’s there and then, once it’s over, just push forward (the same way you do with your code, you know: commit and push it to the repository).

More often than not, after owning your sadness and going through it, you’ll feel reborn. The best part of this is that your “feelings device” in time, grows stronger and stronger, instead of shrinking by not being used at all.

And that means that if you're able to feel sadness with all your being, the same thing will happen with joy.

(image source: own design).

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.