Whether you want to learn how to stop missing someone to get over an ex or to simply stop missing someone who has moved away from you, there are some key truths to keep in mind when it comes to not spending all of our time thinking about and missing another person.
It’s interesting, really, because “missing someone” is one of the most painful things to experience, and yet we don’t talk about it enough.
It’s a sort of grief over a loss that you’ve had, either of the person entirely or of the person being close to you.
When we spend too much time missing someone, we lose sight of our own lives and spend a lot of time thinking about that hole in it that they’ve left – and while this is normal, and natural, it’s obvious why you’re looking up how to stop missing someone, because it hurts.
For some of us, the pain of missing someone never really goes away, and can only be dulled.
This applies to situations where the person has passed away, or maybe a loved one has permanently moved to another country and you just can’t help but miss them when they’re away.
In other situations, like an ex, it is possible to eventually stop missing someone entirely as you evolve and change.
These tips on how to stop missing someone apply to all situations, and while they don’t always feel the most respectful towards the person you miss, sometimes they can be the best thing for your own mental health.
1. Force Yourself to Meet New People and Hang Out with Old Friends
If you’re seeing other people and embarking on new relationships, it can make it hard for your mind to focus so much on the person that you miss.
Sometimes, this won’t come easily, which is why we’ve written that you really need to force yourself to meet new people and hang out with people who are still around you.
The socialization with other people is going to practically keep you tied up thinking about other things and other people, and it can also help you emotionally as you strengthen bonds with people who are around you instead of delving deeper into missing the bond with the person that has gone.
There are billions of people in the world, and while we should always respect our connection with someone, particularly if it a loved one who has passed or a friend who has moved away, we shouldn’t focus on that to the detriment of our relationships and friendships with new and existing people in our lives.
When you have a moment of strength, try scheduling a coffee date or lunch or an activity with multiple people spread across multiple days in your week.
Even if you feel like you would rather wallow in missing someone when the activity comes around, it’s highly likely that you’ll feel obligated to go and that you’ll feel much better when you’re there and listening to someone else’s life stories and issues and not thinking about your own.
2. Take Up a Hobby
It sounds cliche, but taking up a new hobby or skill can really help keep your mind on moving forward in your life and learning something new rather than dwelling on someone else.
Whether it’s creative writing, tennis, boating, horseback riding, drawing, blogging, etc, pick something that you’ve always been interested in, but haven’t yet tried out, and get yourself lessons or buy an online course on the subject.
Your heart might not be all in at first, but if you give it time, the act of having to learn something new is going to give your mind less room to think about missing someone else, and that’s part of learning how to stop missing someone is figuring out what to do instead of spending that time missing them.
3. Accept the Length of the Process
Often, people hope that they can get rid of the pain of missing someone overnight.
You expect that you can snap your fingers, listen to a few self-help tapes, and boom, you’re in the clear.
Unfortunately, that’s not how fast the process works, and even if you do all of the right things, its entirely possible that you’ll still have moments of missing them in the future.
If you have a setback, accept it.
Know that this is a long process that may take weeks, months, or years, and that all you can do is continue putting systems in place in your life to help lessen that pain and focus on the future.
In many ways, accepting this reality is a great way to help stop missing someone, because the more we focus on something, the more we feel it.
So if you are so focused on how you want to stop missing someone right away, the intensity of missing them may be even greater and you may be unable to think about anything else besides how much you miss them.
When you relax and let go and accept the process, you don’t have to spend all of your time “fighting” these feelings of missing them and can just accept them.
4. Remove Some/All Reminders of Them
From a practical perspective, removing some or all reminders of this person from your life can be a good way to stop missing them.
When we see them and are reminded of them, the pull is stronger to miss them and dwell on them.
This can be both healthy and unhealthy, depending on why you miss someone.
If you miss an ex, for instance, then definitely remove all of their belongings from your space and you can even stop following them on social media or get rid of pictures of them from your phone.
However, if you’re missing a friend or a loved one, it’s cruel to think of just removing reminders of them throughout your house or your life. Instead, try sticking to just one meaningful object or one photo up in your house with them in it, while you stash the other things away.
You don’t want to get rid of those memories, but equally you don’t want to have a shrine in your house to that person if you’re trying to stop missing them.
Narrowing it down to just one item may help you remember them once a day or every few days when you walk past, but not be continually confronted by memories of them.
5. See a Therapist
If you find yourself missing someone in an unhealthy way or for an extended period of time to the point that it’s impacting your life, it’s time to see a therapist.
So many people think you can only see a therapist if you’re struggling with mental health issues, but that’s absolutely not the case.
You can just be dealing with some “regular” life things like missing someone too much to see a therapist, or you can be dealing with nothing at all, but feel you want somewhere safe to talk about your feelings and get a third party’s advice.
A therapist can help you get to the root of the pain that you feel on missing them, and give you techniques for coping with these feelings and continuing to live your life in a positive and healthy way.
6. Plan for Their Return OR Acknowledge They’re Not Coming Back
Often, missing someone is different based on whether you’re planning for their return or having to acknowledge that they’re not coming back.
In grief, oftentimes, we have to come to terms with the fact that our “missing” them will last forever because they will never come back to us.
In other things, like relationship break ups, it can be harder to decide whether you should hope for their return or come to terms with the fact that they’re not coming back.
If you do miss someone who is going to return, like a friend or family member who has moved away (but you’ll see again one day), then it’s often better to focus on when you will see them again, even if it is months or years from now, and make exciting plans or talk about the things you’ll do together.
This can turn the negative feelings of missing someone into more positive feelings of excitement.
7. Celebrate the Good Times
Missing someone can be a really sad feeling, but you can focus that energy into the positive if you work to celebrate the good times.
It’s the old, “don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” mentality, and while it feels hard in the moment, the further along you get in the process, the easier you’ll find it.
If you have photos from happy memories together, make sure you put those out if you do want to remember the person, and if you’re dealing with a breakup and trying to get over missing someone because you’re heartbroken, work on gratitude and being thankful for the times that you did feel happy with them (even if those moments were fleeting).
8. Share Your Feelings with Friends or Family
Don’t sit in your feelings along. If you want to get over missing someone, sometimes the best thing to do is just to talk about it and to get those feelings out.
It often helps lessen the intensity, and it can help for your friends and family to know you’re struggling so they can actually make sure to help keep you distracted as well.
You don’t have to go into too much detail if you don’t want.
You can make an off-the-cuff comment about how much you miss someone.
It might be that they miss them too, and you can talk about it together, or they can help you feel better by helping to get your mind off of it.
9. Do Meditation
People think meditation is all about sitting by a river and saying “ohm” over and over, but it’s really not.
Meditation is just a way to help keep your mind focused and clear, and it can help you work through things like anxiety, missing someone, and more.
Use an app like Calm or Headspace and practice the art of meditation to get better at not dwelling on how much you miss someone and being able to be more in control of your thoughts.
In some ways, meditation is great because it allows you to see your thoughts about missing someone as just thoughts that you can easily let flow through your mind without taking it over.
It also can help you actually choose what you want to focus on so you can get better at focusing on the positive things in your life rather than the negative ones.
10. Ask Yourself if They Miss You Back
In some cases, like a breakup, it can help to ask yourself if you think they miss you back.
If your ex if off living their best life somewhere, this realization can help you go through the process of missing them by realizing that you don’t want to spend your time missing them if they’re not missing you.
Sounds a bit cold-hearted, but it can do wonders for the soul if you’re stuck in a negative place when the other person probably isn’t.
Why waste that time on someone, especially if you feel like you already wasted time on the relationship?
11. Believe that It Will Get Easier
Often, the difference between learning how to stop missing someone and forever missing them is the belief that it will get easier to stop missing them.
When we focus on how it’s “always going to be this way,” we get stuck in that mindset and it gets incredibly difficult to move on from.
If you can harness just a little bit of hope that it won’t always be so overwhelming and that you will be able to get your feelings about missing them to manageable levels, it suddenly becomes not a question of if, but when, and that can help put your mind at ease and go through that process with hope for the future.
