Susan Cain on Transforming Pain, Building Your Emotional Resilience, Exploring Sufi Wisdom, and More

Susan Cain says the project began with a personal mystery: minor-key “sad” music made her feel uplifted, connected, and grateful, not simply sad. That question widened into years of research across art, literature, wisdom traditions, and conversations with psychologists and neuroscientists about why sorrow and longing can be generative.

Cain defines bittersweetness as inhabiting the truth that life is “always simultaneously joy and sorrow,” paired with a deep awareness of impermanence and a piercing appreciation of beauty. She argues the state isn’t the same as depression, even if modern psychology often lumps melancholy into depression without distinction.

Cain describes preliminary work with Scott Barry Kaufman and David Yaden to create a “bittersweet quiz,” and says their early findings suggested bittersweetness correlates with creativity, awe, spirituality, and wonder. She also notes research suggesting severe depression can reduce creativity, while an “in-between” emotionally vulnerable state can fuel it.

Drawing on Darwin-related discussion and Dacher Keltner’s work, Cain highlights the vagus nerve’s responsiveness to others’ distress as evidence humans are built to resonate with sorrow. She frames shared sorrow and story as a bridge to connection in divisive times.

Cain says mystical traditions—especially Sufism—treat longing as a signal that draws people toward the divine, quoting Rumi’s “This longing you express is the return message.” She argues contemporary culture lacks language for longing, which can lead people to mislabel heartache as depression and to overburden romantic relationships with impossible expectations of “Eden.”