Be sad, be sorry. You don’t have to smile or pretend everything’s OK.

It felt like a punch in the stomach when I saw the exit polls. It was a shock. I woke up at about 6am, looked at Twitter and couldn’t stop crying. I had allowed myself to get hopeful and these were tears of disappointment.

I feel so sad about Ed Miliband resigning. In the past weeks he was getting into his stride, becoming more confident at being himself, being someone we could relate to and trust. It’s like the breakup of a relationship and you have to give yourself time to adjust. You can’t expect to feel better tomorrow. But I expect to regain full equilibrium within a month.

Try not to hate, or to blame, or think of things in extreme terms of right or wrong.

When we have a shock, we go into black-and-white thinking. We need to get out of this. If we are hating and blaming, we are not going to be functional. Check your mindset. Don’t think we’re doomed. You need to observe yourself being angry and hateful, notice that it’s a phase you are going through and know that there is something more useful you are going to do. Feeling glee for more than moments about the Lib Dem or Ukip defeat is all-or-nothing thinking. It’s grabbing comfort where you can and is of no lasting benefit.

Feeling helpless and impotent is not great for getting over feeling sad.

Do something – join a political party to get involved in policy-making. I noticed on social media that a number of people intend to do just this.

We must slow down discussions.

We need to try to understand the other rather than shout over them. Nobody is going to change their mind if someone shouts at them or dismisses them. What the Conservatives have done is make a connection with the electorate that Labour failed to. We feel connected with our tribe and think everyone feels the same, but this election has shown that other people don’t know what we are on about.

Philippa Perry’s fruit therapy. Photograph: Philippa Perry

Don’t write anyone off as plain evil.



Let’s stop assuming the worst of our so-called enemies. We need to learn to empathise and to make an effort to understand the feelings beneath the behaviour of people who voted for rightwing parties. It’s tempting to write them off as uncaring, selfish or persecutory, but that won’t solve anything. I need to feel what it’s like to believe that someone is after all my money and resources and imagine what it’s like to think people coming into this country will not add to our resources but take them away. Hating the electorate for being stupid, however satisfying in the short-term, will make things much worse. I think probably everyone means well in their own way. If I think that, I start to feel more upbeat and less despairing.

However much you may despise some of the Conservative philosophy, it is not necessarily all bad.

Look – they got gay marriage through. Let’s not look for the worst and be forever cynical. It won’t make us happier or solve anything.

Do something to self-nurture. Spend some time with like-minded friends so you can console each other. It may sound silly but after drawing faces on fruit with a friend on Friday morning, I started to feel a bit better. We spent time face to face and concentrated on something that wasn’t about how sad we felt. Joke, even if the humour is dark. My husband had to catch a flight on Friday. I took a picture of him on the pavement holding his passport and tweeted: “Grayson’s leaving the country. I’m gonna miss him.”

Drawing, reading, knitting – do whatever it is you need to do to regroup and pick yourself up.