How can i overcome sadness?

i've been having a really hard time in life, all of sudden i wasn't even thinking of people i wasn't trying to understand life i was just happy

Then a series of unfortunate events happened.. now the world just seems like sadness.. sure i get happy from time to time but.. Almost all of the time i'm sad.

i was a really weak person back then, but life changed me, all the stuffs happened just made me a lot stronger.

But still sometimes i cry before i sleep and other stuff, and i'm trying to overcome it but i can't.. i hope things get a lot better.. but i don't think the old me will return  anymore.

Crying is good, and it lets you release all the feelings that you're hiding inside. I used to do it a lot too, until I finally felt all right. :)

Without knowing what's going on... some minor things that always help. Getting out and soaking up some sunlight, listening to music that makes you want to dance or sing along (even if you sing horribly like I do), or getting up and moving around especially if you don't feel like it.. like light exercising as it does that "endorphin rush" or "runner's high" that makes you feel good about yourself. Some minor depression runs in my family. So those are things that usually help me when I realize I'm starting to slip into a funk.

Sadness is a pretty normal thing in life.  Throughout your life you will come across three types of people. The first two you want to avoid.

The first type will essentially be as cuddly as a cactus. They'll spew out garbage you truly don't need t hear like "Suck it up." and "Man up, cupcake."  They essentially have ZERO empathy and would just assume smack you across the face than listen to you.

The second type is just as bad. The enablers and nurturers. 'Nuff said.

A third type, the best type to talk to in times of sadness (or worse, in bouts of DIAGNOSED depression) are people who actively listen and can maybe even help you talk things out.

Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes it's good to just drop everything and have a good old fashioned melt down.    Just don't aim it AT anyone.

My views may or may not suit well or similarly with others, but for ME they work.  I myself have struggled with clinical depression and heavy sadness in the past. (Still do. I hide it well.)

Also what Venka said. Light (sometimes HEAVY) exercise is great therapy.  I won't lie. Sometimes, I thrash about with weights. It feels GOOD and I'm doin' something good for the body. :)

Well said Croc.

How can you overcome sadness? By force, because in life you can only go forward, even if you have the impression that things are going backward. And hiding the pain is wrong, you don't have to pretend to feel good when you're dying inside, in these moments don't hold anything and if you want to cry just cry. Talk about it with people close to you, this will lift a weight off your shoulders and help you stop worrying...then try to get distracted and avoid thinking about it (even if it's hard). You can't do anything else to be honest, time will resolve this. As I said in another thread even sadness needs to be experienced sometimes, life is not always fair, it's important though to not break yourself down and tackle the problems head-on.

It really depends on the cause of your current sadness.  If you have clinical depression, which goes far beyond normal sadness (you can't sleep but have no drive to do anything, withdraw from everything and so on), seek out the care of a good mental health professional.  The right anti-depressant and good counseling can allow you to live a normal life.

However, if you just feel sad, that's a part of being human.  Pretending you don't feel sad, denying it's there when it still is, is the worst thing you could do.  But, so is continuing to feed your sad thoughts, because that slowly, over time, rewires your brain to think more sad thoughts.  Now, the good news is that the brain is ALWAYS rewiring itself, so you CAN change this with care and effort.  For example, I used to live in a constant low-grade level of anxiety, for absolutely NO logical external reason, but recently put in a huge effort to make a big change in my thoughts.    It doesn't mean I never have any anxiety, but now it's much more intermittent and I'm sure with more effort on my part, will be much less so, over time.

How to change the sadness?  What things light you up?  Chocolate?  A beautiful sunset?  A favorite pet?  A child?  What really good memories and experiences have you had, where you just felt overcome with joy?    Get a list of those, write them down, and in your mind experience those again, in vivid detail.  If you have a favorite dog (even if said dog passed away years ago), feel the dog sitting next to you, feel his/her fur, smell his breath. 

The funny thing?  The more you cycle through these happier memories and feelings, the more your sadness begins to change.

Just get in the habit of doing this every morning, and it might help.

You have pretty solid advices here already. What works best for me is keep telling myself that the logical part of brain didn't quite caught up to the emotional part and whatever situation I'm dealing with it'll past, like everything usually does. What you need is time, I know its a cliche, but that's the reason it is because it the truth. Keep yourself busy with something, come up with a project idea and work on it, read a good book, exercise, just do something to keep your mind occupied. :)

I think a lot of people here have good advice, most of mine is likely to be similar I guess but what I'd say is to embrace your sorrow and let it become a comfort to you. The only real certainty in life is that things change, if things become worse for you causing sadness the only real choices you have are to abide your own sadness or to embrace it and move forward. You can't let sadness suppress you, but neither can you suppress sadness. (You can try, but it just leads to headache, numbed emotions and likely an eventual psychotic breakdown.) the only way to change is to move forward with your sorrow, accept that it is a valid part of who you are and remember why you are sad, most people's sorrows come from losing someone/something that used to make them happy, so to truly be sad you first have to know happiness most of the time.

Sorrow isn't a disease, an illness to be cast out of the body, it's a part of a well-rounded individual, a validation that something is important to you, that your life even has purpose. It's a check against overwhelming pride and arrogance and the way we find the strength tho empathize with others. Embrace your pain, move forward and learn through it to appreciate what happiness you have left and will gain in the future. The person you used to be May never come back, people change, but if you are the one in control and never bow to the hubris of negative experiences then in the end the change will not be completely without positives. The person I was May have died a dozen times but the person I am wouldn't exist without the cumulative of those mindset changing experiences, both good and bad. No matter how bad things get, for the living there is always more good to be experienced and the bad things of the past allow you to appreciate those moments even more.

The best thing that worked for me when I had depression was to get your mind off it. I am sure you must have some hobbies that you love very much. Spend your time on them, get engrossed. The problem with depression a lot of the time is that we end up self-reflecting way too much, and not in a nice objective way, but usually in a way where we blame ourselves for all the things that went wrong in our lives. Don't. You should spend more time in happy thoughts and do the activities that help you generate these happy thoughts.

You might also want to try doing some exercise that exhilarates you. It does make you feel really good afterwards. I am a big fan of running during summer time. Nothing de-stresses you quite as well as running in a nice weather to some great music.

And finally, talking to people helps as well. The more you shy away from people in your low times, the worse it's going to get. You have to do the counter-intuitive, and that's to get out there. It's not easy, as something I can tell you from my own experience, but it's worth it. Just remember to take things a step at a time. Don't run before you can walk.

Something that has helped me a lot is to figure out exactly what it is that's making me feel low. Many times I just haven't defined the problem. Then I look at the problem as objectively as possible and figure out if there's anything I can do to solve it. If I can't, I do my best to move on, maybe talk it out with someone who'll sympathize. If I can I put a plan into place for what actions I'll take to solve it. If it's a more complex thing like a worry about what might happen, sometimes it helps to define the worst case scenario and then make a plan for what I would do if that happens. Then I make sure to also look at the best case scenario with equal attention so I'm not just focusing on bad stuff all the time.


My mind is really good at borrowing trouble and blowing things out of proportion so taking the time to put the problem into clearer terms makes a huge difference in overcoming it or moving on and that makes me feel a lot better.

Well, I will kind of bare my soul a bit here.


I think the advice above is all very good. You can fight "the blues" in many ways, and the ways people are mentioning are all reasonable. I'd add eating well, getting in the sunshine, being thankful for good things, helping other folks and watching kids and puppies play. =]


I come from a family with a history of bi-polar disorder, and depression is a real thing that I respect and care about.


But when you said you cry a lot, I thought of a very difficult time I had when I cried an awful lot.


I didn't know it, but I had a vitamin B-12 deficiency.


I cried at ambulances going by, because people were hurt and brave people were helping them. I planned funerals. I cried at "meaningful" commercials. I was a wreck.


Sometimes things tip the scales and you need to check things out. Honestly, I didn't realize the problem. My doctor asked why I was losing weight and I didn't know why. I had read that a side effect of one of my meds was a B-12 deficiency, and could cause tingling in my hands and feet, and that was bothering me. He checked all kinds of things, but I was right. It was the B-12.


It got really bad before it got better. I knew there were 12 months in the year, but not what they were called. I knew there were four seasons, but not their names. I knew there was a reason we couldn't buy Ice Cream at the outdoor kiosk anymore, and I knew it has something to do with leaves on the ground, but I couldn't figure out that they were only open in Summer. As I said, I was a wreck. And that was AFTER the diagnosis and the replacement of the B-12 started; it took months to get better.


I share all this because some people might be surprised to know what I did to start trying to be able to concentrate again. You see, I couldn't read anymore. Just a sentence or two, and I'd get confused. I lost my ability to concentrate.


So I joined an RPG Making community. I started making a game. I started chatting with people in the IRC. Lol, I got better. I still have a weakness for remembering names and my concentration has dips and I have poor short term memory - it takes me longer to learn new things. But I made friends from around the world - many of whom I love and care for very much. And friends are the best answer for sadness. People you love.


And that is the other reason I share this. People are out there who are great folks. Don't forget that. Don't quit. Tomorrow holds the promise of good things.


And eat a steak. And a cookie. And chocolate. And remember Granny cares about you.

The common thread I see in all of these threads is connection, meaning, and purpose. People you love, taking the sad, hard, painful things and finding a way to make them useful to your growth as a human being, and finding what you love to do are so important to being happy... I have also hit some really hard times this last year. My dog passed away in February, and i had to steal time from full time work and school to grieve that loss. (not finished) But I had 13 beautiful years with a being of pure love and acceptance... who changed me forever.

@GrandmaDeb Your honesty is touching.

Something we need to be careful about.  Those of us who are on spiritual paths sometimes think being on one means "I should never be unhappy."  When I was younger, I thought that all the time.  But, nothing is farther from the truth.  Painful though the sad times are, many people have had their greatest times of personal growth from the sadness.  Their coping with it helped them grow immensely as people and in the end opened them up to far more joy than they might ever have experienced otherwise.    But, getting there would never have happened if it weren't for the sad experience.

My point is we always get the experiences we NEED to grow, but those are sometimes NOT the experiences we WANT. 

So we need to be careful not to expect to permanently overcome sadness, like it is an illness.   If we think that way, when we feel sad we might blame ourselves for feeling sad, making it worse.    Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

When I experience sadness, it sometimes helps me immensely to keep the above in mind.