It will get better, but don't stuff your emotions. If you are struggling to work through this, reach out for support. Wish your friend well, and then let them go. You can't move on from the loss if you continue to worry about them or get stuck trying to understand why it happened.
You may ask yourself, “How am I going get through this?” or “Will my life ever return to normal?” The answer to both questions is “yes.” Yes, but... You will be forever changed by your friend's presence in your life — and that's not a bad thing. Anytime that you suffer a loss, you are changed forever.
It's normal to feel grief
When a friendship ends, there is a grieving process. Allow yourself to feel those emotions — and be patient with yourself.
There is no way to know exactly how long it will take you to get over a friendship breakup. Research shows that it typically takes around 6 months to go through the five major stages of grief: disbelief, a desire to reconnect, anger, depression, and acceptance.
Losing a best friend may hurt more deeply than other friendships or relationships. Often this is because your best friend and you shared a special bond. You may have told them things you have never shared with anyone else. You may trust them more than anyone else in your life.
Friendship breakups are so hard because we don't get the same permission to process grief around a friendship. We struggle to reconcile how we feel toward the loss with how society says we should feel. We grieve in community; others acknowledge the weight of our loss, and it helps us heal.
Friends are psychological kin, that is, you may even have a stronger bond with friends than people you are related to by birth or marriage. So when a friend dies, the psychological and emotional stress can be as bad as the death of kin.
The loss of a close friend can spiral us into depression with feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness. If we believe we have enough friends to meet our needs, we cope with stress better. The loss of a friend shakes that belief and rocks our emotional foundation (King, A. R. et al., 2016).
Quite often, we associate post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with extremely traumatic events in our lives, but the loss of a friendship that we thought would fulfill us can also be extremely jarring and traumatic. Friendship PTSD is often caused by friendships that have ended suddenly and badly.
The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.
While lost friendships are often considered unimportant compared to romantic partners, their loss can be just as painful and regrettable, says Neal Roese, PhD, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and author of If Only: How to Turn Regret Into Opportunity.
Extreme stress, the kind experienced after the loss of a loved one, is associated with changes in heart muscle cells or coronary blood vessels (or both) that prevent the left ventricle from contracting effectively — a condition called stress-induced cardiomyopathy or broken-heart syndrome.
A study done in Australia in 2019 showed that grief can impair physical and mental health, as well as a social function, for up to four years. YOUR GRIEF COUNTS as you mourn the death of your friend.
It is possible for a suddenly bereaved person to be defined as suffering from a grief disorder and PTSD. People diagnosed as suffering from PTSD often have recurring thoughts about the horror of the event that has traumatised them.
While many people won't go on to experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD or C-PTSD), an analysis from the World Health Organisation's 'World Mental Health Survey' found there was a 5.2% risk of people developing PTSD or C-PTSD after they found out about the unexpected death of someone they love.
What Is Friendship PTSD? Friendship PTSD is a condition that is set in motion after a relationship ends. People can choose to go their separate ways either because their bond naturally ends, or there was a massive falling out.
Missing someone is a natural feeling that everyone has to go through. It is a feeling that can be hard to cope with, but there are ways to make it easier.
You have little or nothing to talk about
Sometimes, friends drift apart, whether you have less in common or life circumstances have changed. If you have little or nothing to talk about anymore, it may be a sign your friendship as you knew it has come to an end.
Common Feelings After Losing a Best Friend
The five stages of grief is a framework that includes denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. After losing a best friend, you may experience some or all of these feelings.
Some friendships last a lifetime, but most have a. lifespan. In the U.S., for instance, best friends tend to. orbit each other for about 10 years, says sociologist.
“The imprint of trauma doesn't 'sit' in the verbal, understanding, part of the brain, but in much deeper regions- amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, brain stem – (similar to the grief response) which are only marginally affected by thinking and cognition.
The death of a husband or wife is well recognized as an emotionally devastating event, being ranked on life event scales as the most stressful of all possible losses.
It takes time to get used to of not having their presence in your daily life. You might not have someone in your life who understands you better than your best friend or who listens to you patiently like they did. Sometimes, no one, not even your partner, can fill void your bestie leaves in your life.
It found that the average person will make 29 real friends over the years but will lose at least five of those along the way due to arguments. We then lose touch with at least another eight of these 29 due to different lifestyles and moving house.