We all feel a little sad sometimes. It’s a normal part of life. But if you are asking how to cope with sadness, then you may have realized it has already gotten out of hand. We don’t feel sadness for the same reason. The cause can be depression, which is capable of inducing extreme sadness. And sometimes, it is there due to something like bereavement and with the same intensity. We are here to talk about it in greater detail, and we’ll also be predominantly jotting down coping skills for sadness to help you.
What is Sadness?
Sadness is the condition or feeling of being sad. Sadness stems from a range of different reasons. As we have said before, sadness can occur due to the presence of depression, which one can say is a synonym for the term extreme sadness but it can also originate or exacerbate due to these:
- Life-changing events such as the loss of a loved one or even a pet, divorce or separation, being laid off or even having a baby.
- Chronic mental issues such as bipolar disorder or physiological conditions such as diabetes
- Other factors such as persistent substance abuse problems, stress or anxiety, side-effects of medication, chemical changes due to drugs or something like puberty, and even changes in thinking style can lead to sadness
Read More: Symptoms and Causes of Depression – How to Treat Them?
The Difference Between Sadness and Depression
If you want to learn about how to cope with sadness then it’s important that you learn how you can differentiate between sadness and depression first. If your sadness starts to feel constant, unpredictable, or overwhelming with overbearing symptoms mentioned below coming into existence:
- You feel hopeless and unworthy all the time
- You feel empty and you have gradually lost interest in any activity
- You don’t want to do anything besides sleeping a lot (hypersomnia) or a lot less than previously (insomnia)
- Your eating habits have changed considerably (which often leads to an eating disorder) and there are rising problems with your appetite
- You are exhibiting social avoidance as you avoid things such as social gatherings
- You are persistently sluggish and extremely restless all the time
Read More: Depression And Eating Disorders: Understanding The Link And Finding Help
In addition to these symptoms, we can identify if one is feeling sadness or depression by recognizing if the feelings of sadness are abating as sadness has a tendency to go away when you start to enjoy things you do and carry on with life but depression is a full-blown mental disorder that has actual criterion for diagnosis and has an official name – major depressive disorder. Okay, once you have recognized if it’s just sadness or depression, then it’s time to learn how to deal with sadness or moreover find better and more healthy ways to deal with sadness that stems from depression.
Read More: Depression in young adults: Signs, Causes, and Treatment
Overcoming sadness
If your brain is wondering about or questioning how to overcome sadness or asking questions like something along the lines of what to do when you’re sad, we are here to help you with the answers.
Allow yourself to be sad
This is the rawest idea as an answer to how to cope with sadness but it might just also be the most natural way to get rid of sadness from your life. Emotions are meant to be felt and regressing these emotions will lead to problematic behavior in the future. This is why it is important to let yourself feel the emotion of sadness.
Read More: What To Know About Psychotic Depression?
Avoid rumination
One of the best ways to learn coping skills for sadness is to start avoiding rumination. Rumination happens when you dwell in extremely negative thinking which often leads to bigger problems. These negative feelings are capable of amplifying negative thoughts and emotions that could potentially trigger or worsen psychotic symptoms in individuals already vulnerable to issues like psychosis. Rumination is also a key feature of depression and is often one of the main contributors to the said mental health issue. It is best to focus on something else or participate in an activity that helps you take your mind off rumination.
Find your support system
A support system should never be underestimated when you want to know how to get rid of sadness in no time. You don’t have to ask something like how to deal with sadness alone as a support system is a necessary component of the skills that are needed when you are dealing with sadness and it comes in many shapes and sizes. Your support system can consist of friends and family members, while you can also use something like psychotherapy (talk therapy that helps you look inward into your problematic behavior that stems from mental health issues), to treat your sadness issues. Psychotherapy is also a good answer to a question like how to cope with sadness.
Read More: Will Depression Make You Tired?
Practice mindfulness
Mindfulness is all about self-reflection, which is an important part that is needed in the building blocks of coping skills for sadness. Self-reflection can be used to become aware of the negative thinking and approach it with subjectivity rather than objectivity, which helps get rid of the judgement. This is also a good answer to a question like how to cope with sadness.
Try to boost serotonin
Serotonin is a chemical messenger (neurotransmitter) in your brain that is used to influence mood, sleep, digestion, nausea, and more. As it is capable of inducing different types of moods, it is also capable of affecting your mood, and that too in a big way. Low serotonin often leads to the development of feelings revolving around extreme sadness, which in turn can induce depression and that should be avoided at all costs. You can decrease the reuptake of serotonin in your body by eating more carbohydrates or carefully taking 5-HTP supplements. Another way to induce serotonin is to participate in some kind of aerobic exercise that can essentially induce greater levels of serotonin through which sadness can run away from you naturally.
Read More: What Is High-Functioning Depression?
Psychiatric medication management
If nothing works, medication will. Antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are able to fight both sadness and the much worse ailment – depression by blocking the reuptake of serotonin in the brain and you know what happens when serotonin is increased. Medication can also be monitored by experts and stands the test of time as one of the ways you can learn how to cope with sadness in the shape of psychiatric medication management.
Wrapping Up!
Above we have laid out some of the many ways you can learn how to cope with sadness but if you still have some lingering questions like “What to do when you’re sad?”, “How to manage sadness?”, or “How to get over sadness?”, then you need prompt treatment such as the one mentioned in the support system section or something like telehealth psychiatry to treat depression or something else such as OCD. You can get treatment at Inland Empire Behavioral Group and we are looking forward to your appointment.
