Mixed Emotions: Feeling Happy and Sad at the Same Time

Yes, both at once

For a long time, a common view in psychology was that happiness and sadness sit at opposite ends of one scale, so feeling one pushes out the other. Jeff Larsen, Peter McGraw and John Cacioppo tested this directly. In ordinary moments most people did report one or the other. But right after watching a bittersweet film, moving out of a college dormitory, or graduating, many people reported feeling happy and sad at the same time. (Larsen, McGraw, and Cacioppo, 2001)

A later meta-analysis by Raul Berrios, Peter Totterdell and Stephen Kellett pooled 63 experiments with 7,157 participants. Procedures designed to evoke mixed feelings did so with a large average effect compared with control conditions (d = 0.77), and the method (films, music, pictures, recalled personal experiences) made no significant difference. (Berrios, Totterdell, and Kellett, 2015) The authors concluded that mixed emotions are a real, measurable experience, not a reporting quirk. Researchers still debate whether people feel both at the exact same instant or switch rapidly between them. (Hershfield and colleagues, 2013) For practical purposes the answer matters less than knowing it is common.

When mixed feelings tend to show up

Mixed feelings cluster around endings, transitions and gains that come with a cost. A few examples most adults will recognize:

• The last day at a job you are glad to leave, with people you will miss.
• Watching your youngest child drive off to college.
• Hearing that a close friend got the role you also applied for.
• Moving a parent into assisted living after months of worry.
• Ending a relationship you chose to end.
• Finally finishing a big project that also gave your weeks their shape.

What they share is that the situation has more than one part. The feelings are not confused. They are each responding to a different piece.

Each feeling is about something different

The most useful move with mixed emotions is to stop asking “What do I really feel?” and start asking “What is each feeling about?” Once each half has its own target, the conflict usually turns into two separate, manageable things.

Is feeling mixed bad for you?

People sometimes worry that mixed feelings mean they are conflicted in an unhealthy way. The limited evidence points the other way, with caveats. In a 10-year experience-sampling study of adults aged 18 to 94, Hal Hershfield and colleagues found that people whose positive and negative emotions more often occurred together reported better physical health and smaller declines in health with age. (Hershfield and colleagues, 2013) Health was self-reported and the design was correlational, so this does not show that mixed feelings cause better health.

In a smaller study, Jonathan Adler and Hershfield followed 47 adults starting psychotherapy. Writing that expressed happiness and sadness together came before improvements in well-being at the next assessment, rather than the other way around. (Adler and Hershfield, 2012) That is one small clinical sample, and the authors say plainly it cannot show cause. The fair conclusion: mixed feelings are not a sign that something is wrong with you, and they may be part of how people make sense of hard changes.

Use “and,” not “but”

How you say a mixed feeling changes how it lands. “I'm thrilled about the job, but I'm sad to leave” tends to sound as if the second part cancels the first. “I'm thrilled about the job, and I'm sad to leave” keeps both. The same goes for what you say to yourself: “I love my daughter and I'm exhausted by her” is honest; “I love her but I'm exhausted” often slides into guilt about the exhaustion.

When someone else tells you they feel mixed, resist telling them which feeling is the real one. “You must be so relieved” can feel dismissive to someone who is also grieving. Try “That sounds like a lot of different things at once. What's the biggest one right now?” For more on responding well, see emotional validation.

Deciding without waiting for one feeling to win

Mixed feelings can stall decisions because people wait for the conflict to resolve. It often does not, at least not before the deadline. Three questions help:

1. Which feeling is about the future and which is about the past? Grief about what you are leaving rarely argues against a choice; it is the cost of having had something good.
2. Which feeling points to something you can fix? Dread about a parent's safety can turn into a plan. Excitement about the work cannot be arranged some other way.
3. What would you advise a friend with the same two feelings? This kind of distance often makes the trade-off clearer. The guide to reflective self-awareness exercises has more ways to step back.

One exception: if one of your feelings toward a partner or family member is fear (of their anger, of what they might do), do not treat it as one half of an ordinary mixed feeling to balance against love. Fear for your safety is a signal to get support. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233 (or text START to 88788), and local emergency services can help if you are in danger now.

Key takeaways

• Feeling happy and sad at once is common, especially at endings and transitions.
• Each feeling is usually about a different part of the situation, so ask what each one is about.
• Say both with “and” instead of letting “but” cancel one of them.
• Do not wait for one feeling to win before you decide; plan for what each one needs.