The order of remedies?

Maybe the order is about intensities of sadness. A minor sadness can be healed by WHATEVER pleasure. You had a bad day at work - your boss yelled at you, whatever. You come home, your siblings greet you with their chubby innocent smiles or bits of "news", you forget what made you down. Even watching a funny clip on the internet could do that. Even a cinnamon bun can remove that. So that sadness is done - any pleasure does the "trick". The second one - okay - I mentioned the part about tears being a possible irascible avenue. I think some women may have more experience with this than men, especially when they don't feel that a more aggressive option is open to them or they don't want to make it something aggressive but just "get it out". The "befitting" the "operation" part of it is very visible here. But Aquinas isn't thinking irascible - he's thinking "death of friend" like Augustine. And that is a pretty intense sorrow. But the death of a friend concerns the past even more than the present - and one is not seeing a friend suffering which, while not as bad as death, might be something more saddening in a way than, for example, watching somebody suffer like Job - "one thing after another" in very intense ways. He does give the justification that the "stronger" the "present" and the "longer" will carry out - if I recall - Augustine's friend took ill and died over a very short period of time - if he had watched him suffer long and intensely - the sorrow might have been a different one to work out when he died. There is something about surprise that while it is more traumatizing in a way in another way can also be easier to work through beause of the quickness? I am just speaking off the top of my head. I have next to no experience with these things.
Anyway - so at a certain point - friends would become necessary - weeping doesn't do any kind of trick no longer. For example, you take to sitting on a dung heap. This would be a good time for friends to come (not Job-style friends, but friends friends - friends who allow you to perceive how they love you). But friends cannot always be there... or even your friends are not getting through to you... sickness unto death kind of thing. You can feel gratitude perhaps but no increase in self esteem - there is a kind of block. Well maybe then you need a dose of the truth. And depending how much you love the truth - this can carry you through. Maybe it is the thing that originated your pain in the first place - maybe a truth about yourself for example that loving people cannot fix. And it is interesting this might be the cause of pain - the very first objection of article 4 is the Ecclesiastes "who adds knowledge, also adds pain (dolorem)." And if that isn't enough to pull you out - there is a greater and greater intensity - you need sleep and baths - fortification - sensual surroundings with comfort and stimulation - baths restoring natural movement. You've got to learn how to feel pleasure again - you got to start almost being forced to experience pleasure in order to forget/again disperse the soul so that you may collect it later.
Anyway, this is my suggested story. I don't know what it might have to do with Aquinas.