{"id":17844,"date":"2020-04-23T13:37:46","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T13:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sparkvisionnow.com\/?p=17844"},"modified":"2020-04-23T13:37:46","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T13:37:46","slug":"how-do-you-reply-to-a-sad-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunneez.com\/sparkvision\/how-do-you-reply-to-a-sad-message\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you reply to a sad message?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>10 Effective Ways to Respond to Others&#8217; Sadness: A Guide to Empathy and Understanding<\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">Nowadays, it&#8217;s really normal to hear people speak about their sadness. It may be in the form of a complaint or frustration, but that underlying emotion is pure, raw sadness. As a country and globe, we are all going through <a href=\"https:\/\/sparkvisionnow.com\/a-guide-to-make-room-for-grief-at-work\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">immense grief<\/a> related to the pandemic. Whether we like it or not, sadness is a key ingredient of grief and something that we simply can&#8217;t muscle through in order to get to the other side of it. Unfortunately, the majority of us were not taught how to respect and process our feelings &#8211; let alone the feelings of others. So you may be wondering, how do you reply to a sad message?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">When I&#8217;ve reached out to people expressing my own sadness it&#8217;s been a powerful mirror &#8211; reflecting my expectations of others. You see, we often think that others can help us process what&#8217;s going on inside, and when we vulnerably reach out, we&#8217;re left feeling deflated. And that&#8217;s usually because that person didn&#8217;t give you the response that you were looking for. Perhaps all we really wanted was some empathy, but instead, we got coaching.\u00a0<\/span>Or we wanted someone to tell us it was\u00a0<em>all going to be okay,<\/em>\u00a0but instead, they told us to\u00a0<em>grow up<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">I have been guilty of being a poor listener in the past and going straight to coaching when that person really just wanted to be heard and validated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">So, I thought it might be helpful to show 10 ways that we humans respond to others&#8217; sadness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Use these the next time you wonder how do you reply to a sad message.<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-23700 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/sunneez.com\/sparkvision\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Copy-of-how-to-respond-to-saddness-1-1024x461.png\" alt=\"how do you reply to a sad message \" width=\"1024\" height=\"461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sunneez.com\/sparkvision\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Copy-of-how-to-respond-to-saddness-1-980x441.png 980w, https:\/\/sunneez.com\/sparkvision\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Copy-of-how-to-respond-to-saddness-1-480x216.png 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">Perhaps you can identify which category you typically land in?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">Most of the time, the top row of responses is what folks are hoping to receive when they reach out about their feelings. That&#8217;s not to say that any of these are the &#8220;right way&#8221; or the &#8220;wrong way&#8221; however it&#8217;s really important to be intentional about how you engage with your own energy and triggered response when someone opens up. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">We are constantly saying what we would ultimately say to ourselves. So if you&#8217;re someone who is unkind to yourself when it comes to making room for difficult feelings, it&#8217;s highly possible that you&#8217;ll respond that way to others. And on the other hand, there are some of us who are ooooovvvvverrrly compassionate to others and never give ourselves an ounce of that very compassion.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #333333;\">So, while this article is about your external response, it&#8217;s also an opportunity to reflect deeply internally. <\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/insighttimer.com\/marybeth.hyland\/guided-meditations\/a-guide-for-making-room-for-grief-in-work-and-life\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Are you someone who was comforted or denied when you experienced sadness growing up?<\/a> Are you carrying any of those wounds with you into your adulthood? If you&#8217;re a human it&#8217;s more than likely the case. And if you haven&#8217;t yet given yourself the space to explore and love yourself exactly where you are now, it&#8217;s unlikely that you&#8217;ll be able to truly do that for others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">When you notice your own patterns and trends, it&#8217;s a wonderful opening for you to go within. The truth is, we&#8217;re our own best medicine. When we can give ourselves the response we need, we can ultimately help everyone around us who hasn&#8217;t gone on that journey yet and is looking for support to feel better.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">Will you get curious about how you respond to sadness? What will you do the next time you wonder how do you reply to a sad message?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>10 Effective Ways to Respond to Others&#8217; Sadness: A Guide to Empathy and Understanding Nowadays, it&#8217;s really normal to hear people speak about their sadness. It may be in the form of a complaint or frustration, but that underlying emotion is pure, raw sadness. As a country and globe, we are all going through immense [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18,10,35,20,21],"tags":[17,24,82,34,25],"class_list":["post-17844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-emotional-intelligence","category-experience","category-mindfulness","category-personalities","category-reflection","tag-emotional-intelligence","tag-empowerment","tag-growth","tag-mindfulness","tag-reflection"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How do you reply to a sad message? - Sparkvision<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn how to reply to a sad message with empathy and understanding in our guide on handling sadness and grief with these 10 tips.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sunneez.com\/sparkvision\/how-do-you-reply-to-a-sad-message\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How do you reply to a sad message? 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