Sad
It's natural to feel sad sometimes, for whatever reason it is.
If you feel that your sadness may have become depression, try giving the Samaritans a ring on 116 123. If you aren't sure, click here to take a quick test and get a clearer idea.
If you feel that your sadness is just sadness and nothing further, then this website may be able to help you.
Click here to find out what depression is, and read more about it (the link will open in a new window).
Being sad might feel like you're weak or fragile, you might feel like everything is harder than it used to be, or feel as if everything is a chore. Sadness can creep up on you slowly, without you realising. It can make you feel trapped within your own emotions, or drowning in them, with no escape.
It can be difficult to overcome, but it is possible.
Try distracting yourself with these suggestions:
> Reading a good book
> Listening to music
> Drawing (it doesn't matter if you aren't very good)
> Watch your favourite TV series
> Play a game on whatever console you have
> Anything at all that requires concentration
Other, more physical things can help too. Try these:
> Push-ups/Sit-ups (or any other exercise)
> Throwing socks against a wall
> Going for a walk, jog, run, bike ride etc.
Socialising when sad
When you're sad, you might not feel like you want to talk to anyone. You might feel self-conscious, or afraid you might break down in front of someone. Sometimes, it doesn't seem like there's a reason for you feeling sad, which means they can't understand why you're sad. That make you question the purpose of socialising.
That's not the case, however.
Try and surround yourself with people who care, and talk to them about what you're going through. They might not understand, but you'll find it helps just to discuss your feelings with someone who cares enough to listen. A friend, a partner or a trusted adult are all great ideas.
Try having a chat with a Get Some Space volunteer by clicking here.
Stressed
Feeling stressed can feel like you're being weighed down with problems and things to do but you're helpless to change your situation. Maybe your brain makes you feel like whatever you do to try and help yourself, you make endless mistakes, like you can never shift the constant weight. Although stress is a normal, expected emotion in our fast-paced, working world of today, too much stress can be unhealthy and difficult to cope with.
Something that can help ease stress is distraction with other, mundane tasks. Try these, for example:
> Having a bath/shower
> Deciding on a shopping list for your next trip to the shops
> Cooking/Baking - you can wash up whilst you wait for your food to cook/bake
Other, more physical things can help too. Try these:
> Push-ups/Sit-ups (or any other exercise)
> Throwing socks against a wall
> Going for a walk, jog, run, bike ride etc.
A more direct approach you can take is talking. Talking about how you feel with a partner, friend or trusted adult can really help, even if you feel like they won't understand. The fact that they care will put you at ease from the start.
Try having a chat with a Get Some Space volunteer by clicking here.
If you aren't sure you have anyone you can talk to about your feelings, there are websites designed for anonymously talking to a person who will try and help you. They're free. You can find them on the Other Help page.
Keeping organised and neat can help reduce stress - preventing your head from making you see the mess.
Stress can easily lead to anger sometimes, click here to read about dealing with anger.
Socially Stressed
Social stress is when a social situation/expectation or even just the idea of a social situation/expectation affects you negatively, in a stressful way.
For example, a school disco. You might hate them, but everyone around you enjoys them. This places an expectation on you not only to attend them, but also to enjoy them. If this situation causes you a lot of stress, it's best looking into why, and what to do about it.
So you'll likely already know why the social situation makes you stressed. One thing you can do to help yourself initially is to follow the exercise below:
> Take a piece of paper and write "I feel stressed about ____________ because ____________"
> Fill in the blanks
> Write the completed sentence out until you can't fit any more on the paper
> Look at what you've written and think about why that bothers you
> Take the paper, scrunch it up, stand on it a little if you want, and then rip it up and bin it
See how easily your problem can be destroyed? It can be gotten rid of just like that.
You're strong. You can be strong. Try your hardest - facing a fear will feel good afterwards and make you stronger for the next time a fear crops up.
If the exercise helped and you have more reasons, try it with all of them, too!
Talking about how you feel with a partner, friend or trusted adult can really help, even if you feel like they won't understand. The fact that they care will put you at ease from the start.
Try having a chat with a Get Some Space volunteer by clicking here.
If you aren't sure you have anyone you can talk to about your feelings, there are websites designed for anonymously talking to a person who will try and help you. They're free. You can find them on the Other Help page.
Angry
If it's an appropriate situation, it's an important step to try and explain to the person, as calmly as you can, what they did to make you angry. If you've had a major falling out, it might be best to wait for a little bit until you talk to them. If you feel you can, try and explain why it's made you angry. However, before you try and talk to them, try and calm down first. The STOPP Methodcan help with this. When you're feeling angry, it can feel like a ball of anger inside of you that's growing, as if a fire is growing inside of you. You might be angry at yourself, even if it isn't you that's done anythingwrong. However you're feeling the anger, controlling your breathing can be a big help in managing it.
Try the exercise below:
You can close your eyes if you prefer.
> Hold either thumb in front of your mouth and gently blow onto the tip of it for five seconds (count this in your head)
> After 5 seconds, clench the same fist as hard as you can without causing any injury to yourself. Count to ten in your head, then relax your fist
> Repeat the first step, blowing gently for 10 seconds now
> Now you can take the thumb away, but keep gently breathing in and out, ten seconds each way
This exercise will slow your heart rate down and help you to calm yourself before making any decisions.
Other, more physical things can help too. Try these:
> Push-ups/Sit-ups (or any other exercise)
> Throwing socks against a wall
> Going for a walk, jog, run, bike ride etc.
Remember: a decision made whilst angry is likely to be rash and is often regretted later on
If you feel like you can try and calmly talk to the person now, it would be helpful to do so.
Otherwise, you could always try taking your anger out in a harmless way with the exercise below:
> Find yourself something that is worth very little/nothing at all, but that can't harm you. Good examples are scrunched up balls of paper, marshmallows, foam balls, a piece of cotton wool, a used toilet paper roll etc.
> Find a place where you can be on your own (e.g. back garden, empty room, shed)
> Take your anger out on the object. Try throwing it, standing on it, kicking it, ripping it and anything else that allows you to give the object everything you've got
Note: be careful not to injure yourself whilst doing this
The exercises above should help you relieve your anger a lot. If you're still feeling angry, talking it out with a neutral, "third" person can help a lot. Just the feeling of them listening to you and caring can make you feel much more at ease quickly. Try having a chat with a Get Some Space volunteer by clicking here.
If you aren't sure you have anyone you can talk to about your feelings, there are websites designed for anonymously talking to a person who will try and help you. They're free. You can find them on the Other Help page.
Anger can quickly lead to sadness in some cases. If you feel that you may be sad, click here to read about that and how to improve it.
Angry at Something
If you're feeling angry at something, rather than someone, this section might help you out.
When you're feeling angry, it can feel like a ball of anger inside of you that's growing, as if a fire is growing inside of you. You might be angry at yourself, even if there's nothing you could have done to change/prevent the situation. However you're feeling the anger, controlling your breathing can be a big help in managing it.
Try the exercise below:
You can close your eyes if you prefer.
> Hold either thumb in front of your mouth and gently blow onto the tip of it for five seconds (count this in your head)
> After 5 seconds, clench the same fist as hard as you can without causing any injury to yourself. Count to ten in your head, then relax your fist
> Repeat the first step, blowing gently for 10 seconds now
> Now you can take the thumb away, but keep gently breathing in and out, ten seconds each way
This exercise will slow your heart rate down and help you to calm yourself before making any decisions.
Other, more physical things can help too. Try these:
> Push-ups/Sit-ups (or any other exercise)
> Throwing socks against a wall
> Going for a walk, jog, run, bike ride etc.
Remember: a decision made whilst angry is likely to be rash and is often regretted later on
If you're feeling calmer now, you may not need the next exercise.
Otherwise, you could always try taking your anger out in a harmless way with the exercise below:
> Find yourself something that is worth very little/nothing at all, but that can't harm you. Good examples are scrunched up balls of paper, marshmallows, foam balls, a piece of cotton wool, a used toilet paper roll etc.
> Find a place where you can be on your own (e.g. back garden, empty room, shed)
> Take your anger out on the object. Try throwing it, standing on it, kicking it, ripping it and anything else that allows you to give the object everything you've got
Note: be careful not to injure yourself during this
The two exercises above should help you relieve your anger a lot. If you're still feeling angry, talking it out with a neutral person can help a lot. Just the feeling of them listening to you and caring can make you feel much more at ease quickly. Try having a chat with a Get Some Space volunteer by clicking here.
If you aren't sure you have anyone you can talk to about your feelings, there are websites designed for anonymously talking to a person who will try and help you. They're free. You can find them on theOther Helppage.
Anger can quickly lead to sadness in some cases. If you feel that you may be sad, click here to read about that and how to improve it.
Lonely
When you feel lonely, you might feel like no one cares about you, or that no one cares for you. It can happen at night when you're on your own, but it can also happen in the middle of a crowded room full of familiar faces. If you often feel like you don't fit in with other people, like you're an outsider to others or that you aren't worth anybody's time, you're likely experiencing loneliness. A common question is "what's the point of carrying on?" - if you feel like nobody wants to talk to you and/or nobody cares, it might seem like good reasoning to you. However, if there's one thing everybody has, or has access to, it's somebody that cares.
Be it a teacher, a friend (you can have friends and feel lonely), a parent/guardian, a trusted adult or anyone else that you know you can confide in privately, talking can really help.
For starters, it shows you that you aren't alone. It makes you feel cared for, like you're wanted around by that person. It may feel like nobody understands what you're feeling, which can heighten your loneliness, but the person doesn't have to understand. If they're listening to you, they care. That's the most important thing when trying to feel less lonely.
Loneliness can feel like a cavity that will never be filled.
It can feel like you're watching yourself stumble through society from outside of your own body, because that's more comfortable than actually trying.
However, you aren't alone.
Talking to a trusted adult, whoever it may be, can really help.
Try having a chat with a Get Some Space volunteer, by clicking here.
Even if you aren't sure you have anyone you can talk to about your feelings, there are websites designed for anonymously talking to a person who will try and help you. They're free. You can find them on the Other Help page.
If your feelings of loneliness are making you upset, click here to read about sadness and how to try and improve it.
Anxious
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Currently, I have no notes on this emotion. If you can help me understand it, please get in touch.
Afraid
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Being afraid is nothing to be embarrassed about, or feel bad about.
It's a perfectly ordinary emotion that everyone feels from time to time, whatever the cause may be.
Most people bottle their fear up, but this isn't a good idea. It can lead to the fear growing stronger.
It may not feel like it's in your head, but at the end of the day, fear is in your head, meaning you can take positive steps towards controlling and managing it.
Fear can be linked to a distressing childhood memory or experience, or it may simply be caused by something that you're currently going through that is scary. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact the first step to helping yourself overcome fear is admitting that you're scared of something.
Common effects of fear are feeling on edge constantly or a constant skin crawling feeling of being on high alert all of the time. It can help a lot to try and distract yourself from the fear. Try distracting yourself with these suggestions:
> Reading a good book
> Listening to music
> Drawing (it doesn't matter if you aren't very good)
> Watch your favourite TV series
> Play a game on whatever console you have
> Anything at all that requires concentration
Another coping strategy is sleep. If you tend to get a lot of late nights, try getting to sleep earlier. More sleep will not only help you think more clearly, it will improve your overall health - including your mental health. This is an important step in helping to empower you over your emotions and overcome the fear you're feeling.
Although fear may make you be wary of others, or less trustworthy of people, talking to other people is very important in helping yourself to overcome the fear. Friends, family, teachers or any other trusted adult can help.
Try having a chat with a Get Some Space volunteer, by clicking here.
Even if you aren't sure you have anyone you can talk to about your feelings, there are websites designed for anonymously talking to a person who will try and help you. They're free. You can find them on the Other Help page.