"How to be Sad by Helen Russell is part memoir and part exploration of sadness and grief. It’s written in a chatty style and is well researched."
How to be Sad by Helen Russell is part memoir and part exploration of sadness and grief using expert sources. It is split into three parts – looking after ourselves when we’re sad, how to talk about being sad, and what to do when you’re sad (including the benefits of reading). It isn’t an obvious self-help book, focusing a lot on the science and psychology of how and why we feel sad, and why this emotion shouldn’t be a taboo topic. But it’s written in a chatty style and is well researched, featuring interviews with scientists and journalists and with an extensive list of references at the end. Helen Russell discusses key events in her own life that have led to sadness, including the cot death of her baby sister, and how perfectionism and expectations have led to eating disorders and addictions. Her book is personal, reflective and insightful; following her research into happiness for a previous book, she realised that many people are phobic about being sad (or admitting to being sad). Here, her message is that sadness and tears are an important part of life and shouldn’t be held back.
| Primary Genre | Popular Science |
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We live in an age when reality TV shows climax in a tearful finale. But feeling sad - genuinely sad - is still taboo. Yet, sadness happens to us all, sometimes in heartbreakingly awful ways. If we don't know how to be sad, it can be isolating for those experiencing it and baffling for those trying to help others through dark times.
Today, most of us know intellectually that 'sad' is normal. But we're not always brilliant at allowing for it, in practice. Sadness is going to happen, so we might as well know how to 'do it' right. And it's time to start facing our problems and talking about them. Positive psychology may have become more accepted in mainstream culture, but rates of depression have continued to rise.
We're trying so hard to be happy. But studies show that we could all benefit from learning the art of sadness and how to handle it, well.
We cannot avoid sadness so we might as well learn to handle it. Helen Russell, while researching two previous books on happiness, found that today most of us are terrified of sadness. Many of us are so phobic to averse to negative emotions that we don't recognise them.
How to be Sad features in the following genres: Popular Science, Mind, body, spirit, Science: general issues, Mathematics and Science, Health & Fitness
How to be Sad is available in Paperback, Hardback
How to be Sad was written by Helen Russell and published by Fourth Estate Ltd an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
How to be Sad has 384 pages
