Pushkin

I try to be a fairly honest person, but there's one situation in which I'm often tempted

to lie.

It's when someone asks me the innocent question, how are you?

My default answer feels pretty automatic.

I'm fine.

How are you?

Now, don't get me wrong.

A lot of the time, I am fine.

But there are also days when I'm really down about something.

And when people try to check in on those days, my first instinct is to keep whatever sadness

I'm going through to myself.

Kind of like a stiff upper lip thing.

Not mentioning it when we're feeling low seems like what we're supposed to do.

But the science shows that when it comes to emotions like sadness, the reflex to put

on a happy face is actually making us feel worse.

Our silence about feeling blue also means that we're missing out on opportunities to

make meaningful connections with the people around us, whether they're close friends

or even total strangers.

So in this episode in our series on difficult emotions, we'll say to heck with the stiff

upper lip mantra, we're going to start talking about sadness.

We'll find out what our everyday sorrows are trying to tell us, and we'll learn what

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