TikTok therapist explains why you need to feel sad sometimes to experience true happiness

Nadia Addesi is a 27-year-old psychotherapist and founder of Evolve & Bloom, a holistic wellness center. She uses the company’s TikTok to provide short and insightful mental health advice.

Addesi’s TikTok on understanding your spectrum of feelings is just one example of how she’s using her platform to educate and inform. The psychotherapist used a pendulum to explain how burying the feelings we don’t want — like anger or sadness — makes it more difficult to enjoy the emotions we do want, like joy.

“You tend to only really want to hold onto the happiness. So, every time something happens you hold onto the happiness and lift it higher and higher,” Addesi explained in the video.

She lifted the side of the pendulum that represents happiness.

“But eventually, it becomes too heavy and it gets to the point where you can’t hold onto the happiness anymore,” Addesi said.

Then she released the “happy” pendulum ball, freeing it to swing and crash into the other balls.

“So, you drop the happiness and you realize that as soon as you drop it, the more power you give to the other side [unwanted feelings],” Addesi said. “We can’t avoid and try to mask with positive feelings all the time.”

She elaborated on the subject when she spoke with In The Know.

“There’s no such thing as a bad emotion,” Addesi told In The Know. “Emotions are just that. There’s one side, of course and the other side. But neither of them is bad and neither of them is good. The first step is to realize that it’s nothing to be ashamed of and that it’s healthy to feel both sides.”

The psychotherapist offered some parting advice for those struggling to find the balance.

“My two main pieces of advice is: one, don’t negatively judge an emotion and don’t just yourself for experiencing a ‘negative’ emotion,” Addesi told In The Know. “Two, just being a mindful observer of your thoughts and your emotions as they are coming … If you’re numbing all those emotions that you don’t want to deal with you’re not going to experience those positive, happy emotions either. With happy comes sad. With sad comes happy.”

Enjoyed this article? Check out this TikTok psychologist who shares tips for managing panic attacks.

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