People Who Feel Overwhelming Sadness On Their Birthdays Usually Have 11 Specific Reasons
antoniodiaz / Shutterstock Birthdays are supposed to be happy days full of celebration, but just because you think something should be a certain way doesn’t mean that it will actually happen. It’s not uncommon to feel sad or even depressed on your birthday. Other people may not get it, but there can be something triggering about that day.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Ernesto Lira de la Rosa explained that this can be caused by bad past experiences, feeling like you haven’t come far enough, or even just going through a hard time in general. Once you get past having all of your classmates come over for cake and presents as a kid, birthdays can stir up a lot of questions. These are just a few of the reasons some people might feel overwhelming sadness on their birthday.
People who feel overwhelming sadness on their birthdays usually have 11 specific reasons
1. Nothing ever meets their expectations
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Everyone tends to have pretty high expectations about their birthdays. They turn into some sort of mythical holiday, and they begin to think things like, “Everything is really hard right now, but next Tuesday is my birthday, so that will be a good day.”
In a study published in Social Science and Medicine, researchers confirmed that having high expectations for your life that aren’t met can lead to depressive symptoms. Whether or not you ever score your dream job may feel like a bigger deal than a single birthday in the grand scheme of life, but on that birthday, not having a good time can feel like the end of the world.
2. They are lonely
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Birthdays are traditionally communal days. Chances are, most of us can’t remember a time in our childhood when we didn’t have some kind of party to mark the occasion, but that can be easier to coordinate when you have school friends or nearby cousins to invite. Once you reach adulthood, making friends gets harder, and there’s a higher likelihood that you’ll move away from family.
A persistent feeling of isolation can contribute to the development of depression in the long run, but even feeling just a bit lonely every now and then causes stress levels to spike. Feeling like there’s no one around to celebrate their big day can definitely make people feel sad, even on their birthday.
3. They spend the day absorbed in self-reflection
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Birthdays are pretty natural days for reflection. You think about what happened over the past year, but you also consider what age you’ve reached and all that you’ve done up to that point in your life. From there, it’s not hard to feel like you’re not proud of yourself, or you haven’t done all the things you thought you would by now.
Generally, self-reflection is a good thing as it allows you to learn more about and better understand yourself. However, an analysis published in Current Psychology concluded that too much self-reflection isn’t good for you and can actually lead to depression and anxiety. Everyone should have goals, but it’s important to remember that life rarely moves in a linear pattern that always moves you closer to what you want.
4. They are grieving a loss
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Sometimes sadness on birthdays can be caused by external factors that feel completely out of your control. Grief is a hard thing to face at any time, but it can be especially difficult on your birthday, when you’re remembering the way that loved one was always there to celebrate with you in the past, but never will be again.
Everyone will feel grief at some point, but they’ll also feel it in different ways. For some, it is a time of sadness and anger that dissipates after a while. Others deal with complicated grief, which makes it even harder to move on with their lives. These feelings don’t care about what day of the year it is, and they don’t go away just because it’s someone’s birthday.
5. They feel forgotten
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Feeling forgotten on your birthday is a bit like feeling lonely, but not exactly the same. Instead of feeling isolated and thinking you don’t have anyone in your life to spend the day with, there actually are people close to you that you thought would make the day special. The problem is they didn’t.
Maybe they genuinely forgot, or maybe they were so busy they could only manage a quick text. Regardless, this can leave you feeling like they don’t care.
Psychologist Holly Schiff noted, “Feeling excluded, rejected, or left out also hits on our sense of self-worth, which we develop through our interpersonal relationships with others.”
Thinking your circle left you behind can leave you wondering why you’re even celebrating your birthday in the first place.
6. They have anxiety
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Not all things that can make someone sad on their birthday have to do with the present moment. It’s also common to feel anxious about what’s coming next in your life and worry that you aren’t up to the challenge. Psychologists call this feeling of looking to the future with fear anticipatory anxiety.
Anticipatory anxiety can accompany major life events, as well as more minor occurrences, so wherever your birthday falls on that spectrum in your head, it could definitely stir up these feelings. Nothing is a better reminder of how fast time passes than taking another trip around the sun.
7. They have traumatic childhood memories
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Many of us are lucky enough to have images of streamers and piñatas come to mind when we think back to our childhood birthdays, but that wasn’t the case for everyone. Whether financial constraints held their family back from throwing them a party, no one from school RSVP’d, or something bad happened on a specific birthday, someone might be carrying childhood trauma related to their birthday with them.
We typically think of nostalgia as being a good thing, but that’s not always true. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that nostalgia can stir up a mix of positive and negative emotions. Nostalgia is more likely to feel negative when it’s brought up by a routine experience, which could include a birthday. And, of course, if the nostalgia brings a bad memory to mind, it’s not going to make you happy.
8. They feel too much pressure to be happy
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Knowing that things like loneliness and feeling forgotten can cause sadness on someone’s birthday would lead you to think that spending the day with loved ones would automatically remedy that, but that isn’t always the case.
If people are with you on your birthday, they’re probably going to expect you to have a great time. It’s only natural, and it’s what you would expect from someone else. This can put immense pressure on the person celebrating to appear happy at all times, leading to sadness.
Attempting to avoid negative feelings no matter what can actually just create more negative emotions, according to a study published in the journal Emotion. Forcing yourself to feel happy can lead you to ruminate more, which also makes you sad. It’s always healthier to be your authentic self, even if it feels like that doesn’t meet social expectations.
9. They feel guilty
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If you think you should be happy and enjoy yourself on your birthday, but instead feel the exact opposite, it may lead to guilt. It’s kind of like thinking someone always has it worse than you do. If it’s your birthday and you have no real reason to be unhappy, then it must be bad to do so when others have “real” problems.
Guilt isn’t an inherently bad thing. Recognizing that you made a mistake and learning from it can help you grow into a better person. But if you feel an unhealthy amount of guilt that just won’t go away, it can seriously wear you down both emotionally and physically. If your mind makes guilt a habit on your birthdays, you’ll come to dread it more than ever.
10. They compare themselves to people on social media
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Comparison has always been an issue because you can compare your own circumstances to anything you see, but social media makes it even more ubiquitous. Instead of just being there for friends’ and family members’ birthdays, you now have complete strangers’ birthday celebrations to scroll through as well.
Of course, that stranger could have had a pretty bad birthday overall, but they’re only going to show the highlights on social media. Seeing this and feeling like your own life doesn’t measure up can lead to depression and poor self-esteem. It might be a good idea to try to live in the real world on your birthday and not take it to social media.
11. They question their purpose
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This may sound a bit existential and extreme, but the reflection that comes with birthdays can lead someone to think about their purpose in life and what they’re doing in the world. Some people are able to brush these questions off easily, but others can become obsessed with them.
Psychologist Larissa Rainey coined the term “purpose anxiety” to describe the feeling of worrying about whether you’ll find and fulfill your purpose. This could definitely be applied to reaching the start of another year and wondering if you’re doing and contributing enough.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
