How to manage sadness: 8 practical tips

It is important to learn to properly manage our primary emotions; In this way we can have a clearer picture of how the situations of our lives affect us. And in relation to this, sadness is one of the basic emotions that can cause significant havoc in us.

In this article Let's see how to manage sadness so that it does not become a problem in our lives and cannot significantly affect our quality of life. We will also review the concept of this primary emotion.

• Related article: "The 8 types of emotions (classification and description)"

What is sadness?

Before seeing how to manage sadness, it is important to know what it is about. As we have seen before, sadness is one of the primary emotions that human beings experience. This is characterized by states of anguish, melancholy and discomfort when some situation is unpleasant for us.

Sadness, like other emotions, can vary in intensity, depending on a series of personal and environmental factors.

It is natural for all of us to feel sad from time to time;

the problem is when the states of sadness become too intense and long-lasting, being able to take the subject to the brink of an anxiety crisis or mood disorders such as depression.

• You may be interested in: "Types of depression: its symptoms, causes and characteristics"

How to manage the feeling of sadness?

The following list is made up of a series of recommendations aimed at managing sadness in daily life.

1. identify emotion

The main thing to achieve an adequate management of sadness is to get identify how we are feeling at that moment.

Sometimes emotions are confusing, and make us doubt. What we must do is establish that what we are feeling is sadness and not anger or frustration.

2. Determine the reason for the emotion

Once you have established that sadness overwhelms you, it will be time to find the reason for that emotion. That is, find the trigger for sadness. This will require being truly honest with yourself.

To do this, we need to ask ourselves key questions. For example; Am I avoiding what bothers me? Am I really doing what I like? What exactly is making me feel bad? Through the answers to these questions you will be able to clarify the panorama.

3. Establish each thing when it occurs

It is crucial to establish the intensity of sadness in order to know if it is becoming a problem, or if it is a question that we can consider within the parameters of normality. To do this, we must pay attention to how many times during the day we feel sad or discouraged.

In case the feeling persists for many days in a row, we could be facing a mood problem (it is best to seek professional help), but if it is sporadic states, we may have to try to solve the specific cause of these states of sadness.

4. Determines the degree of tolerance

Another important aspect to manage sadness is to see to what extent we find it tolerable; in the most intense cases the subject could not bear the feeling of sadness and would be affected by one or more anxiety or panic attacks during the course of the month.

On the other hand, when they are less intense cases, the person will be able to restore her emotional stability using only her own means, in an appropriate way. The normal thing is that we are able to tolerate a certain degree of sadness and frustration throughout our lives.

5. Understand sadness as something temporary

The way in which we perceive our emotions determines the way in which they affect us. If we insist that most of the things that happen to us are sad or unpleasant, then most likely we will live submerged in that negative state of mind.

Quite the opposite occurs when we are aware that sadness is a passing state of mind, and that eventually we are going to feel better than we do when we are down.

6. See sadness as an agent of change

Most people understand sadness as something completely negative for their lives. Although it is true that it is an unpleasant emotion, it is also It is a powerful agent of change for certain situations.

Let's see the following example. When we find ourselves going through a love breakup, it is natural that a feeling of sadness and restlessness invade us. But as time goes by, we internalize that sadness as an enriching experience that makes us grow as people.

After a while, the sadness will be gone, and we will have a feeling of calm and the ability to look at the past in a more objective and serene way. As a consequence of sadness we have become stronger than we were before going through that experience.

7. Find the antidote to your sadness

It is true that there are no magic formulas that can make us feel better from one moment to the next, but if we follow all the previous steps, we will have reached a conception of our sadness that will allow us to find the necessary tools to overcome it.

Taking up a hobby without the desire to be the best at it, just doing it to enjoy doing it, It can be an effective way to combat our feeling of sadness and replace it with one of joy. staff.

8. attend therapy

In the event that none of the above recommendations manages to reduce the negative emotions of sadness, and despite all the attempts, a bittersweet taste prevails of not having achieved what you wanted, what top attend therapy with a psychotherapy professional who will be able to assess you properly and offer psychological treatment.

Bibliographic references:

• American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Fifth edition. DSM-V. Massón, Barcelona.
• Torralba, f. (2007). The essence of suffering. An. Syst. Sanit. Navar., 30 (Sup.3): 23-37.