ensuring that you aren’t as harmed by your loss
So the thing that I don’t remember the film answering, and that I think your comment doesn’t answer either, is: how do they do this?
Like, first we need to ask “if I didn’t feel sad, how would I be harmed by my loss?” That seems easy enough. If I accidentally flushed my wedding ring down the toilet: I’m down an item that has sentimental (and perhaps monetary) value. If I’ve lost a Smash Bros tournament: well, winning would have been some kind of gain, and I’ve lost the possibility of that. But perhaps there are also less obvious harms.
And then we need to ask “how is this harm lessened by my allies showing they care about me?” I don’t have a clear answer to that. I still don’t have my wedding ring or the possibility of a Smash Bros tournament victory.
We could say “well, you’re still just harmed by your loss, but with sadness you get extra friend time which is good, so the net is less overall harm”. But… I dunno, doesn’t ring true to me. Like for one thing this leaves out that on top of the object level harm, you get the unpleasant sadness emotion.
If we additionally stipulate that I’m worried that my friends and loved ones will all desert me, now that I’ve lost my wedding ring/the tournament—then sure, them coming to show their support fixes that. That kind of thing is what I was gesturing at with “cognitive distortions”, but tbf maybe it’s not always a distortion.
Neither of those. I’ll try to recap the conversation from my POV:
In my first comment, I distinguish between
Situations where I’m sad, and my friends can help me fix the thing I’m sad about.
Situations where I’m sad, and my friends can make me less sad but can’t fix the thing I’m sad about.
(And my memory of the film is that the “oh! Sadness signals your friends to come help!” revelation is about a (2), which makes the revelation feel unconvincing to me. Like, I think the argument presented in the film isn’t very good; but I can come up with a better argument myself, so I’m not questioning the conclusion.)
Then I read pjeby as saying that in both types of situations, sadness signals allies to come help; but the help they offer isn’t to fix the problem, the help they offer is to do harm reduction.
And in my second comment, I’m specifically focusing on the (2)s, and asking how your allies do harm reduction in those situations.