6 Ways to Deal with Feeling Sad and Lost
Have you ever felt like you don’t know where to go, don’t know what to do, and don’t know how to deal with the inner feeling of too much to bear? It’s a feeling we can probably all relate to, something we’ve all experienced: the feeling of being sad and lost.
Guess what? You have been there, so what does that mean? Exactly! You overcame and “survived” it. This was just another low mood that came and left. It’s like walking underneath a scaffold–it’s a little shaky and scary to walk under, but you know there is an end to it, so you keep walking anyway. And it’s exactly the same when dealing with a low mood. You feel it, you deal with it, and it passes like any other happy or sad mood.
Oh I know, that sounds so simple but it surely isn’t like that. I’ve experienced quite a bit of rejection and even more “waiting periods” in different life situations lately. Also, particularly during the winter months when there is almost no sun and the weather is cold and gloomy, it’s very hard to catch yourself and have happy thoughts. The trick is to keep your head up in those times and to think about better days to come. Here are six strategies that help me whenever I am feeling sad or lost:
1. Acknowledge your sad thoughts and push them to the side.
This is a strategy I’ve been using for a few years now. Whenever I notice a pattern in my negative thoughts, I mentally sort them in the form of little playing cards in front of me, with my negative thoughts summed up in one word like “Rejection” or “Unworthiness,” etc. Then, I look at that card, acknowledge its existence, accept it, and put it to the side or in my imaginary “gift box.” That doesn’t mean that I avoid dealing with it, I am only saving myself from getting caught up with something that I cannot change at this moment, or from making a decision with my temporary emotion. Then, in moments of a better mood, I will take this card out and look at it again, this time from an optimistic standpoint. This usually makes me realize that this really wasn’t an actual problem I had, but rather the sad, fearful, pessimistic “everything is terrible” voice in my head speaking. Believe me, this has prevented me from making decisions too quickly that I might have regretted.
2. Allow yourself to be in a low mood.
It’s okay not to be okay. It’s part of the human condition. Sadness is part of our lives, just as much as happiness is. Interestingly, it almost seems like low moods are looked down upon, like they’re something to be ashamed of and not acceptable. As you might know, I am a big believer in positive thinking and the “Law of Attraction,” however, when I am sad, I am sad. What’s wrong with that? I have learned to be thankful for my low moods because–think about it–being in a low mood means discomfort. You’re obviously “not happy” with your current situation, perhaps because you’ve left or have even been thrown out of your comfort zone. And you know what? That’s awesome! Because that means you are growing, you are learning. Every pain you’ve ever experienced, has made you stronger or at least smarter in your future actions, right?
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” –Winston Churchill
3. Be patient and kind with yourself.
Know yourself. You most likely know when and where your low moods are coming from. Especially during the cold winter months, the weather can be a big factor, the missing sunlight, perhaps a hormonal imbalance, nutritional lack, insufficient sleep… you name it. The majority of the time your low mood is actually not “caused” by a circumstance or situation. It’s the way you cope and deal with it. When you’re in a happy mood or when you can think clearly, draft a contract with yourself for times of low moods. This will confirm your decisions and will give you strength to carry on in low moods or in times of doubt, as well as prevent you from committing, as Richard Carlson called it, “emotional suicide.” So, if you want to cry, then cry! Crying will help you let go of painful thoughts and also clear your mind. Remind yourself that it will all be okay. Like Jonathan Lockwood Huie put it: “The darkest night is often the bridge to the brightest tomorrow.”
4. Don’t overthink it.
When starting to overthink: give it a laugh! Try to think of something funny or watch a funny movie. Make a list with reasons that could make you sad, like the weather, a current waiting period, no vacation time, job pressure, a conflict with someone, big changes ahead, or whatever it is. Again, acknowledge them and accept them for what they are: sad thoughts. Then, remind yourself, that you are in control over your thoughts. And you’ve just busted them! Now, it’s actually easy to grab them and put them into their places. Remember that overthinking truly ruins the situation. It can even go so far as to make you stop believing in the good and start believing your doubts and negative thoughts, or even manipulate it to the outcome you feared the most. Remember, Mr. or Ms. Doubt are not your friends. So, when I catch myself overthinking, I smile and say: this is typical you. You’ve been here before. You’ve experienced this mood before, and it left as quickly as it came. It’s seriously like my mom’s glasses that she is almost always looking for and almost always finds on her head, pushed over her forehead when she didn’t use them. Same goes with our happiness. It’s always there, only sometimes we forget where to find it.
5. Be grateful and forgive.
I strongly believe that gratitude, optimism, and the ability to think less and feel more has helped me to deal with any kind of struggles, unkind people, and lonely moments. It has helped me to see not getting jobs, facing challenges, or lost relationships as blessings and teachers that have actually led me to exactly where I am today. The puzzle pieces can only be put together in hindsight and that’s what makes life so incredibly exciting. Imagine all the great things that will unfold when you’ve been through another storm. You might come out of it with a scar, but this is only another thing that makes you unique. It adds a little “trophy” of another challenge you overcame or battle you’ve won or survived in your story. It’s really so powerful when you’ve reached the point where you truly understand and live the power of your thoughts. As Bob Green once said: “The body achieves what the mind believes.” I cannot tell you how often I told myself this in moments when I felt lost. Remind yourself that you are the creator of your own reality.
6. Take action.
I’ve learned that, whenever you feel lost or stuck, the only way to get out of this is action. Or as Cheryl Strayed put it: “The only way out of a hole is to climb out.”
So get active! Start working on your goal or on something that can change the situation you are in. If you’re trying to find a job and you feel like you’re stuck because you’re waiting for responses, then shoot some more stars into the sky by applying to more jobs, volunteer, get creative, start painting, dancing, writing, singing, or whatever it is that helps you get your emotions out and organize your thoughts. My lowest points have always brought positive changes in my life so far. Without them, I would have never started my Yogilation page and never had the courage to write and share it with others. I would’ve never pushed further by asking questions and simply starting to share my experience. Same goes for rejection. Every job rejection had brought me to my last job, made me move to a city close to home, and guided me to some people who mean a lot to me today. So, find a purpose in your low mood, not a cause. Make the best of it and use it as your chance to get inspired and to inspire other people. You will not only feel inspired, you will also feel motivated and needed. That’s something money cannot buy!
About the Author
7 Tools for Managing Overwhelming Emotions
Let’s face it – sometimes emotions get the best of us. Once we are triggered, it is tough to be in pain and not do something that essentially makes it worse. It’s much easier to numb the pain temporarily, but unfortunately those coping methods tend to have negative consequences. Basically, we get into the habit of choosing short-term symptom relief rather than addressing the core issue. You know what I’m talking about. How many of you have used alcohol to cope with your feelings of stress or sadness? How many of you ended up in much worse pain the next day or, worse, by the end of the night in tears in front of people you don’t quite trust?
Other popular unhealthy coping methods include: TV, drugs, sex, cigarettes, food, gambling, prescription pills, and the ever so popular sweeping-it-under-the-rug method. I must admit these methods are very tempting, but we all know how they end. What’s worse is that we still engage in these behaviors. Why?! Well for one, these unhealthy solutions work very well in the immediate. The second reason is that they are much easier to engage in and usually come with pleasure.
What are we hiding from, though? It’s funny, but when you think about it, we are only hiding from negative emotion. What’s an emotion? Is it going to kill us? Is it going to last forever? Sometimes emotions can feel that they are going to last forever, but the answer is no. All emotions crescendo and then dissipate. They imitate movement like a sign curve. Keeping this in mind would make it a lot easier to navigate our emotions. In order to deal with overwhelming emotions it is helpful to have a tool belt to reach for in times of distress. Here are a few of these less dangerous, and unfortunately, less fun, ways of dealing with these pesky negative emotions:
- Put it in perspective
Sometimes when you take a step back and think about what is really important to you, the problem that you think you are experiencing becomes very small. Ask yourself, “Will I still be in this much pain in one week? A month? One year from now? Will I remember this as significant? When I die do I want to remember this as something I spent a lot of time on?
Death is the ultimate teacher. Life is precious because it is limited. Nothing is worth sacrificing our happiness for. Nothing. It is impossible to control outside events that cause disturbance within, but it is completely in our control to either hang on or let it go. When we cling or feed the negative emotion, it robs us of our limited time on this planet. You are not your thoughts, your emotions, your body, or your things. Do not let death teach you this at the last minute.
- Engage in an act of self love
Many people understand being physically ill and respect it as painful. If you get sick, oftentimes your loved ones will tell you, “You poor thing. Go home and take a hot bath!” But there is a double standard when it comes to being in pain from emotions. If you don’t feel well emotionally, it can be tough to find an empathetic ear. We all get scared to share our emotions at times. We are ultimately afraid to hear, “Suck it up or get over it.” These words do more harm than good. If you are not feeling well emotionally, I challenge you to engage in acts of self-love as if you were physically ill. Go home. Take a hot bath. Sleep. You never know, it might make you feel a little better to take care of yourself. The idea would be to soothe with the 5 senses. Find activities that are soothing to your each of your senses:
- Sight: Look at the sunset
- Sound: Listen to relaxing music
- Touch: Get a massage or go to yoga
- Smell: Aromatherapy in a nice hot bath
- Taste: Eat something that brings up good memories or give yourself that treat you love!
- Put a time limit on it
When we are hurt it is so easy to get lost in the rabbit hole. In the rabbit hole we become the emotions and thoughts that are plaguing us. We ruminate and get lost in trying to solve a problem that is unsolvable. We feed the emotion by believing the catastrophic thoughts that come up like, “I hate him and myself for trusting him. He never liked me and was just using me the whole time. I never want to see him again. I am going to call his parents and tell them what a bad person he is.”
Instead of letting these thoughts come and go we might actually act on them. We feel so horrible that we avoid people, stay in bed for weeks at a time, drink too much, or eat too much. In order to avoid this, put a time limit on it. Tell yourself that you are going to think or talk about this problem for only one hour a day until it is resolved or you come to acceptance. Once the hour is over, choose an activity that is the opposite of the emotion you are feeling to change your mood.
If you are sad, listen to happy music. If there is anger, watch a comedy on TV. If you are stressed and tense, go take a yoga class. Everyone deserves a break from time to time. Do not let one area of your life that is causing you pain engulf your entire world. You have the ultimate control over your happiness.
- Let the negative energy pass through you
Negative emotion is just negative energy. It does not help to squash it down, numb it or avoid it. The only way, is to face it head on and allow it to pass through you. This takes some bravery on your part. You must allow yourself to feel the pain. There are some tools that can help while you do this. You can allow yourself to get the support you need. Oftentimes, it is very difficult to be vulnerable and admit to others that you are having a hard time. In order to move the negative energy through your body it helps to talk to another trusted person. You can also release the energy by exercising, writing in a journal, or simply relaxing your body and letting your preconceived notions of how it “should” be, go.
- Observe the emotion
You are not the emotion or your thoughts. You can take a step back and witness what your thoughts and emotions do when there is a disturbance. Watch the thoughts or self-talk get faster as they ask you to fix them before they become abusive. Watch the emotion crescendo and dissipate. Do not avoid. Avoidance makes the emotion and the thoughts louder. Allow yourself to have the emotion, don’t fight it, and don’t escalate it by falling down the rabbit hole and attaching to the thoughts. Eventually it will pass. You do not really need to do anything for the pain to subside. It will on its own.
By this, I do not mean that you should not deal with your problems. By all means take care of yourself and your responsibilities. Just do not make decisions when you are in a heightened state. Wait until the emotion passes and then solve the problem. You will be able to see much clearer once the intensity has lessened.
- Delay, distract, and then decide
This tool, created by Marsha Linehan, is useful in order to inhibit negative reaction to a negative emotion. Many times, if we make a decision in the emotion it will make it worse. Basically, any negative urge or craving lasts for about 20 to 30 minutes. Help yourself by delaying your reaction and any subsequent actions for 20 to 30 minutes with a distraction.
You can go to work, help someone else, go for a walk, take a break from the trigger, read, or watch a movie. Once the time is up, make a pros and cons list as to whether your reaction is worth doing. Usually you will decide not to react the original way you had planned. For instance, slashing your boyfriend’s tires out because he lied to you probably won’t seem like such a good idea once some of the anger has passed.
- Become aware of your physical and emotional vulnerabilities
Sometimes our emotions can get the best of us when we are not feeling well. Become aware of your triggers. Ask yourself if you have any physical or emotional vulnerabilities that are getting in the way of managing your emotions. Some of these vulnerabilities are: hunger, lack of sleep, injury, illness, stress, lack of support, crisis, past trauma, negative core beliefs, etc. If you notice that the current problem is escalated due to one or more of these factors you may want to try to take care of the vulnerability first in order to prevent and manage the escalation of your emotion.
Embrace Your Emotions
My wish for us all is to start viewing negative emotion as an opportunity to practice these new skills rather than allowing the emotion to be a threat to our self-concept or survival. We do not have to fight and we do not need to flee (run or avoid). I hope that one or more of these resonates with you, and the next time you are in the emotion, you can remember to pull this list out of your wallet. Remember that it will pass, it is ok to have the emotion, and above all else you don’ t necessarily need to do anything. Let go and let it pass through you, because it will!
If you would like to learn more please visit or contact me at Good Therapy San Diego.
This article was inspired by The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
