This is an easy but beautifully written insight into the realms of sadness. Very interesting and extremely informative. It’s written in such a way that you follow the author on her life journey while at the same time uncovering scientific facts and psychological viewpoints on the subject. Highly recommended.

Thank you NetGalley

I really appreciated this book. I had not thought about the topic before on this way, but it makes so much sense. So essentially it talks about how parents these days in some countries do their best to shield their children from negative emotions, but in doing so they effectively prevent them from learning how to manage such emotions like sadness and even learn from them. It discusses how all emotions are useful, even the difficult ones. Helen Russell has her own past experiences to back up a lot of the theory and must have had a really interesting time researching this based on the conversations she had with a diverse range of people. It’s changed my thinking on being sad and also links well into the current opening up o and focus on mental health as well as physical health. We have some picture books fro young children in our shop that talk about being sad and I now tell people about Helen’s book as a background to explaining why it is important to help children manage sad instead of trying to shield them from it completely. Hence I am looking forward to getting this book into our shop and being able to show it to parents as well as school librarians.
The book is quite long, so people may dip in and out of it. Non native English speakers may find it hard going. Hence the 4 star rating. Personally I liked the diverse opinions sought, the information on how different countries deal with sadness and other strong emotions. The last part of the book on strategies for managing the sadness is also super helpful.

The basic premise of this book is that to understand happiness, and to be happy, you need to understand the other side sadness.

Happiness and sadness are two side of the same coin, and go together. You cannot be happy without experiencing sadness at times.

The author writes the book from her own life experiences, drawing recommendations from her personal life. And in many ways that makes this book easier to use: because many of us have had similar life experiences, so we "get" it.

Some of the stories ramble on a bit (in my opinion) and sometimes I feel she is labouring the point. But it is full of great information and advice, and if you are all interesting in becoming a more positive person, reading a book entitled "How to be Sad" will help, I promise!

I don't usually read self help but I'd read Helen's previous book and loved it so gave this the benefit of the doubt. I'm so glad I did, This is self help Helen Russell style which mean a big dollop of humour, common sense and self deprecation as well as all the interesting science bits that explain why feeling sad isn't just ok, its actually essential to our mental health.

Part memoir, Helen takes us through her childhood and the loss of her sister, her parents divorce and her own health issues to her current life as a mum of three small children in Denmark, She speaks of her own issues with complete honesty and isn't afraid to go deep and dark. Throughout, the book is peppered with interviews from mental health experts and social campaigners who talk about the science of feeling sad. Its never too weighty, its not a book that feels like a crash course in psychology but has lots of interesting take aways.

I never expected a book about sadness to make me smile so much and I've definitely learnt to not to fear sadness so thank you Helen and Netgally. A lovely gem of a book that I hope everyone reads.

I finished this book with tears in my eyes! Not because it was a tragic ending, but because it was hopeful and refreshing - you aren't alone!!

We live in a world that is based on 'being happy', seemingly at all costs for some, and this book gives a fascinating balance to that saying we need to embrace the negative more instead of trying to shut it out and avoid it all costs! Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns, and we need to take more in our stride and deal with the differing emotions that life throws our way in a more pro-active way, instead of trying to shut out all feelings with pills and medication.

The author delves heavily into her own life which is full of heartbreak and has led her on the path to trying to understand why she feels the way she does. From childhood, to her present life, she looks back at the different stages and events that have shaped her as a person. And how as a society we are encouraged to dismiss all the bad stuff and strive for happiness 24/7! That isn't humanly possible! But society tells us it is as we scroll through various social media sites, seeing the happy posts of people, and this book does a brilliant job of looking behind the curtain on a number of issues of how 'sadness' is perceived.

She also talks to a number of well known people on their own battles with expressing their emotions in life and that was quite illuminating. The public image versus the personal battles, and that's another way in which social media has skewered our views on people.

From the role of parents trying to suppress their childrens' emotions - quick, buy them stuff to make them happy all the time! - to how as adults we find it difficult to express our feelings and feel ashamed to be truthful or ask for help when we are suffering. It also explores different ways of getting out of your head, so to speak, in the form of therapy, medication, reading, being in nature - and the importance of switching off from the digital world for your own wellbeing, something I always feel better for doing.

This was a really well written book, full of so much honesty and great advice and information.

How To Be Sad by Helen Russell examines our cultural tendency of pursuing happiness to our own detriment. This is a book that explains the benefits of sadness and how avoiding it causes us pain in the long term.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS BOOK
Helen Russell's penchant for stories from her life experiences makes this book believable and her theory on sadness solid. The way she tells her stories makes the book interesting and her explanations easy to follow.

DISLIKES
Some of the stories go on for too long, making the reader lose interest after a while. How To Be Sad is a tome that can afford to lose a couple of pages......

As someone who is sad a lot myself, I really apprechiated this book. Not only seeing that I am not alone but being told to embrace the sadness, the depression. There was a lot of information by experts I appreciated.

I got completely lost when it came to the topic of children. I know this is based on the author's personal experience and that is absolutely valid, I just felt like having children (in more ways than one), not having children, raising children etc. was the main point of a lot of these chapters and I found myself skimming the children bits a lot as this is not a "me" topic. Which is completely fine, noone will identify with all themes all the time, I just felt like the children theme was very dominant. This is absolutely a point that is "me and not the book". I am sure that most other people will find themselves connecting more to these storylines than I was able to.

I also didn't get a lot out of the advice at the end since I thought that it was advice I'd already gotten and I had hoped to read about something I may have not tried yet. However, again, I am sure that to a lot of people these suggestions will be new and helpful.

All in all I really liked the book and thought it was very interesting and I could see myself from 10 years ago really love this book.

I found this to be an interesting read. Very well researched which was enhanced by the authors personal story. I believe it is an important read with an important message. I particularly liked the research on other cultures and how they deal with certain circumstances, many cultures embrace sadness as part of their healing process. There is much to be taken from this book and I read it at a time when I needed some guidance after suffering a bereavement. I have come away feeling like my sadness isn’t just normal but an important part of life.
Thank you to 4th Estate Publishers and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

I really enjoyed this book and its exploration of sadness. I felt like Russell was holding my hand and saying “absolutely nothing is wrong with you and your sadness is fine.”

I don’t feel the blurb fully encompasses what to expect from this novel, as it is a part memoir as well as part exploration of the emotion sadness. She speaks to a range of researchers, people with lived experience and shares her own life story with us. These three components make for a digestible, comforting and informative read. Russell talks about what to do when you’re feeling sad, how to talk about being sad and sitting with yourself when being sad. Overall, she really advocates for simply accepting sadness will be a part of life and you do not need to battle it constantly, or constantly strive for happiness. And with the use of researchers, science, and her story I think she achieves her goal. This is a good self-help book for dealing with general ups and downs in life and I think the messages here are useful for everyone. There is a jam-packed reference section as well as a resource section that allows readers to go beyond her book.

I enjoyed the way Russell approached this, as well as her writing style and also appreciate that she speaks about seeking professional help for the other challenges in her life (that go beyond just being sad). She embraces the distinction between mental health conditions and plain sadness, urging readers to discover what’s right for them but working through their sadness. A book I’ll re-read and I can certainly say I’m a fan of this author!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC that I have finally finished after so long.

I LOVED this. This book is part memoir, part self-help and part research paper and I think that it balanced those things perfectly. Russell has a simple yet effective writing style.

I went in with the expectation that this would be a non-fiction story that discussed mental illness/clinical depression. Instead it discusses the importance of balanced, rational emotion alongside Russell's personal struggles. It talks about how sadness is the most normal thing and yet the most vilified and compares the experiences of friends and celebrities with critiques from a variety of psychologists.

I don't think this book is for everyone. If you want something that will mollycoddle your feelings of sadness or justify bad behaviour caused by mental illness, this isn't for you. It's self-aware, informative, heart-breaking and incredibly helpful. I am putting a list of the major trigger warnings though because this book discussed a LOT of things.

TW: eating disorders, insomnia, depression, anxiety, infertility, loss of a child, medical trauma, death, grief, suicide, self harm, divorce, neglect.

This book was quick read, easy to follow and informative. It was exactly what I was expecting and I enjoyed reading it. I felt like I got something from the book, and it helped me. Recommended.

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.

Helen Russell blends memoir with inquiry to create a delicate book that reveals how her years of research and reflection have helped her to make sense of, and find peace with, her life's narrative. The primary argument Russell puts forward is that we all need to allow space for sadness in our lives. Working with this difficult feeling, rather than running away from it, is the key to a durable state of contentment and emotional resilience. An incredible array of resources are included at the end of 'How to be Sad' - everything from diagnostic questionnaires to crochet patterns - making the book a practical tool with which readers enact some of Russel's learnings for themselves.

A unique book a very helpful guide that allows you to be sad.Most books I’ve read on emotions turns us away from sadness this excellent read let’s us absorb our sadness be emotional feel,Will be recommending this well written book.#netgalley #4thestste

Why do we cry? How come love hurts? And what's a happiness researcher doing writing about sadness, anyway? Well, it turns out the two aren’t mutually exclusive. After eight years of investigating into happiness, Helen discovered a startling fact: most of us are terrified of being sad. So phobic, in fact, that we jeopardise our chances of truly living at all. This needs to change, because we need our sadness: it’s a message. It can tell us what’s wrong and what to do about it. Researchers have found that allowing for temporary sadness, counter-intuitively, makes us happier. And trying to avoid sadness – even to the extent many of us do on a daily basis – is detrimental to our mental health. So the time has come to get better at having difficult conversations. How To Be Sad is part memoir, part manifesto for change in how we express our emotions, good and bad. Exploring why we get sad; what makes us sad; how sadness can be a force for good; the truth about crying; why some of us get sadder than others; what we can do when we’re sad; and what we definitely shouldn’t do. Including the history of sadness, how other cultures handle theirs, the differences between sadness and depression, addiction, grief, heartbreak, burnout and everything in between.

Russell interweaves personal testimony with the latest research on sadness from psychologists, psychiatrists, geneticists, neuroscientists and historians as well as the experiences of writers, comics, athletes and change-makers from both sides of the Atlantic. How To Be Sad includes interviews with former medic Adam Kay, Joshua Becker (Becoming Minimalist), Meik Wiking (The Happiness Research Institute), Ella Mills (Deliciously Ella), Jeremy Vine (BBC), journalists Matt Rudd (The Sunday Times) and John Crace (The Guardian), polar explorer Ben Saunders, Yomi Adegoke (The Black Girls Bible), comedian Robin Ince, Julia Samuel MBE (Grief Works) and Mungi Ngomane (Everyday Ubuntu). This is a fascinating, insightful and accessible read brimming with anecdotal evidence and cases to back up the author's claims. It explores how sadness is a vital part of life and discussion about this was much more thought-provoking than I had initially imagined it would be. It's an intriguing and well written book compiled by one of the most prominent scientists in her field and is published at a time when many are facing more sadness than they have ever felt before. How To Be Sad is a guide for anyone who has ever been sad. A book about how we can all get happier by learning to be sad, better.

How to be sad – Helen Russell
This book was a real eye opener for me. Virtually every sentence landed, hit a nerve, unlocked a question, challenged a thought. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
As someone who ‘feels sad’ most of the time, I hoped it would both shed some light on why and perhaps also offer some ideas and approaches about how to ‘improve’ my situation and it delivers on both counts on an extraordinary level.
If you:
• Went to boarding school
• Set yourself a lot of goals to achieve
• Often feel disappointed with yourself
• Have lost someone special
• Enjoy exploring other people’s lives and challenges to learn from
Or have even just felt sad... and let’s be honest, who hasn’t...then this book is worth a read.
Helen’s style is warm and approachable, she lays everything on the table. She is joined throughout by the most amazing combination of ‘experts’; some professionals in their field, others expert by experience, and the mixture works beautifully.
Complimented by detailed appendices offering further reading, tools and tests to try for yourselves and possibly some of the most entertaining ‘referencing’ work I’ve ever read, this book is a must read for everyone – especially those who don’t like non-fiction...you’re in good company and will find out why you’re right...by reading it.
Sheer brilliance. Buy it, read it – you will not regret it.

How To be Sad is the third "brain" book I have read this year, and shares a lot topically with Ouch! - A History of Pain around some of its discoveries about our more negative mental states. It is fair to say however that unlike Ouch and the Rag And Bone Shop, How To Be Sad is, as its title suggests, somewhat of a self help book. Tied up in a minor misery memoir - Russell is clear she is not writing Angela's Ashes here but it is fair that in discussing why it is important to allow ourselves to be sad, and find ways of being sad productively, she has had her own sadness.

As such this is not really my kind of book, sorry. She writes with pep and vigour about some quite unpleasant things which nevertheless are not that unusual in British society (and this is a very British book). A child of divorce, which came after family bereavement, perfectionist, eating disorder, depression. They are all tackled in Sunday supplement style, there is a columnists wit threaded through all of the sadness, and a gallows humour recognised as a defence mechanism within the book. And we occasionally get out to talk to others, experts, psychologists or people with some equally sad experiences. For me the balance was a little off, I wanted less personal memoir and more of the stuff I got in Ouch!, the stories which crystallise a particular mindset. that said Russelll is thorough, there is excellent stuff on perfectionism, achievement fallacy, the pain of being childless, the pain of having children. It is also clear that post partner, epiphany about sadness and children that the 40+ aspect of the book wobbles because she has kind of worked it out. The self help bit however becomes a little nebulous because she is also aware that the techniques that have worked for her are by definition very personal. Cue making sure you have people to talk to, eat well, exercise, allow yourself time to be sad.

This is very much a book for now, it has been completed during the early stages of the Covid crisis and you can see the weight of the relevance of the book bundled with the impossibility of some of the solutions. It is also a little more wishy-washy on some of its pronouncements, where Ouch! was very clear that you have to allow a little danger, a little pain into your life so you can grow, How To be Sad sort of assumes it will be there and that the resulting sadness is something you need to live with. Infact the word pain rarely appears in How To Be Sad, there is a sense that emotion doesn't physically manifest as much. As such it wasn't something that really worked for me - though this is partially having worked out much of this myself and having more or less worked out what I have needed for a happy ongoing life. I can see it being useful, and even powerful read for a millennial audience, really hitting the wall, give yourself time.

Ever since picking up and really enjoying Helen Russell's book 'The Year of Living Danishly' I've looked forward to reading more of her work. I like the approachable and chatty tone of her writing alongside her thorough research. 'How to be Sad' feels like the author's most personal book so far, tackling some very difficult times in her own life. This book looks at sitting with sadness, rather than seeking a life free from it. It's packed full of interviews from a host of people and the contributions from Adam Kay, Marina Fogle and Ella Mills stood out the most for me. The final part of the book 'Stuff to Do When You're Sad' I found especially useful at this point in time when lockdown is still in place in the UK (February). It's a good reminder of the things that can help when times are hard and uncertain (backed up by research).

'How to be Sad' has left me with plenty to think about and contemplate. Many thanks to 4th Estate and and NetGalley for the ARC. I really enjoyed reading.

An amazing book that I only wish I had access to when my own life was filled with sadness following a bereavement and a divorce in the same month. Accepting sadness when you have only known happiness is very hard. This book explains clearly how you need to be unhappy in order to experience happiness again. An appropriate book in the current climate when so many people are sad and lonely.

I'd like to preface this by saying - I don't read anything that remotely resembles a self-help book usually. But this book just called out to me - not yet another book telling me I shouldn't be sad, but one encouraging me to embrace my sadness and learn how to live alongside my emotions rather than hide them.

Written in an easy-to-follow, jargon free style that felt more like a friend giving good advice than a faceless author telling us how to feel.

This book was refreshing, insightful and genuinely helpful - dealing with the real issue of sadness still being a taboo subject no matter how popular sad movies are.