How to be sad ­­– and become happier

In How to be Sad, Helen Russell incorporates a breadth of research on sadness from around the world, as well as the great losses and challenges she has faced in her own life. Divided into three sections, she talks readers through the importance of looking after ourselves (“It’s about not fighting our sadness, learning to lower expectations, taking time and being kind, and avoiding deprivation and excess”), reframing how we communicate (“Shaking off shame and learning to stop apologizing for feeling… because we all need to open up more when we’re sad”), and things to do when we are sad (“Taking culture ‘vitamins’ and the power of art, music and books to help when we’re feeling low; the importance of getting outside, getting active. And, finally, why doing something for someone else is the ultimate in how to be sad, well”).

“Many of us will have been raised with the assumption that ‘what we don’t talk about can’t hurt us’, and, for a long time, not talking about being sad was seen as a sign of strength,” says Russell. “But really, the opposite is true. And learning how to be sad, better, is something we need right now, more than ever.” Here, she shares some of the lessons she has learned.

“Having spent the past eight years researching happiness worldwide, I began to notice that many of the people I met were so obsessed with the pursuit of happiness that they were phobic of feeling sad. I’d speak to people who had just lost loved ones who would ask how they could be happy. I’d meet people who’d recently been made redundant. Or homeless. Or had a bad break-up. Who’d still ask: ‘So why aren’t I happy?’ I would try to explain that, sometimes, we need to be sad. Sadness is what we’re supposed to feel after a loss, and sorrow is the sane response when sad things happen. In a pandemic, for instance, it’s OK to feel sad. But a lot of us are conditioned to be so averse to ‘negative emotions’ that we don’t even recognize them, much less acknowledge them or give ourselves permission to feel and process them. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve said, ‘I just want to be happy,’ at times when this is almost impossible.

“During my research I’ve become increasingly convinced that many of us have been sold a very narrow definition of ‘happiness’ – a definition that means never being sad. Or never doing difficult things. A definition that does all of us a disservice.”

“Make friends with nuance and ambiguity – and learn to sit with discomfort. Many of us feel as though, if we’re not happy, we must be sad, and vice versa. But this is a particularly western approach. In East Asian cultures, studies show there is much more acceptance of the idea that, sometimes, we feel happy and sad all at once. Knowing this and recognizing the granularity of our thoughts means that we can be at peace with them – we’re not constantly lugging around a sense of unease or guilt. There is no hierarchy of sadness. We still get to be sad when we need to – so first up, we just have to stop fighting it.

“As children, we may have been told on repeat, ‘It’s OK’, ‘Don’t cry’, or ‘We just want you to be happy’. When we were scared, our parents may have told us there was nothing to be afraid of. When we felt pain, we may have been advised to be brave and smile. Children look to parents for ways to regulate their own emotions, because they don’t yet know how to do it themselves. But if caregivers don’t know either, or were never taught because the ‘bad feelings’ were anaesthetised away, then we’re in trouble. And trying to fight ‘sad’ is something many of us are taught from birth.”