hello Pandora,
I hope you are feeling better since you wrote your post.
I just want to say something that could not appear reasonable at first. It is just my opinion and I only ask to think it over. I know what sadness feels like. Believe me. Just read some of my posts. I learned from it too and what I learned may be shocking to most people but it was what I learned. When I stopped considering sadness (or any symptom for that matter) as something that I should get rid of, as my enemy, not only it didn't bother me being sad but I didn't feel sad most of the time. I discovered that I was mostly sad because I was not able to get rid of it. There was a fight between how I SHOULD have felt and how I DID ACTUALLY feel and the same sadness was coming from that fight. When I let it be, as something that has to be experienced and a part of the ups and downs of life, it just goes by, passes without holding on to it.
When we fight some feeling, it seems that there is no end to it, and when we let it be it passes by making place to another feeling. That's what I learned (not from books) We perpetuate the feeling by fighting it. Once we let it be and observe it:
1º. It bothers no more
2º. It passes by as naturally as it came
3º. Something else takes place
It is the nature of things to pass by and not last unless we get involved with them with destructive emotions (hate, fight, shame, ...) We are conditioned to want to get rid of anything we don't like, did that serve any? I wonder.