There are losses that break us loudly, while others pass unnoticed, unnamed, unwept.

In this episode, we turn toward those quieter sorrows that never found language, the ones that never received permission to exist. We begin with Freud’s notion of melancholia: grief that doesn’t know its object, mourning that turns inward, as the self becomes the site of absence.

Then we enter a phenomenological space, where sorrow is not simply a mood, rather a way the world appears: no longer as a horizon of “I can,” but as a closing down, a withdrawal, a silent “I cannot" .

We reflect on the losses we never named, the parts of ourselves we lost with others, and the strange, beautiful moments when we are full of sorrow without knowing why.

In a world shaped by the modern happiness project, a world that demands productivity, cheerfulness, and emotional clarity, Sadness becomes suspect.

But perhaps sadness is not weakness; perhaps it is a form of truth-telling. In the therapy room, we are invited to stop smiling. To grieve what was silenced. To honour what was lost before we even knew it was ours.

In episode 16 of Philosophers in the Therapy Room, we invite you to listen to the silence beneath the smile.