Question #28
“What do I do when something great happens to/for my friend and I feel happy, and sad at the same time?”
Dear AB,
It sounds like maybe you have some unprocessed emotions about whatever is happening for your friend. Here are some questions for you to reflect on:
Am I sad because I feel like this great thing will change our friendship?
Am I sad because I thought that I too, would have this great thing in my life by this point as well?
Is sadness actually the emotion that I’m feeling, or is it something else?
A big part of being a mature adult is recognizing and dealing with those complicated emotions, like the grief that we feel when facing potentially big life changes (or because we aren’t yet facing big life changes and we want to be).
It’s tough to emotionally balance being genuinely happy that something is happening in a friend’s life, when it brings up sad things for you. It’s really hard to sit with feeling like you’ve lost something, when you have no tangible thing to point to: there’s not a death, or a break-up or anything, just a feeling that something has slipped away.
Here’s my advice: be happy for your friend, and express your genuine happiness for whatever the new great thing is. But also take some time on your own, or with a therapist to process the sadness that you are feeling in this moment.
