11 Tips to Stop Missing Someone

When our loved ones are away, there can be times when we miss them so much it hurts. We reminisce about having them near and recall the times we shared. But in some situations, the relationship just… ends. Whether it’s due to death, a breakup or divorce, military service, or just a bad argument, we may be left with nothing but mementos and scattered memories of a relationship. 

The feeling of missing someone can manifest like a coldness that settles into your stomach. You may experience racing thoughts and sleepless nights. Scientists have even examined the reasons why you may miss someone so much. They have found that the psychological and physiological pain of losing someone is part of a complex process that’s similar to withdrawal. 

Will I Ever Stop Missing Them? 

Yes—but the length of time that it will take to recover from losing them depends on how long you knew them, what happened, and the nature of the relationship you shared. As cliché as it may seem, time often is the best medicine, and the more distance you have from the loss, the easier it may become to cope. There are, of course, certain losses that you may never fully overcome, especially if you are mourning a death. In those instances, you may never fully learn to stop missing the person, but you can learn to live with the new normal and to find new and better tools to cope over time. 

What Does Missing Someone Feel Like?

Missing someone can feel different for different people. The situation can also cause you to feel varying levels of severity of pain. You can expect to experience the following when you’re deeply missing someone: 

• The five stages of grief. Missing someone can feel a lot like you are in mourning, even if the person is alive. You may experience the five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
• Insomnia: When you miss someone, it’s normal to have trouble falling or staying asleep. Your mind can wander and you might start obsessing when you’re missing someone. The lack of sleep isn’t helpful for your mental health, but it’s not uncommon either. Insomnia can be manageable at first, but the grieving process can take upwards of a year, in some cases. Besides being unpleasant, sleep deprivation is also dangerous: It increases your risk of stroke, heart attack, vehicular accidents, and can negatively affect your work performance and sex drive.
• Loss of appetite: When you’re missing someone, ​​especially if they’ve died, they aren’t speaking to you, or your relationship with them has ended, you might become locked into survival mode; this common phenomenon is related back to the stages of grief. Although you may not be in immediate danger, your brain is a primal piece of hardware that’s doing its best to process and cope with your loss. Until you’re able to make sense of the situation that’s taken someone out of your life, your body won’t want to prioritize food, because your fight-or-flight response has been triggered. Stress hormones may inhibit your hunger cravings. 
• Changes in brain chemistry: Scientific studies indicate that your brain reacts significantly when you’re missing someone you love: The oxytocin and dopamine that’s released during a relationship suddenly stop flowing. You become chemically dependent on their presence in your life. Researchers note that romantic love is addictive on purpose—the rush of chemicals encourages us to seek out partners and form social bonds. 

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How to Stop Missing Someone

Loss of any kind can be a staggering blow to your emotional self-confidence, self-image, and optimism about the future. While it can be very hard to altogether stop missing someone, there are a number of ways you can learn to cope with the feeling of loss. Here are five ways to cope with missing someone:

1. Accept that it’s okay to miss them. How we cope when we’re missing someone is up to us, and sometimes it’s easier to look away from the mess in front of us. However, all is not lost. Though it’s true that we may find ourselves reflecting nostalgically on the times spent with the person we’ve lost, it’s actually okay to miss them. In fact, acknowledging that we’ve experienced a loss can be a healthy way to work through what we’re feeling. 
2. Know that the process of moving on is not always linear. You may not seamlessly flow from one stage of “moving on” to the next. That’s normal. You might, for example, come to a stage of depression, but then slip backward into negotiating, trying to find ways to salvage the relationship or ways to convince yourself that maybe the person isn’t truly out of your life forever. Having compassion for yourself is important. Moving on from someone takes time and it’s rarely a straightforward process.
3. Record a voice message that you wish they could hear. Say everything that’s on your mind. Instead of bottling up the pain, you might be surprised at the words that come out. Don’t hold back, because the negative emotions you’re feeling shouldn’t be locked inside you. You don’t even need to share your message with anyone—in fact, it might be better not to. 
4. Give them space if you’re going through a breakup, divorce, or have lost a friendship. It’s tempting to reach out, beg, or plead with the person who’s left you to come back. Yet with too much prodding, you can not only ruin the chances of reconciling with that person (on some level) but postpone your own healing process, too. Instead of worrying about what they’re doing, think critically; the relationship may not have actually been healthy for either of you. 
5. Join a support group, especially if you lost a loved one who was serving in the military. Having a spouse, child, or sibling who’s serving in the armed forces, or who was killed in active duty, is a unique experience that can trigger a wide range of emotions. While it’s important to reach out to those in your immediate support system, it could be truly cathartic to connect with the spouses, parents, or siblings of other servicemen and women. Taking the time to search for a support group could connect you with other people who may relate better to the pain, stress, and love that you feel.
6. Restructure your routine before bed so that you actually get some sleep.Take 30 minutes before lights out to stretch, make tea, or journal. Rather than lying awake in the dark with racing thoughts, be proactive and protect your sleep schedule, even if it’s the last thing you feel motivated to do. 
7. Pay extra attention to your train of thought. A tactic straight out of the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) playbook, you can practice thought replacement on your own. When a negative emotion arises, trace it back to what you’re focused on. Odds are, you can shift your perspective slightly in order to view the situation in a more positive light. Think: “Okay, I feel sad, hopeless, or angry. But is that an accurate representation of the entire situation?” Most likely, it isn’t. 
8. Remove reminders of them for the time being. It’s okay to keep mementos of a loved one, such as pictures, old clothes, or gifts from them. While you’re in the process of trying to overcome grief or moving on, however, keeping such reminders can hinder the process. For now, put mementos in a box and ask a friend to hide it for you. You can also do a tech cleanse. For example, if you have an iPhone, you can adjust settings so that old photos don’t show up in your “Memories” slideshows. Once you are in a better mindset, you can start to revisit those old memories. Maybe an old photo with them in it, a memento they gave you, a medal they’ve earned, or a uniform they’ve worn with pride. Whatever they’ve left behind, it doesn’t have to be viewed as a painful reminder of their absence. When you’re ready for it, it can be viewed as a celebration of their impact on your life.
9. Stop following them on social media. If you are going through a breakup or divorce, it can be especially important to stop following your ex on social media. Not only can seeing photos of them feel hard, but it can be easy to create false narratives around what they are doing and thinking based on a snapshot or caption. Social media does not usually paint a full or totally honest picture of what is going on in a person’s life. If you don’t feel ready or comfortable to unfollow the person, you can simply mute them on your social media platforms, so they don’t show up in your feed. 
10. Fill your schedule. When you are in deep stages of grief and really missing someone, you might find your mind racing with thoughts of them. Sometimes, the most effective thing can be to simply fill up your schedule to keep yourself distracted. This can also allow you to sublimate your hard feelings in more productive ways. For example, you might choose to fill your schedule with an after-work volunteer job. You might consider finding a new or different exercise method, like jogging. Sign up for classes and do things you may not have had time for before. There are many ways to fill your time so that you aren’t tempted to stay home and lean into the grief. 
11. Accept that life continues on without them. Though it might feel hard to accept that life will in fact go on, it will, and you will, too. Focusing on yourself and value your own experience, post-loss, regardless of who you miss. Healing doesn’t mean that you forget: It means that you learn to accept their absence. And although stitching together such a deep emotional wound can take a long time, it is possible. 

The Bottom Line

While you can’t control the fact that the person is out of your life, you can control your mindset in how you deal with it. As you start moving forward, it’s normal to feel like some days you take two steps back, and things seem to freeze in place. Remember, moving on is not often linear. If you are still struggling to move on, a therapist who specializes in grief and loss counseling can help provide the support you need.