Authentic sadness: the fastest path to real connection

Some years ago, a client I’ll call Julia (a composite of several people I’ve worked with, details changed) told me about the worst week of her career. Her team had lost a project she’d spent eight months building. The decision came from above, with no real explanation. On Monday morning, her colleagues asked how she was. “Fine,” she said. “Moving on. These things happen.”

By Wednesday, she was snapping at an intern over a formatting error. By Friday, she’d stopped going to the team lunch.

When I asked what she was feeling, she said, “Irritated. Mostly at everyone.”

We stayed with that for a while, and then something shifted. “Actually,” she said quietly, “I’m sad. I put so much of myself into that project. And nobody even noticed it was a loss.”

That’s the moment I want to talk about, because I see it constantly in corporate life. Sadness is the emotion we are most afraid to show, and I’d argue it’s the one that would help us the most.

Why sadness is the emotion we hide

In a culture that glorifies resilience, sadness gets a bad reputation. We praise people who “bounce back,” “stay positive,” and “keep the momentum going.” Somewhere along the way, many of us absorbed an unspoken rule: sadness is weakness, and weakness is unprofessional. We don’t even give ourselves the conscious choice to show it or not. Not anymore.

So we do what the Emotional Assertiveness (EA) model, developed by John Parr, helps us notice. We cover it up.

In EA, we work with four core authentic emotions: anger, fear, sadness and happiness. Each one carries information. Anger signals that a boundary has been crossed. Fear signals a perceived threat. Happiness signals that something matters and is going well. And sadness signals loss or grief: something we valued has ended, changed, or never arrived or worse, we’ve lost something or someone.

When we don’t feel safe expressing an authentic emotion, or we’ve learnt in early childhood that it is not safe to express it, we often replace it unconsciously with a cover-up emotion, a reaction that looks more acceptable but doesn’t actually tell anyone what’s going on. Sadness is very commonly covered by:

• Irritability or anger, which feels stronger and safer than vulnerability
• Busyness, because if I keep moving, I don’t have to feel the loss
• Forced cheerfulness, the “I’m totally fine!” that fools no one
• Withdrawal or sarcasm, which keep people at a distance

The trouble is that cover-up emotions don’t resolve anything. Julia’s irritation didn’t bring her project back or help her colleagues understand her. It just made her harder to be around, and lonelier.

What authentic sadness is, and what it isn’t

When I suggest expressing sadness at work, people often picture a breakdown in the meeting room: tears, collapse, a request for everyone to hold space. That’s not what I mean.

In EA, expressing sadness assertively is not collapse, and it is not asking someone to fix it or rescue you. It’s an honest, proportionate communication of loss. It sounds like:

• “I’m sad that the project was cancelled. I put a lot into it.”
• “I felt sad when I heard the team was being restructured. I valued how we worked together.”
• “I’m sad about how that conversation ended.”

Notice what these statements have in common. They’re short. They name the emotion directly. They connect it to something that mattered. And they don’t blame, perform, or demand a particular response.

This is where EA’s life position of I’m OK, You’re OK matters. When I express sadness from that place, I’m not telling you that you hurt me and owe me something (that’s a different position, and usually it’s anger in disguise). I’m also not hiding my reality to protect you. I’m simply letting you know what’s true for me, with respect for both of us.

Why it builds connection faster than almost anything else

Here’s what I’ve observed across more than twelve years of working in multinational organisations, and later with the people I train: vulnerability, shared at the right moment and in the right measure, is a bonding tool.

Think about the last time someone said something like, “I’m sad about how that went.” What did you feel? Most of us feel a softening. We lean in. We stop performing and we actually start relating.

There are a few reasons this works:

1. It’s honest. People sense incongruence. When our words say “fine”, and our body says otherwise, others feel the gap, and trust erodes. Authentic expression builds trust.
2. It gives others permission. One person naming a real emotion makes it safer for the next person to do the same. Teams that can say “I’m sad” can also say “I’m afraid” and “I’m angry” before things fester.
3. It tells people how to treat us. A colleague can’t respond to a loss they don’t know about. Information, not mind-reading, is what allows support.
4. It lets the feeling move. Authentic emotions are meant to pass through us. When sadness is acknowledged, it tends to ease. When it’s covered up, it tends to show up sideways, as exhaustion, cynicism, or conflict.

When Julia told her manager, “I’m sad about the project. It mattered to me,” the conversation changed. Her manager, who had been avoiding her because she seemed prickly, admitted he’d felt uncomfortable about how the decision was communicated. They talked for forty minutes. It was the most honest conversation they’d had in a year.

How to start (without overhauling your personality)

You don’t need to become a different person. You need a few small practices.

1. Name the cover-up. Notice when your reaction is bigger or flatter than the situation warrants. Irritated for days? Suspiciously cheerful? Ask yourself gently: what have I lost here?
2. Check for loss. Sadness is nearly always about a loss, something that ended, changed, or didn’t happen: a project, a relationship, an expectation, a version of the future. Naming the loss often makes the emotion clearer.
3. Choose your moment and your person. Assertive doesn’t mean indiscriminate. Pick someone and a setting where a few honest sentences are possible.
4. Keep it short and clean. “I’m sad about X, because Y mattered to me.” Then stop. Resist the urge to justify, apologise, or turn it into a case.
5. Let it be received. You’re not asking for a solution. Allow a pause. Sometimes the connection is in the silence afterward.

A closing thought

We spend so much energy protecting ourselves from being seen as sad that we miss what sadness offers: a way to say, plainly, this mattered to me. That’s rarely weakness. In my experience, it’s one of the clearest signs of emotional intelligence in a room.

If there’s something you’ve been covering up lately, I invite you to ask yourself what you might be sad about, and who in your life could handle hearing it.

Stay happy,

Magda.

If you’d like to practise this kind of emotional honesty in a supported setting, the autumn online edition of the Open EA Training runs over five live Friday sessions (6, 13, 20, 27 November and 4 December, 9:00–13:00 CET), with a maximum of 12 participants.