10 Tragic Reasons Some People Love Being Sad

Some people seem to enjoy being sad.

A person with short blonde hair wearing a white shirt appears upset, with slightly furrowed brows and tearful eyes. They are indoors, in front of a white brick wall and sitting on a bed.

It’s probably a strange thing for you to admit, but you enjoy being sad. Or maybe you know someone who seems to prefer being that way. At least, that’s how it seems.

But sadness isn’t an emotion we ought to enjoy—that contradicts the very definition of sadness.

Yet for some reason, some people seem to find themselves in a place where feeling sad is seemingly preferable to other emotional states.

Why? Why do some people like being sad when others strive so hard NOT to feel that way?

And is it normal to enjoy sadness? It depends. If someone loves being sad, it likely means they don’t have a good relationship with the rest of the emotional spectrum and the way they move up and down it.

Let’s explore why that might be.

1. They have a low set point for happiness.

A man with a tired and contemplative expression looks toward the upper left. He has red, irritated eyes and wears a black knit beanie and a dark striped shirt. The background is a solid, muted gray.

Every individual has a unique set point for their happiness. In other words, no matter what good or bad things occur in their life, they tend to return to a steady level of happiness over the long run.

A person’s set point is chiefly determined by genetics and conditioning—aka nature and nurture. So, if someone has a particularly low set point for happiness, they may spend more of their time in a low mood than a high mood.

Since a low mood is the norm for them, it’s just something they’ve gotten used to.

In fact, emotions that are too far outside of their norm may feel unsettling. They may not know how to handle feelings of elation or joy, so prefer to be melancholy instead.

So it feels like they enjoy being sad because it’s more familiar. They know how to live life with a generally low mood.

2. Sadness is comfortable.

A woman with shoulder-length brown hair leans against a white wall, looking thoughtful and concerned. She is wearing a blue blouse and has her hands clasped in front of her chin. The background is softly lit with a neutral tone.

Change can be a terrifying thing. You have no idea what you’ll face in the future, what challenges are ahead of you, or what successes and failures are to come.

There are so many unknown variables that it can all feel overwhelming. And because it’s overwhelming, some people avoid trying to make progress against their sadness or depression.

Depression and dysfunction are comfortable if that’s all you’ve known for a long time.

So, people adopt the attitude of “Why change? Why try to change? Why make myself uncomfortable when this sadness or depression are what I know?”

Getting better is hard to do if you’re already worn thin by just trying to survive the mental health problems you may be experiencing.

If this describes you or someone you know, it might not be that you want to be sad, but you’re too afraid of challenging your underlying sadness.

3. Depression and sadness are easier than the alternative.

A person is lying on a bed, curled up with their hands covering their face. They are wearing a long-sleeve top and sweatpants. The room has a minimalistic decor with a plant in the background. The atmosphere appears to be calm yet somber.

You may or may not know how much work goes into recovering from depression.

For some people, it’s not much work at all. They see a doctor, get a prescription, and their brain starts doing the things it’s supposed to be doing.

For other people, though? Yeah, nowhere near that easy. It takes some people years to find a solution for their mental health problems. Some people are medication-resistant and gain little benefit from treatment at all.

It’s hard to get mentally well. Mental wellness requires resources, support, and time that people don’t necessarily have. How many people have time to devote to their mental wellness when working, taking care of family, keeping a roof over their head and food in their belly, and all the other demands that life throws on your shoulders?

Sometimes it’s just easier to be depressed and feel sad than the alternative.

4. Negative feelings have become motivating.

A man in a black suit sits on a black leather sofa with a laptop on a wooden table in front of him. He is holding a white cup in his right hand and has a thoughtful expression. A large, modern wall clock hangs in the background on a grey wall.

Many people use their negative emotions as fuel for their motivation. They can strive for great changes if they are just angry with the world, their position in life, and the hand they have been dealt.

The sadness and despondence can turn into a bitterness that their life is going the way it is. Plenty of people use spite for motivation to strive for more.

The problem with this approach toward life is the lack of sustainability and damage to personal relationships.

To use a metaphor, anger and spite are the fuel for the roaring flames of motivation. The problem is that the flames consume their fuel as they burn, and sooner or later, there is no more fuel left. But you get so used to burning that you may not be able to turn it off, so it bleeds out into your personality, turning you into a bitter and angry person.

The other issue with this approach is that it dramatically affects your social dynamics. Happy, healthy people don’t spend much time around miserable people because that negative mindset is contagious. They know to set boundaries against that. But unhappy people often find themselves surrounded by other unhappy people. That harms everyone involved as they drag each other back down, like crabs in a bucket.

5. They are excessively cynical.

A woman with long dark hair and a serious facial expression is staring directly at the camera. She is wearing a black sleeveless top with a lace pattern on the front. The background is a plain, muted gray.

Cynicism is an easy trap to fall into. Every day, we are flooded with an unending deluge of everything terrible in the world.

And what about humans in general? Many just aren’t that good, and quite a few are terrible. Even the people we hold as heroes or the people we view as good humans don’t necessarily meet all the criteria that society forces on them to be good. And even those people come under attack because what’s their motive? There has to be some ulterior motive.

Cynicism is an inherently negative view of the world we occupy, and it’s extremely easy to be cynical.

But cynicism and blind optimism aren’t the only choices out there. A better choice is to focus more on the present and handle the present moment. Be sad when it’s time to be sad, be happy when it’s time to be happy, and walk through life assuming people are generally doing their best, even though their best may not be all that good.

Cynicism is not realism.

6. Feeling hopeless makes sadness the easiest option.

Elderly woman with gray hair and a thoughtful expression sits with her hands clasped near her face, looking directly at the camera. She wears a gray turtleneck sweater, and the background is softly blurred, with hints of books on shelves.

The feeling of hopelessness is a common symptom that many people struggling with depression face. Hopelessness is an amplification of negative feelings, of just knowing that there is no possible way that you can ever be better, happy, or feel good.

Those feelings and a lack of energy from the depression can make it so difficult to try to be better.

But here’s the problem: depression is a liar. It’s not an accurate reflection of who you are, the world around you, or what you’re capable of.

Granted, it’s easy to look around at all the pain, suffering, and turmoil in the world and be utterly depressed about it all.

But hopelessness makes those things worse because it keeps people from taking action. It’s far easier to be sad, depressed, and throw our hands up with how hopeless it all is.

7. They may have an undiagnosed medical condition.

A close-up image of a man with short, dark hair and light eyes. He has a serious expression, light facial stubble, and wears a red and white plaid shirt. The background is blurred, focusing attention on his face.

Chronic feelings of hopelessness, sadness, and depression may point to an undiagnosed medical condition. Mental illness is an obvious possibility, but it may not be. There are a variety of physical illnesses that can cause mood and emotional problems.

Diabetes and out-of-range sugar management can cause dramatic, negative mood swings. Thyroid problems can mess with emotional regulation. Hormonal problems and chronic pain can create significant problems as well.

It may be less that you’re addicted to sadness and more that you have an unaddressed medical issue that needs to be identified and treated.

8. They feel like they don’t deserve happiness due to past sins.

A woman with curly hair and a pensive expression sits on a couch, propping her head with one hand. She wears a red shirt and a necklace. In the background, a man in a plaid shirt and jeans also sits on the couch, looking away. The mood appears tense.

To some people, their sadness and misery are penance for guilt and bad decisions in the past. And sometimes “bad” is an understatement.

For example, consider a person who has long struggled with a serious substance abuse disorder, an addict who needed to feed their addiction. Addiction is an ugly thing. At its worst, it can cause people to lie, cheat, steal, break into places, rob people, and do whatever it takes to feed the addiction.

And there are plenty of times when these actions are not in line with the actual morals and beliefs of the person struggling with the addiction. When they gain clarity, they may look back on their past and see all the misery and suffering their addiction created for themselves and the people who cared about them.

To that person, they may feel like they deserve the misery, sadness, and guilt for these actions driven by addiction.

Plenty of society feels the same, but the masses can be wrong. Should those wrongs be forgotten or unaddressed? No. But neither should anyone feel like they deserve to be miserable for the rest of their life because they made some terrible decisions.

9. Past traumas affect people’s experience of life.

A person with curly hair, wearing a black hoodie and jeans, is sitting indoors by a window, looking outside thoughtfully. The natural light illuminates their profile, casting a calm atmosphere.

Most people will experience traumatic events in their lives. Personal traumas, assaults, child abuse, loved ones dying, car accidents, environmental catastrophes, addiction, suicide, pandemics…the list goes on and on.

It doesn’t matter how much money you have, what resources you have available, or how withdrawn you are from the world, trauma will visit all of us sooner or later.

People who have been surviving trauma for a long time may not even realize there is an alternative. And when they do experience the alternative, it’s so foreign and uncomfortable that they just retreat back into the sadness and depression that they know.

For instance, a child who’s been traumatized by the people who were supposed to love and protect them will have difficulty shedding those negative feelings and learning to love positive ones.

The harm can run so deep that the trauma survivor may subconsciously seek out negativity to feel comfortable.

10. Some people just like to be unhappy.

Close-up image of a man with short, graying hair and a light beard and mustache. He is wearing a black shirt and looking directly at the camera against a blurred background, which appears to be a mix of blue and wood tones.

That may seem counter-intuitive, but some people just like to be unhappy in much the same way that some people like to be scared by horror movies or rollercoasters.

The theory behind it is that many people feel positive and negative emotions simultaneously or in a similar window. They feel negative and scared from the horror element but then feel the wave of relief with a resolved ending.

Sadness or depression is a catalyst for amplifying the positive feelings that follow, much like a rollercoaster.