5 REASONS YOU FEEL SAD ABOUT LIFE (AND HOW THERAPY HELPS)

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Feeling sad about life? Well, have no fear because in this article we’ll look at exactly what might be behind your feelings of sadness and how therapy will help.

When you’re swept up in sadness or have been for as long as you have known, it’s easy to think that’s just the way things are.

Therefore, can never really change it.

However, that’s not true at all.

You just haven’t learnt another way to deal with your feelings of sadness.

And so, that’s what I’ll be showing you in this article; what’s behind your feelings of sadness and how in each circumstance therapy will help.

So let’s get started.

Table of Contents

About sadness and having a sad life

Before we get onto the five reasons you feel sad about life, I’d like to talk a bit about sadness by answering some frequently asked questions.

Is sadness a part of life?

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
Haruki Murakami

Now to be clear, sadness is a part of life but prolonged sadness is not.

Prolonged sadness is called suffering.

Why? because there are actions you can take to relieve your feelings of sadness but you’re not doing them, which is why you feel down about life.

Therefore, prolonging your pain and sadness.

What triggers the feeling of sadness?

Not feeling good enough, not feeling worthy towards the people, places and situations in your life are all reasons, which trigger your feelings of sadness.

What makes a sad life?

A sad life is simply one where you BELIEVE you have a sad life.

Therefore, it’s a matter of changing your beliefs about life and your life itself to not feel you have a sad life.

That’s of course not easy to do because this is also a question of finding your worth.

But it’s entirely possible to do with the help of therapy over time.

How do you know if you have a sad life?

You know you have a sad life, therefore, if you think, feel and believe you have a sad life.

I mean think about it.

If you thought, felt and believed that even the smallest of details in your life was fascinating and interesting, would you not believe that your whole entire life was interesting and fascinating?

So you see it’s all about perspective.

5 reasons you feel depressed about life (and how therapy will help)

1. You feel disconnected from your body

What does it mean to feel disconnected from your body?

To feel disconnected from your body means to feel disconnected from your emotions because you either numb, suppress or avoid them.

Why do you disconnect from your body and your emotions?

The reason you might disconnect from your body and emotions is that you have learnt that it is not safe to feel your emotions.

Therefore, as a coping strategy, you have learnt over time to employ one of the methods I mentioned above; numbing, avoiding or suppressing your emotions in order to keep yourself safe from getting hurt as a result of feeling your emotions.

Why does being disconnected from your body and emotions matter?

You feel the need to control yourself and the behaviour of others

When you are disconnected from your body you try to control your emotions instead of allowing them.

As a result, you also try to control the emotions and behaviours of others too as this further helps to ensure that you don’t get hurt by feeling what you’re feeling as a result of what they may be feeling and are transferring to you.

But all this does is result in you feeling bad about yourself and your life over time.

The tendency to overthink

In a bid to numb, avoid or suppress your emotions, you may also become overidentified with your thoughts.

Therefore, resulting in you overthinking things, which prevents you from being in the present moment.

Disconnection to yourself and other people

Feeling disconnected from your body and emotions results in feeling a disconnection to yourself and other people.

Why? because it is your emotions and your connection to your emotions, which binds you to other people.

So without them, you’re not able to step into the puddle with others in order to be able to feel empathy and compassion for them and what they may be experiencing.

As a result, creating strain and tensions in your relationships.

You struggle to make yourself a priority in your life

Your emotions also clue you into your wants, needs and desires.

Therefore, if you’re disconected from your body and emotions you cannot pick up on the clues that your emotions signal to you about what you want, need and desire in your life in order to be able to understand what action to take next.

As a result, neglecting yourself and your wants, needs and desires.

You don’t listen to yourself

This also means you may not listen to yourself either as you go with the want, needs and desires of others.

Therefore, resulting in regrets around what you could have said or done when you look back in hindsight.

Three monkey statues hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

How does therapy help you to connect to your body and emotions?

Reprogramming your mind and body to feel comfortable talking about emotions

Therapy will help you to achieve this by helping you to reprogram your mind and body to feel comfortable talking about and eventually feeling your emotions in your body.

How does therapy reprogramme your mind and body to feel comfortable talking about emotions?

Giving you the chance to express your thoughts and feelings

The more you turn up to therapy and feel safe expressing your thoughts and feelings towards the situations taking place in your life, the better you will get at it.

And so the more comfortable you will feel talking to others about your emotions too.

Mindfulness tools and practices

Implementing mindfulness tools and practices into your daily life will also help you to reprogramme your mind and body to feel safe talking about and feeling your emotions as they will get you into the habit of paying attention to what you’re thinking and feeling.

Therefore, helping you to be more present with your emotions as opposed to avoiding and denying they exist.

What do you experience after learning to connect to your body and emotions in therapy?

More safety and security in yourself (see also: HOW TO FEEL SAFE? (WITH PRACTICAL TOOLS INCLUDED))
More ease and fluidity in your life
Increased joy and happiness

2. You haven’t learnt how to give yourself positive validation

What is positive validation?

Positive validation (or positive reinforcement) is when you give yourself praise, encouragement or support whether that be when you do something well or when you make a mistake and do something wrong.

Therefore, being able to objectively see your strengths and weaknesses as opposed to getting caught up in them.

What is an inability to give yourself positive validation?

An inability to give yourself positive validation, therefore, results in you giving yourself more negative validation, such as harsh criticism and judgement about the things you do.

As a result, not being able to objectively see your strengths and weaknesses.

Why does learning to give yourself positive validation matter?

Learning to give yourself positive validation matters because it is detrimental to your health and well-being and overall self-esteem.

Why? because it can mean the difference between depending on others to give you positive validation and when they don’t give it to you, getting all defensive and mean about it, which increases your stress levels.

And depending on yourself to be able to pick yourself up when you need to and feeling okay when other people don’t give you the positive validation you need because you understand this is about them, not you.

Therefore, increasing your happiness and reducing your stress levels.

Plus, it can make you more sensitive to receiving criticism from others, which may stop you from listening to the criticism of others in order to see if maybe there is an element of truth to it.

And so, maybe there is something you can do about it.

How does therapy help you to learn to positively validate yourself?

Therapy will help you to positively validate yourself as your therapist will provide you lots of positive validation by listening, encouraging and supporting you over the course of the time you work together.

So in essence they will be your cheerleader until you learn how to be your own cheerleader.

What do you experience after learning how to positively validate yourself in therapy?

Confidence in standing up for yourself
The ability to recognise your own strengths
Not being too harsh on yourself

3. You don’t follow through on your commitments

A penguin feeling sad about life and about to jump off cliff and into water

What does it mean not to follow through on your commitments?

When you don’t follow through on your commitments, you don’t do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it.

Therefore, you may have a tendency to cancel plans frequently, and often, at the last minute.

This, as a result, results in you letting other people down and yourself in the process.

As you may cancel plans not necessarily because you want to but because you fear what others might think if you always follow through on your commitments.

And that others might not follow through on their commitments so you try to get in their first before they do, to avoid them hurting you later on down the line.

Why you don’t follow through on your commitments?

Not following through on your commitments is a learnt pattern (a.k.a behaviour), which you will have learnt as a result of being let down by others not following through on their commitments.

This, as a result, has led to you believing that it’s okay not to follow through on your commitments because after all it was done to you by other people.

And it didn’t hurt you (or so you’ve convinced yourself to believe).

Therefore, not realising the impact this may have on others and especially yourself (see also: 9 HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY WAYS TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL BETTER).

How does therapy help you to follow through on your commitments?

By committing to work with a therapist one hour a week over a period of five years you will learn to follow through on your commitments.

And if you’re not sure if you’ll be able to do something, you’ll have the confidence to be able to say so, providing an alternative date for when you will be able to follow through on your commitment.

What do you experience after learning to follow through on your commitments in therapy?

More joy and happiness
The confidence to be able to set clear boundaries with others around your time (see also: HOW TO TALK TO SOMEONE WHO HAS HURT YOUR FEELINGS (WITHOUT GETTING ANGRY)?)
The ability to be open and honest with others without fearing the consequences of doing so

4. You have high expectations

What are high expectations?

High expectations are when you think, feel and believe that you, others and life itself should be a certain way or shouldn’t be a certain way.

Or that people should do this or should do that.

Or they should know this and should know that.

And when you or others fall short of your expectations you take it out on yourself and others.

Why do you have high expectations?

You likely have high expectations because of the assumptions you make about other people and their life in comparison to you and your life.

Why does having high expectations matter?

It results in Blaming others

Having high expectations matters because it makes you believe that everyone around you is to blame.

And as a result, needs to change and be different as opposed to you being the one who needs to change and be different.

Therefore, stopping you from taking the initiative to change yourself in order to be able to take different actions and make different decisions to the ones you are making.

A lack of joy and happiness

When you have high expectations it further robs you from experiencing joy and happiness in your life because it’s impossible for either you or anyone else to be able to live up to your expectations.

Therefore, always falling short.

Man feeling down about life on a hill, which overlooks a number of houses

How does therapy help you to have more realistic expectations?

By providing you with a different perspective, as well as, advice and guidance on how else you can think, feel and approach the situations in your life.

What do you experience after learning to have more realistic expectations in therapy?

More joy and happiness
Less rigidity in your thinking and feeling

5. You haven’t found your life’s purpose

What does it mean to find your life’s purpose?

To find your life’s purpose means to find what it is you’re meant to be doing in this world because we all have a purpose and until you figure it out you can’t be happy.

Why? because you’ll always feel out of alignment between what you’re doing and what you’re meant to be doing in this world.

Even if on a conscious level you don’t realise it.

Therefore, going on an endless (and probably expensive) search to find it only to realise what you needed all along was within you. Not outside of you.

Plus you’ll always feel a dampener in your life as you feel confused and lost about what you’re meant to be doing in this world.

Therefore, stopping you from being able to create a happy and healthy life for yourself.

As you constantly go after the wrong things in your life.

Why have you not found your life’s purpose?

Firstly because you don’t know that it matters to work on finding your life’s purpose.

Therefore, you don’t even make an attempt to find it.

But also because you don’t trust yourself, your instincts and intuition, which means you more often than not go along with what other people say and want to do as opposed to going along with what you think and want to do.

So it’s not that you don’t necessarily have any clue what your life’s purpose is but you don’t trust in your wants, needs and desires.

If you’ve experienced trauma too this will also impact your ability to find your life’s purpose as it also reduces your confidence in you and blocks your creativity.

How does therapy help you to find your purpose?

Therapy helps you to find your purpose by getting you to focus on yourself, your thoughts, feelings and beliefs and nothing else.

Therefore, giving you the chance and space to really contemplate what you want for yourself and your life, which isn’t an opportunity you get to do anywhere else.

However, it also helps you to find your purpose by opening you up to different perspectives and unlocking your creativity as you work to resolve the trauma you’ve experienced in your life.

What do you experience after working to find your purpose in therapy?

After working with a therapist to find your purpose you will experience:

Confidence in you and your ideas
The confidence to follow your dreams

Summary: 5 reasons you feel sad about life (and how therapy helps)

So there you have it, my 5 reasons for why you feel sad about life: feeling disconnected from your body and emotions; you haven’t learnt to give yourself positive validation; not following through on your commitments; Having high expectations and not finding your life purpose yet.

And how therapy can help.

Now over to you

I would love to know if any of the five reasons you might be feeling sad about life resonate with you so let me know in the comments section below.

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