Things that help me are nature, exercise, and escapism. If you can, get out into nature and just observe it. Try to break a sweat for at least thirty minutes if you can, but any amount is beneficial. Escapism might be harder but if you have a longer attention span I'd recommend reading. For a shorter one I'd honestly recommend Tetris.

Set timers for mealtimes, workouts, and bedtimes

Cry. We get trained early to hold it in. Whether it's a good intentioned "please don't cry" or a heartless "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about", we learn when we're young that it's not okay to let out our emotions. But sadness passes in tears. My wife of 25 years died less than two months ago. I have good support from people who understand letting out your emotions and I've been crying hard almost every day since then. I'm mostly past the acute grief now. I'm getting out and doing things with people, spending time with friends. I still have moments where I see something of hers and have to take a moment to cry. But I'm up and living my life.

So be gentle with yourself. Hold space for your sadness and let the tears come. It's the only way I know of to pass through it.

I am not a therapist so take my advice with a massive grain of salt.

My advice would be to get out of the house and go walk in nature or go hiking. This worked for my sadness and depression. In my case staying at home just made things worse and since I didn't feel like being among other people at the time hiking was my solution.

In my experience reading is much more efficient than watching/interacting with a screen. It doesn't need to be something thought provoking, might even be some comics if it suits you more. But written words have power because you make your own rendition in your mind.

Go get involved in a volunteer kitchen. That’s literally it. Social connectedness is the most close correlate with happiness, and that’s light exercise in meatspace (literally)

"sadness" is just your subconscious processing things. it's like a small micro-factory hidden somewhere in your mind. you have the options to either

(a) be a slave-driver and demand it be done quickly so you can return to "joyful" things (a.k.a. wastes of time)
(b) or allow yourself to have the time to heal properly.

your decision, no one else's.

note: it helps spending time in the garden, among plants in general, or just any place where there's not too many cars driving by and making a noise.

Sounds like you're depressed to me. My advice is learn to tolerate enduring pain then do things while you're not happy and even irritated.

To make it more tangible you play video games past the few minute mark and you make it a chore to get past the intro cinematic or tutorial level. You might not enjoy video games at the end of it but like you'll feel a little different.

I would say get curious to help you with what you're going through but I'm not sure if you'd have the inherit joy or exploring and you'd have to explore things by sheer force of will

Edit: you could use sheer force of will to try other people's advice.

knowing what you're sad about is half the battle. grief is emotion without an outlet.

have you thought about why you're trying to ignore or hold onto that sadness?

have a good cry, or paint something, or hell buy something beautiful and destroy it.

you need to find a healthy outlet for this emotion you're holding onto.

I once was overcome by a bad breakup, was spiraling and drinking myself stupid. one particular night I had enough and ripped a broken fridge out of my house and took a pickaxe and sledge hammer to it, then set it on fire.

The next day I woke up in my ditch, sore, exhausted, wet. I saw the fridge and was sad for myself. I realized that before I was sad at the loss but never felt sorry for myself. then I started to laugh at how absolutely absurd it was to pull a fridge out of my house, drag it 50 feet into my yard, and absolutely demolish it.

when I was laughing I knew I was going to be ok.

Only thing that's ever helped me a little is getting into water. Bath, pool, river whatever you can. Sauna might also work. Cold plunge is even better.

Get a dog. Saved my life.

I took up the guitar during Covid, and it made me feel so good that I realized that I've been operating under a low-grade depression for a long, long time.

Try playing music, whatever moves you. It takes focus and concentration, and there's a significant learning curve, but it feels so good when you understand a new concept, and can apply it to your instrument. It takes mental and physical discipline, and progress there may help with the rest.

I know this is cliche, but go outside and walk. Walk until you feel better. Even better, find a place with trees you can walk in. There are books written on this subject, the Japanese call it shinrin-yoku, or tree bathing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinrin-yoku

Do you have someone you can trust to talk to in person, like a friend? Sometimes the best balm for the burn of a rejection is the acceptance of a friend.

Escape?

Don't stay inside. Find the nearest place to where you live with a lot of trees and few people, and go there, and walk. It won't cure it, but at least won't make matters worse the way sitting being sad in your room will.

A combination of exercise, physical activity and doing something that serves a purpose, for example doing some cleaning, tidy up an area of your room/house/desk because a cluttered environment has a massive impact on your mental state.

That "remember you are both the animal in the enclosure and the zookeeper taking care of them, so clean their enclosure and feed them." meme is more real than you could imagine, so grab a shower and have a long soak in a bath, eat something hearty but simple like a slowcooker stew with some rice (and don't feel bad about putting leftovers in the fridge)

I've been in the same state before, it's a hard one to build up the motivation at times, sometimes you just have to say "Fuckit, today I am taking things slow. There's nothing I NEED to do immediately." (And if there is, potter your way around and get it done at a pace you can manage, you'll feel better for having completed a task)

I can only recommend finding the root cause. Yeah, no small feat.

I thought and I might have had depressive episodes but the root was that I am an Autist and as such I had a completely wrong view of the whole situation and of me. This doesn't make it better per se but it's far more approachable.

Also had a therapist and while he helped me find that out he was no help for the resulting situation.

(edit: sorry for bad typing and autocorrect with bad eyesight lol)

You don't. You take it and try to make sense of it.

In my experience fighting this just makes it take longer.

Allow yourself to feel sad and don't see it as something to avoid. Think about what can be learned from this, if anything can be learned from this.

Basically try to frame the experience as something that will help you in the future.