How to Feel Better When Sad

When sadness happens we just want to know how to feel better when we’re sad.

Sadness is an inevitable part of life and when we feel sad we just want it to go away. Often the ways we use to feel better make us feel worse!

However, you can get through your sadness AND take care of yourself at the same time.

Why am I writing this today?

Because I feel sad. I’ve felt sad off and on for about a week and these are the ways that I’ve helped myself feel better while also processing my sadness in a healthy way.

I believe with my whole heart that processing sadness in a healthy way is good, for not just my emotional health but my physical health as well.

Experiencing a sad situation and feeling sad is not bad for you. When we use unhealthy ways of dealing with sadness it can become bad for us.

The trick is to learn to feel, process, and eventually feel better.

When you do this, you grow, you feel more alive, and yes, you will feel better.

Here is an important note. When I talk about feeling an emotion, I mean feeling it in your body. By focusing on the physical pain of an emotion, you can process it. This usually only takes a couple of minutes.

I am also sharing a situational feeling I am going through. If you feel sad on a chronic basis; I recommend finding a therapist or specialized life coach.

What is Sadness?

What do you believe about sadness? Most of us believe it is something bad and definitely something to be avoided.

Sadness is a feeling, also referred to as an emotion. There is usually a loss involved. There is also a physical pain. No wonder we hate it!

But when we think of sadness as a normal part of our emotional and physical life, it becomes just a little easier to deal with.

While we think that emotions are in our heads; they actually take place in our bodies. A feeling is an energetic/chemical reaction taking place in your body.

What you think about something is not the actual feeling. But your thoughts about something definitely create or add charge to your emotions.

Here’s a thought about sadness that helps me every time.

I don’t want to be a person who doesn’t feel sadness. I want to care. Choosing to love is also choosing to feel sad sometimes. You don’t get one without the other. EVER

Unhealthy Ways of Dealing with Sadness

Don’t take any of these personally. I’ve done them all at times. Almost none of us have been taught how to handle difficult feelings in a healthy way.

Not only that, but we have been taught to fear strong feelings such as being sad. Many of us will twist ourselves into a pretzel to avoid feeling sad.

Learning to manage strong emotions is important. However, most of us resort to the following ways of handling emotion instead.

• Avoiding
• Resisting
• Buffering
• Reacting
• Blaming
• Ruminating
• Avoiding

This is human ingenuity at its best. Let’s just avoid the whole feeling sad thing. Sounds great. Let’s protect our hearts, not let some people get close.

Yes, you might avoid some sad feelings but you will also avoid all the delicious, scary, wonderful emotions as well. You will literally miss out on some of the best experiences in life.

Resisting

Have you ever told yourself, “I refuse to feel sad!” I know I have. I’ve worked with many clients who fear feeling sad.

Feeling sad doesn’t feel exactly great, but it’s nothing to fear. Yet, our fear is that if we give into it, we’ll never be able to get out of it.

The opposite is true. By resisting, we prolong feeling bad. When you feel what you feel, you ill not get lost in it and I’m going to show you how.

Buffering

This is everyone’s favorite! What is buffering. It’s anything you do to avoid feeling something.

• Drinking
• Smoking
• Scrolling on your phone
• Overeating
• Binging on anything
• Overworking
• Reacting

Most of us think of reacting when we think of feeling our emotions and that’s one of the reasons we don’t want to feel something.

But reacting is a way of trying to push our emotions away.

For example, if you are mad, it may temporarily feel better to yell at someone, and you may genuinely believe that you are feeling your emotion.

You aren’t. You are reacting to it and trying desperately to push it away.

Blaming

Finding someone to blame, even if it’s yourself is another way to avoid feeling. You wouldn’t be sad if such and such hadn’t happened or if someone hadn’t done something.

Our brains always want to find someone to blame! Make it make sense.

This just prolongs or makes the feeling worse.

There may be some things to look into at some point, but for now, it’s important to just learn to have a feeling and process it in a healthy way.

Ruminating

Okay, our brains love to keep repeating painful things over and over. How many times do you repeat a painful conversation over and over in your head?

I also call this arguing with reality.

How many times do you go back and wish you could do something different?

We will eagerly keep recreating the painful situation in our minds.

Why? Because it feels like we are doing something.

And you are. You are keeping yourself in pain and suffering. Ruminating is NOT processing a feeling. It’s like picking at a scab. You are keeping the wound open and bleeding.

Why is It Important to Feel Sad?

I don’t wish sadness on anyone. I hate it as much as anyone. Yet, I also know it is important to our health.

How do I know sadness is important to our health? Because it is built in. I believe it ultimately makes us more caring, more tender, and more resilient. We take care of things and people we care about.

And I believe that feeling our emotions is good for us! When we feel, our energy is moving, not stagnant or stuck.

This isn’t medical advice, but I also believe that feeling our emotions in our body and accepting them is good for our health.

I prove this every day to women I work with.

When they feel their stuck emotions, they can literally feel the pain in their bodies, usually in their hearts, gut, or neck. There is no way that can be healthy to have on a chronic basis.

Healthy Ways to Feel Better When You Are Sad

Here’s what I know. When I am kind and compassionate with myself, I become a better version of myself even through difficult times.

Feeling sad isn’t something I seek out but when I feel it; I don’t avoid it. I believe that the fastest way through it is to actively respond to what is happening in my body.

Our bodies hold the key to our healing and feeling better. Not our minds. If you stay up in your head; it just prolongs the pain.

Here are my five ways that I’ve used to feel better when I feel sad.

How to Move Through Sadness

Four days ago, I literally felt like my chest was cracking in two. Sadness hurts! And I can’t put a happy spin on that.

Here’s something you have to know. No matter how bad it hurts, if you can lean into it and actually feel the pain, it will pass.

I know it feels like you will fall apart or feel so bad you can’t get back up. That isn’t the case.

Feeling my chest breaking did not feel good at the time. I sat there. I breathed. I accepted it. I let it know it was felt. I said the words, “I feel you and you are welcome here.”

And a little while later, I did feel better. I felt good enough to move a little, do some exercise. And while I was gently moving, I realized I was smiling. And then I felt even better.

In fact, I felt pretty good for the rest of the day.

That night, I hurt again but not as deeply. The next morning, I felt good again and had a productive day.

In the afternoon, my heart hurt again. I sat with my hurting heart until I felt better.

Yes, this is as tedious as it sounds.

I would much rather wave a magic wand and make it all go away.

Here’s what I will tell you. The moments in between while colored with a little sadness were also beautiful and life-giving. I felt alive, not shut off and closed down.

I believe I am giving my heart a gift when I allow myself to feel my sadness. I don’t dwell there by fueling it with painful thoughts.

I let my body do what it knows how to do. I let it process and heal.

Use Your Intuition to Feel Better

When I first started this post, I was going to list all the ways I am dealing with my own sadness. Then, I realized that my list was comprised of things that my intuition was leading me too.

This post while it is a “how to” isn’t meant to say, if you do this action or that you’ll feel better. However, I am going to share the actions that have been helpful to me.

Number one is accepting the feeling of sadness. You are not your sadness; you are experiencing a strong emotion.

We haven’t been taught to feel an emotion without trying to make it go away. Years ago, I wrote several posts on how to feel better.

At that time, I believed I needed to make the bad feelings go away.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel better. And it’s okay to do things that help you feel better as you move through your sadness.

I primarily used these things to get me through the worst of it.

• Journaling
• Exercise and walking
• Deciding what I wanted to get done
• Planning things to do with people each day
• Intentional eating
• Getting up earlier so I could go to bed earlier
• Allow yourself to feel better

Journaling

I have journaled almost every morning for the last 25 years. So, it makes sense that would be the place where I went to talk about my experience.

For me, writing helps me stay true to myself and grounded. I don’t judge myself when I write. It’s a place where I talk about what’s going on and give myself encouragement.

I celebrate what I feel good about as well. When we acknowledge what we are doing right, we can do more of it.

Exercise and walking

For me, I love walking and gentle workouts. On the day when I thought my chest was breaking in two, I eventually felt good enough to go move a bit.

What surprised me was how fast I felt better. I didn’t think myself better—I just felt better. I even smiled. I ended up working out for about 45 minutes.

And to my bigger surprise, I felt pretty good for the rest of the day. Thanks Ellen Barrett! I have to recommend Ellen Barrett’s streaming videos. I am not an affiliate. I have exercised to her videos for at least 10 years and I pay a very small monthly fee to have access to all her videos.

She adds one new video each month and I eagerly look forward to it. I am not exaggerating when I say these videos have been essential to my feeling better. I have been doing the gentlest of workouts and her voice guiding me has been the best medicine.

I highly recommend you find some way of moving to process the energy and emotions in our body. I linked above some of my favorite free YouTube workouts.

So, I made the decision to move intentionally each day. I even started getting up earlier so I could get a short walk in before it got too hot.

Deciding what to get done

When we are in the midst of strong emotions it can be difficult to get things done.

One of my coaches taught me that it’s okay to do the minimum or stick to the essentials.

Each day, I decided what I wanted to get done. I pushed myself a little but I didn’t overload myself.

I was thrilled with how much I did get done this week. It felt really good to be able to be productive.

Planning things to do with people each day

I tend to be one of those people that want to hibernate when I feel bad.

This time, I wanted to be different. So, on that horrible first day, I reached out to one of my coach friends.

We’ve known each other for a few years, but I had never reached out to her to talk about something I was going through.

But she was the one I felt called to talk to, so I texted her and we set up a call for the next day.

She was the perfect person and I felt so loved and supported by her. This encouraged me to set up something on most days so I would have some human contact.

An hour or two a day of human contact has been so helpful. And except for talking to my friend, I haven’t used the time to talk about my experience. I’ve used the time to just connect in whatever way makes sense for that relationship.

Today, it’s going to be playing with the grandkids. I can’t wait!

Intentional eating

At first, I didn’t have much appetite so I would let my intuition guide me to foods that sounded appetizing.

Then as I felt better, I started craving my smoothies. These helped me get some nutrition while also appealing to my taste buds.

Early in the week, I cleaned out my pantry and threw away all my chips and snacks like that. While they helped me get through the first few days, I didn’t want to depend on them either.

Yes, I for sure ate them for a few days when I couldn’t eat anything else. But as I am going through this sadness; I also wanted to take care of myself.

Last night, I made my first dinner in over a week. It was so good and good for me.

Getting up earlier so I could go to bed earlier

Evenings are the hardest and I found myself wanting to go to bed earlier, even earlier than usual.

The problem with this was then I would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep.

So, since I really wanted to be able to walk outside (It gets into the 90’s really early here) I decided that I would get up about an hour and a half earlier than I usually do.

I would still be able to get eight hours of sleep that way and I was hopeful I’d be more likely to sleep through the night.

It has worked for the most part. Honestly this has been a great sleep hack for me that I plan to keep up.

I know a lot of people have the opposite problem; in that they need more sleep. I had plenty of time to sleep but it wasn’t good sleep, and I would often have hours awake at night.

Morning is my favorite time of day and evening is my most difficult. This little change has made a huge difference to my mood overall.

When I was having longer times in bed, awake in the middle of the night, I felt horrible in the mornings, so I couldn’t even enjoy my favorite part of the day.

But by changing my getting up time, I can go to bed early as I prefer, get enough sleep, and I wake up feeling better so I can enjoy my favorite part of the day.

Allow yourself to feel good when it happens

Ha! How can this even be a thing? Of course, we want to feel good instead of sad.

But honestly, I had to decide to let myself feel good when it happened. I was so surprised the first time I found myself happy and energized. I wasn’t ready to let go of my sadness.

However, in that moment, I gave myself permission to feel happy and good. To my surprise I felt pretty great for the rest of the day.

Not to worry. The sadness would come back over and over. But there were other feelings accessible.

I would feel enthusiastic. I felt love. I felt energetic. Heck, I even felt happy at times.

Feeling sad is not 24/7 even though I thought it would be. Back in the day, it did feel like sadness was overwhelming.

This time, I allowed it to be different and I was different. I felt different. I actually had lots of other feelings.

By feeling positive emotions as well, I did not drown in sadness. In some ways, I felt more alive than I had in months.

How to Be Positive When Feeling Down?

You won’t feel positive all the time and you don’t have to force yourself to be positive.

However, you can adopt an overall positive outlook while you feel sad.

Here are some thoughts that I found helpful.

• This isn’t going to last forever.
• I’m going to come out of this stronger and more resilient.
• All my feelings are welcome and good.
• I am capable of handling this.
• Something better is coming my way.
• This (processing the sadness) is good for me.
• Feeling sad is a part of feeling love.
• Being able to have incredible love means there will be sadness sometimes.

The idea of being positive isn’t about making a feeling go away. Being positive is finding meaning in your experience and KNOWING that you will become a stronger person on the other side.

How to Let Go of Sadness?

The one thing that surprised me the most is that I had many times that I felt good. I even felt happy at times.

While this sounds good, a part of me wanted to hang on to my sadness. Even though I felt terrible at times, a part of me wanted to hang on to that.

So, in addition to feeling my sadness, I also made the decision, I would also feel my happiness too.

This is, I believe, the most powerful decision I could have made: to allow myself to feel happy at times.

What happened because of that decision came as a surprise.

One afternoon, I was exercising, and I felt happy and good. I decided that I would also let myself feel good when it happened. I was surprised that I continued feeling good until the next day.

I still feel sad sometimes, but I honestly have felt way better than I expected. I feel free. I feel relief. I feel energized. I feel optimistic. I feel proud of myself.

Yes, I felt proud of myself. Allowing myself to feel sad has had the result that I feel good about myself and how I can take care of myself, even when I feel terrible at times.

To answer the question, how to let go of sadness? It’s counter intuitive. To let go of feeling sad, you fully embrace it and feel it.

You take care of yourself.

And finally, you allow yourself to feel good too.

Eventually, your emotions will feel more balanced, and you will have the knowledge that you can have emotions and you will not drown in them.

You won’t just let sadness go; you will have moved beyond it. There might be a twinge now and then, but you will have the confidence and trust in yourself that you can handle it.

That my friend feels amazing!

If You Want Some Help

I work with women in private coaching to help them move through life situations. We all have them! I wrote this post so that you can get feeling better as soon as possible.

Everyone, even coaches, go through tough times. So many women, myself included, think we have to do it all ourselves. You don’t have to! And if you’re curious about working with a life coach, I really encourage you to jump on a Zoom with me.

I can’t stress this enough–even if you decide that this isn’t something you want to do (and there is zero pressure) you will have activated something inside you that is ready to grow and change.