How do I get over it, exactly?

September 21, 2005 7:42 AM

So, I've lost a friend, and I can't stop thinking about it, and it's making me sick. How do I actually get over it - stop thinking about it - move on? Things like this tend to give me a cascade reaction memory of all the bad stuff that's happened in my life.

And I've heard the "just do it" answer, too. I'd like to know HOW? Am I missing a button to push that everyone else's got?

posted by By The Grace of God to human relations (24 comments total)

Really you just have to wait it out, sadly. I think The best thing to do is to get your mind absorbed into something. Go find a great book and just read constantly. Keep your mind occupied on something else most of the time.

That's my opinion, anyway.
posted by delmoi at 7:48 AM on September 21, 2005

How'd you lose them? Death, or growing apart, or moved away?
posted by SeizeTheDay at 7:53 AM on September 21, 2005

By "lost" do you mean your friend died, or the friendship just ended?

In either case, you are going through a mourning period that you should not deny. Things will get better with time, but the feelings will eventually be easier to deal with if you find something to help keep your mind occupied. Talking to other friends helps, as might reading, or taking up a new hobby. If these things don't do it for you, you might want to seek out counseling.
posted by SteveInMaine at 7:54 AM on September 21, 2005

Have you let yourself go through all five stages of grief? It may sound corny, but people who try to skip ahead to acceptance without letting themselves get angry sometimes end up not really moving on at all.
posted by GuyZero at 7:54 AM on September 21, 2005

They don't want to be my friend anymore.
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:08 AM on September 21, 2005

They don't want to be my friend anymore.

That can be difficult to deal with, especially if you to see the other person from time to time socially. This has happened to me and it sucks. You should be aware that it's not always anybody's fault. People just grow apart sometimes.

My advice to find other diversions holds.
posted by SteveInMaine at 8:18 AM on September 21, 2005

I say get angry. If they don't want to be your friend that's their problem. I had this situation recently with a friend of mine because of a stupid argument we had over something philosophical like whether anti-depressents are overprescribed. He told me he couldn't be friends with someone who had such a point of view. Many times people want different things in a relationship, and you have to respect that or try to change yourself to fit what they want, which may not be worth it. Relationship is about respect and compromise. Hard to achieve if you are low on respect and compromise in either direction.
posted by letterneversent at 8:48 AM on September 21, 2005

I lost my two best friends at the same time and it nearly killed me. I couldn't sleep, couldn't think about anything else, etc. It took two years and starting a thrilling new life in a new city to make me stop thinking about them. Time and distraction is what you need, as the others have said.
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:55 AM on September 21, 2005

I think it's okay to keep thinking about your friend, as a friend you had, as someone who was important to you and [hopefully] for a while was someone who you got something from and gave something to. Now, for some reason that is not the case. They are now your past friend, in a box labelled "my past" with all the other lousy things you've probably managed to put there.

It's easy to get really morose about things and decide it's your fault that things didn't work out, or worse yet, that the world is unfairly dumping on you and this is just one more example of that. However, that doesn't help you move on. Moving on involves grieving, as GuyZero said, and it also involves somewhat reconfiguring yourself as "BtGoG who is NOT friends with X anymore" If you had things that the two of you always did together or places you would hang out, you'll need to find ways to either rework those things/places [go with new people to sort of reclaim them, find replacements for them] or avoid them entirely. If your friend and you split in what was a particularly awful way, try to get some semblance of rising above it "wow, glad THAT's over with" to help you move on.

I think for me when I deal with stuff like this, the most useful thing is letting myself feel blue, but also keeping some perspective. You are still everything you were before you and your friend had this rift and if you were okay before, you're likely okay now too, only sadder. It's a somewhat tired cliche to say that if they didn't want to be friends with you then they're not good friends, but at some level, bad friends canbe worse than no friends at all and maybe you dodged a bullet getting this friend out of your system now instead of later than now.
posted by jessamyn at 9:01 AM on September 21, 2005

I lost a really good friend a few years back. I still get a twinge occasionally, wonder how she's doing, etc. It's not at all wrong to be angry about this. Talk things out with other friends, if possible; that's what helped me the most. I'll reiterate SteveInMaine's advice, too; find something to do/enjoy that has no connection to your previous friendship.
posted by cog_nate at 9:06 AM on September 21, 2005

About half a year ago I lost my best friend in similar circumstances. Mostly I was angry about the perceived betrayal of our friendship, but that's because we hadn't had a falling out, which it seems as though you may have done. It's been hard to think about her, mostly because she made the choice to stop contacting me, which made me feel like a lesser person. It took time to feel more like the situation was her responsibility instead of being due to some lack on my part.

I would advise you try to focus on the idea of this not being such a big loss (although I understand it is.) delmoi said 'get angry' and that's what I did. I think the lingering trauma is connected to your feelings that you've lost something, something good and important. If it's not as important, the trauma isn't as severe. It's an artifice to some degree for the sake of coping, but maybe you are angry, and your sadness hasn't let you see it yet. The anger I summoned up over my friend's decision helped me feel more that I was well away from someone who didn't care enough to be my best friend and less that I had been set adrift. I hope things look up for you soon.
posted by rebirtha at 9:31 AM on September 21, 2005 [1 favorite]

Correction to my previous post. It wasn't delmoi. Clearly I can't read.
posted by rebirtha at 9:33 AM on September 21, 2005

SteveInMaine is right - you need to keep your mind occupied.

I've had the same thing happen, and I was angry, sad, depressed....everything. After a certain point, when I was lying up at night wondering what I could have done differently - I realized I was indulging myself, and picked up a book.

Mourn for as long as you need to, but if you find that you are still thinking about it continually after a certain point in time, take steps to distract yourself with whatever works.

It sucks, though.
posted by pinky at 10:18 AM on September 21, 2005

While I think that "getting angry" is good advice, what happens to us folks who are of the belief that we're above anger? Clearly we're not (we're human, after all); but part of our personalities dictate that we maintain composure and a callous indifference, which only causes the pain to increase.

I think advice as to how, exactly, to get angry, and perhaps detailed instruction would help (it would certainly help a personality like mine, who refuses to let people get to them; thus causing a "measured distance" from people, leading to isolation and further alienation).
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:51 AM on September 21, 2005

I don't think "getting angry" will help anything, what's the point? Being angry won't get your friend back. It will just make them sad and angry!

Just try to put it out of your mind and think about it as little as possible --- if you find yourself thinking about it, try thinking about something else --- Read a book, watch a movie, etc.
posted by delmoi at 10:58 AM on September 21, 2005

Oh man, By The Grace, you have my complete sympathy. I had a very bitter parting with a woman I had thought of as one of my closest friends in January 2002 (actually January 5th, the Feast of the Epiphany, but who's counting?). I'm still dealing with the fallout. It's been a long, hard road.

One thing I really needed to do was tackle my own life-long issues around depression and horror of rejection: that meant finding a very good therapist, and eventually accepting that I needed medication. Taking Zoloft helped enormously, not so much with the sorrow itself (sad things are sad) as with what you call the "cascade memory reaction" - the bitter compulsion to tie this rejection to every other failure in my life. The drug, which is often used to treat OCD, just stopped that kind of circling-the-drain obsessiveness and freed up a lot of mental cycles to do other things.

More specific to dealing with the defunct friendship was Forgive For Good, which has lots of very specific advice and formal techniques for managing the bad days. These may be the buttons-to-push that you are looking for. If you're anywhere near the Bay Area it's well worth checking out one of Fred Luskin's classes, too. Secrets and Confidences and The Friend Who Got Away weren't as practically helpful, but made me feel a little less like a singular freak and outcast.

Bitter, angry humour helped for a while - one of my (real) friends wanted to make me a t-shirt that said "It's funny because it's mean!" Eventually, though, the jokes themselves became a way of brooding and I had to give them up. Having and making real friends was a life-saver through the whole ordeal. The woman in question, by the way, has helped tremendously by continuing to behave atrociously to others in our extended circle; but you can't count on your former friend to be quite as broken as mine.

Ultimately, though, and I know this is not what you want to hear right now, the single best healer was the passage of time. Last year I finally gave up wanting to crawl back into any kind of relationship with her. Without making any particular effort, I've managed to avoid seeing her at all since then, and the separation has been great. I no longer flinch when mutual acquaintances mention her name. I haven't had a nightmare about her in months. It will probably never be a neutral issue for me - I loved her crazy, as you can probably gather - but at least it's no longer making me feel sick.

Good luck, and very best wishes.
posted by rdc at 11:24 AM on September 21, 2005

1. Do something else. Go outside, take pictures of things, listen to birds, read books, go for picnics, et cetera. Especially do not hang out on your computer. Remove yourself from the avenues you used to contact your now ex-friend, and avoid any attempt at contact with that person.

2. Think of other things. Find other matters to get engrossed in, something else that will take your mind off what's happened.

3. Realize that not everything in the world is a crisis. People lose friends for a lot of reasons and though it often seems like it, it has yet to be the end of the world. This isn't meant to sound like tough love, because it isn't. Believing that yes, you'll survive, is the first and most important step to making it through the end of any kind of relationship.
posted by staresbynight at 11:54 AM on September 21, 2005

This is the kind of really cheesy sounding new age type advice one might read in books you'd be embarrassed to be caught reading.... write a letter to your friend. Dump everything you're feeling whether hurt, sad, angry, whatever onto the paper. Ask them questions. Write pages and pages if necessary. Then walk away from the letter. If you think of more that you didn't get to put in it the first time, go back and add those extra thoughts. Repeat. Walk away from the letter again. Return to it.

Then tear the letter up!

The walking away from the letter before actually destroying it is an important part. If you don't walk away from it and let it kind of incubate you might be tempted to send it knowing that it's either that or destroy it. However, when you leave it for a while by the time you've gone through enough cycles that you've said everything you have to say, you'll find you don't even want to send it. I think it's obvious, but it's a really really bad bad bad idea to actually send the thing. It's an equally good thing to write it, though.

I know it sounds goofy. It's helped me deal with situations I need to just get over.
posted by INTPLibrarian at 1:19 PM on September 21, 2005

Another voice of someone who's been there -- I've had a handful of really devestating friendship breakups, including a recent one that was a longtime coming and really only happened once she moved to the other side of the country. The pain, grief, shock, and lingering hurt are all real and natural, but often not acknowledged in our culture as being as signficant as "real" (i.e., romantic) breakups. I don't know your gender, BTGoG, or the gender of your ex-friend, but in case you're both women, there was an article in Salon (reg. or day pass req.) recently on this topic.

Also, for those of you asking "what's the point of getting angry?" -- well, there doesn't have to be a "point" to any feeling, painful or not. You just feel them -- sorrow, anger, fear, loss, nervousness, regret, whatever. They're all natural and normal. Not allowing oneself to express a feeling just because it supposedly won't accomplish anything concrete (in this case, get the friendship back) strikes me as repressive and even emotionally unhealthy. Feeling sad won't get the friendship back either, but no one's saying BTGoG shouldn't bother to cry. (Note that getting angry doesn't mean you have to act on the anger in any way. You don't have to call up the person and tell them off, or smash something, or whatever. You just acknowledge that you feel angry.)
posted by scody at 1:35 PM on September 21, 2005

n+1 for the letter thing.

It needs to be outside of your head, and unless you have a really really close friend that you can expose your innermost everything to (which is very rare indeed) than writing it down is the most efficient way of getting it into the outside world without having it bump against somebody.

If you dont, it'll keep bouncing around up there and you wont be able to think of anything else.

Don't send it, that's not the point of the exercise.
posted by softlord at 5:25 PM on September 21, 2005

Well in this case, you could remind yourself that you've only actually met him once in real life, and that it's very easy to get a completely false impression of someone you know online. The person you thought he is is not necessarily the person he really is.

Forget about "winning his friendship back", or getting revenge, just ignore him. You can't be friends with everybody.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:59 PM on September 21, 2005

Theophile - did you post to the wrong thread?

...

As for myself, it took time. Lots and lots of time. We were best friends from when we first met in 1984. 10 yrs later, we rescued him from a bad situation and he moved in with us. A few years later, he got some psycho girl pregnant and eventually married her, and we started to drift apart. After a lot of ups and downs, there was an explosion. Two years later, we tried to patch it up. We both missed the friendship, and both wanted it to work, but there was too much history and too many years spent growing apart. We couldn't use the history we had, and couldn't get used to the new reality because of the 15 years of history clouding everything up. There was no malice between us, but there wasn't anything else either (beyond a wistful sadness).

That was 3 yrs ago. And it still hurts sometimes. But, not like it did before. Between the explosion and the attempted reconciliation, I used to think about him 10 or 15 times a day. And it hurt. Since that failed attempt, things have slowly gotten better for me. His psycho wife still sends us random birth announcements and holiday letters, but those are now mostly amusing, as opposed to painful.

So, waiting it out, therapy, and living your life are the cures. They all take time and a lot of work. Good luck to you - I know the rough ride you're on right now.
posted by Irontom at 6:03 AM on September 22, 2005

Irontom: No, this is the right thread.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:12 AM on September 22, 2005

Ah... ok.
posted by Irontom at 10:53 AM on September 23, 2005