Whether due to depression or just to events in our lives, we all feel sad sometimes. Most of the time teens are given the advice to feel their sadness, but it’s hard to feel those emotions and still be able to get through school and work. These are my tips for dealing with sadness without compromising the things you have to get done. These won’t work for everyone! But they’ve sure helped me and could possibly help you too.
1. Listening to Music
Listening to music has helped me get through most of the times I’ve felt sad. Make a playlist of music that makes you happy or gets you excited. It doesn’t matter what genre of music a person listens to as long as it makes them happy. It has been shown that even listening to sad music can help as well because it can substitute the feeling of an empathic friend. For example, if you had just ended a long-term relationship listening to sad music can help make you feel as though someone understands what you are going through. Of course, listening to happy music can bring people joy as well. Music sometimes even helps people with physical pain. It is shown that after surgery people who listen to music have less pain and feel less anxious compared to people who don’t.
2. Writing Down Your Thoughts
Writing down what you’re feeling can take away some of the pressure that adds to sadness and has been shown to make feelings less intense. It provides similar feelings to telling a family member or a friend what you’re feeling without actually telling them. While it’s good to tell people how you’re feeling, sometimes that’s easier said than done. When you’ve written down your feelings it makes them more real and more manageable (for me it does at least). Writing down your feelings can also help get them from being the only thing you’re thinking about.
3. Working Through It
This is probably the one I use the most. Sometimes you can’t get rid of the feeling of being sad. And when that’s the case, just pouring yourself into your work can be the needed distraction. When you work, it can even sometimes help make you feel better. Just being able to say you finished the work that needed to be done today can improve your mood because it makes you feel productive. It takes away some of the powerless feeling being sad can bring you. When I feel sad it can impact my ability to work and takes me out of the moment. On the other hand, forcing myself to start working on school work or cleaning is a small thing I can do to take myself out of that mood and bring me into the present.
While these tips aren’t going to guarantee that you won’t feel sad or even that you’ll be able to forget about feeling sad even for a moment, they’re meant to help you work through these feelings and move forward just a bit, even in the smallest way. Sometimes that forward progress is all it takes to know that you’ll make it through the sadness into whatever comes next.
About Alexis
I am from the Mid-West. I enjoy listening to music, drawing and reading. I am extremely interested in learning and pursuing a career in Psychology.