Sadness is an emotion that tends to generate in us great discomfort, however, the biggest drawback occurs when it is extended in time and affects the different areas of life, or when it causes depression.
We bring you some tricks as an umbrella to protect us from sadness when this happens and improve our emotional health.
Cry if you feel like it. Sadness is an emotion like any other and has its function. You have the right to feel sad and cry if you need to.
Accept your moment and give yourself time. Sometimes the best way to change something is to accept it and stop fighting it. We don’t have to feel happy immediately, every process takes time.
Do not judge what you feel. The judgment we make about our feelings generates more discomfort: “what I’m supposed to feel, what others will think, what I think I am for feeling this way…”. Being sad wouldn’t affect us so much if we didn’t think it said something about us and clung to it; we can see it as an emotion that, like any other, as it comes, so it goes.
Don’t isolate yourself. The tendency to isolate ourselves contributes to making us feel even worse when we are sad. While it is true that there are times when we need to be in solitude, sharing moments with other people distracts us, makes us think about other things so we don’t keep feeding the negative feeling.
Talk about it, share it. You don’t have to go through this alone; if you try, you’ll find that talking about something or venting can be really liberating. We will always find at least ONE person willing to listen: a friend, a family member, an acquaintance, a professional… Even a journal can be very helpful!
Occupy your time, what do you feel like doing? A priori the answer may be “nothing”, apathy takes over our decision-making power. If this continues over time, stop and think calmly, are you sure that something does not come to your mind? The little things fill our daily lives: a hot bath, a movie, a walk, a chat with a friend, preparing our favorite dish, signing up for an activity?
Take care of your appearance and personal hygiene. Take a shower, get dressed and take care of your personal hygiene. Paying attention to something so basic is fundamental, it means taking care of ourselves: if there is one person who cannot forget about you, it is yourself. Besides, looking good contributes to improve our mood.
Go outside. If we spend all day inside our bubble, the atmosphere will end up stale. There is more oxygen out there, go out and breathe it!
Establish a routine. This pushes us to organize our day to day life and not abandon ourselves.
Try sports. Doing sports, besides helping us to disconnect and release emotions, causes us to generate a series of hormones that contribute to maintaining a positive mood.
Focus on the present. “What’s done is done”, it seems easy to say but we can not go back to recover the time or change the past. However, we can focus our attention and effort on ‘today’, to make the most of the time and change the future.
Set small daily or weekly goals. This makes us focus on other issues and devote less attention to what worries us. It is enough with small facts that comfort, Rome was not made in one day. Reviewing and seeing that we achieve them encourages and stimulates.
Seek professional help. We are not able to recover by relying solely on our environment, but that does not mean that there is no way out. Just as we go to the doctor when our foot hurts, why not go to the psychologist when our heart hurts?
