Amanda Tang’s Reviews > How to be Sad: The Key to a Happier Life: Everything I’Ve Learned About Getting Happier, by Being Sad, Better > Status Update

‘I have regularly seen that it is not the pain of loss that damages individuals, but the things they do to avoid that pain,’ says the psychotherapist Julia Samuel. It’s not uncommon, I learn, to fall prey to addictions or develop reckless behaviours at a time of loss. There’s an idea that because we’re hurting so much already, we may as well really screw ourselves over.

“What you have there is a case of childhood omnipotence. This is a well-documented tendency of some children (and some adults) to think that the world revolves around them and that they control everything that happens in it. It’s an exaggerated sense of responsibility based on the belief that “I, personally, have the duty and power to save loved ones in trouble.””