YOUR AMAZING BODY

WE FEEL truly sad for only six seconds at a time – which is the brain’s mechanism for protecting us from emotional harm.

This is the amount of time it takes for chemicals which are linked to sadness in the brain’s emotion centre to be released and then reabsorbed. Any feeling that lasts longer is the brain’s consciousness reliving the experience of the feeling.

Experts say this is an evolutionary tool that has allowed humans to survive traumatic experiences without becoming emotionally overwhelmed.