How to stop missing someone is one of those subjects that I’ve tried to avoid writing about, just because of the sheer impossibility of it. All I want to do is help people out of pain, suffering, self-sabotage, and patterns that I know all too well. So, how could I reduce to a light switch, the kind of pain and longing that hijacks your joy, your consciousness, your thoughts, and your heart?

How could I remedy through my words, a wound that runs so deep, it allows your deepest fears to burst out of a closet that you thought you had bolted shut?

I didn’t think I could that I compete with that kind of wildfire until I found myself in the middle of a blaze bigger than ever before.

I get asked every day, “How do I stop missing him/her? I’ll do anything. I just want to stop feeling this pain. I’m exhausted… but I just can’t let go. HELP.”

I’ve been there.

I get it, I feel your pain and I’m feeling it with you right now. Although my current pain isn’t rooted in romance, it doesn’t matter. Pain is pain. This isn’t a competition, this is something that we ALL feel. And every ounce of it is valid because it’s OURS.

Since my Grandma died a few weeks ago, I wake up every morning feeling like I’m drowning. I have good moments, but the pain of missing her seems to have a radar that extinguishes any kind of inch toward movement. Experiencing the death of a loved one is excruciating, but at the very least, comfort can be found in the finality of it. Finality is an extremely painful and difficult reality to accept, but you can rely on the knowingness that it will never change and thus, organically and at your own pace, accept it.

I truly believe that breakups can feel harder to deal with than death.

Death by breakup is always subject to resurrection. It’s weird. You could be completely moved on, a year down the line enjoying yourself at dinner, and all of a sudden, you get a “happy birthday!” text.

And just like that… they’ve resurrected from the relational graveyard.

When it comes to figuring out how to stop missing someone…

What do you do when you’re mourning the death of someone who is still living and breathing?

I miss my Mom every day. I miss the person that she was before cancer. Most people wouldn’t notice much because she doesn’t skip a beat, but I do. I miss her and I struggle with how to turn off, or at least lessen that yearning for what was and for what my heart hopes will someday be again. I can never fully trust that hope though because there’s always this looming fear of the cancer showing up somewhere else, just as it did after her first surgery last year. I beat myself up and feel guilty for even expressing these feelings when her situation could be so much worse.

That’s the thing with pain though. Not only does it NOT discriminate, but once it permeates… guilt, self-sabotage, fear, anger, and a destructive level of MISSING, will take on a life of its own as long as you continue fertilizing it.

This got me thinking about past relationships and missing exes. I remember missing an ex so much, everyone that I encountered did nothing but highlight every detail of his absence. My decisions, lack of maturity and lack of honesty were a big reason for the relationship ending. Because of that, I began to disproportionately beat myself up after he dumped me, sinking lower and lower into “I’ll-never-get-over-him-or-love-again,” hell. And that’s when the sh*t really hit the fan.

As I sunk lower and lower into the self-blame, I didn’t realize that because I had sunk so low, I would have to look up higher and higher whenever I thought of him. This inverted pedestaling, not only upped my feelings of hopelessness, but it caused complete blindness to his shortcomings.

Because I was so busy beating myself up and doing everything I could to re-traumatize and reaffirm that I was indeed forgettable, discardable, and worthless, I failed to remember that there were two people in the relationship with their OWN shortcomings and faults.

There was nothing I could do except watch (through a fake social media account because I had been blocked), how his life was so much better without me in it. How could he not miss me and be so happy? How could he just forget about me and everything we had?

Here’s how to stop missing someone when you’re so heartbroken, you feel like you’ve already died an emotional death.

HOW TO STOP MISSING SOMEONE Rule #1: Know the common denominator.

Missing someone that you love is normal, but when it starts affecting your emotional well being and livelihood, the common denominator is always: a failure to accept by means of avoidance. 

We engage in avoidance because as long as we can avoid acceptance (and continue to argue with reality), we have a valid license to not focus on ourselves and thus, prevent our own healing.

And because we can’t heal, we feel defective and blame ourselves.

When you spend your entire day focusing on how awful you are, there’s a one-hundred percent chance you’re going to miss the sh*t out of the one person who put up with all of yours.

You’ve now entered a mindset that’s based more in the delusion of your fears than the reality you’re avoiding. Establishing a healthy relationship with reality is necessary to ACCEPT, so that you can feel your feelings and heal despite your heartbreak.

HOW TO STOP MISSING SOMEONE Rule #2: Stop running.

Before I got into yoga, I used to run on the treadmill every day. I’d run to the point of being drenched in sweat and completely out of breath. It’s funny because looking back, running was a total form of escapism for me.

I literally ran to the point of such exhaustion, I couldn’t think or breathe. Yoga showed me that the answers are all in maintaining breath, not losing it.

Yoga held a mirror up to me that I could no longer run from and proved that I was more of an emotional runner than was I ever was a physical one. This is why I’ll sometimes cry during a yoga flow. I’m no longer running – physically or emotionally. 

When you’re searching for how to stop missing someone, examine how fast you’ve been running. Today, I still deal with pain, longing, missing, and heartbreak. The only difference is that I feel my feelings, independent of my value. I no longer run from my feelings and devalue myself in the process.

I used to be just like a dog that would bury the bone and run. I’d bury my un-dealt-wth trauma and literally, run into the next toxic relationship because I had no idea how to be on my own and feel good about myself without having anyone to be “good enough” for.

I convinced myself that if I just found someone who could “make me happy,” the buried bones would either disappear, or I’d magically have the confidence to go back and dig them up.

HOW TO STOP MISSING SOMEONE Rule #3: It’s not this… it’s ALL that.

I learned the hard way that there were only so many bones I could bury and so much running I could do before it all caught up with me. I was so busy swinging like a crazed ape from one drama to the next; one toxic relationship to the next, that I never dealt with any of my own pain, grief, and issues. I couldn’t. It was too painful and it required the only thing that I was convinced, I was incapable of: doing it on my own. So, I kept looking for a guy to be my Happily Ever After. I needed him to do all the legwork for me by making my happy, completing me, etc., so that I could have the strength to face my pain now that I was “whole.”

Because I kept running and never dealt with anything, that relationship that I talked about at the beginning of this post (the one that I messed up), completely capsized me emotionally. I was so devastated, I couldn’t leave the house. I didn’t even want to shower. Our break up was so much more painful than anything else because it reopened all of these un-dealt-with wounds of my past.

And because I was too triggered from being dumped to deal with all of the unearthed bones that I thought were buried… my low self-esteem had me convinced that this completely unglued emotional state of mine was more of an indicator of my ex’s irreplaceability than it was of my avoidance and lack of self-love.

Be thankful for your pain. When you’re in a state of gratitude, nothing can f*ck with you. Am I still sad over the change that’s transpired in my life? Am I still struggling with figuring out how to stop missing someone? Yes.

But guess what?

I’ve changed too. I used the pain as fuel instead of allowing it to bend me over. Discomfort is the only emotion you’ll ever need to make a lasting change.

You have to be uncomfortable enough to want a way out so badly, you’re no longer avoidant because you’re no longer scared. You’re too uncomfortable and over it all to even notice the fear; you don’t have time to. You just ACT.

Put your pain in checkmate and watch your life transform.

Now, I’m so grateful for everything that has transpired because it lights the kind of fire under my ass that nothing else could have. It made me hungry to expand my business and my reach. And for the first time, I didn’t care what my fears had to say. It gave me courage. Am I still scared? Definitely, but the difference now is: I do it anyway. 

Trying to figure out how to stop missing someone is tricky, but it’s not impossible. There’s nothing wrong with missing someone. It’s human and it’s normal.

Adopt the three rules above and yes, it will still hurt, but I promise… light will start to appear at the end of a tunnel that you were convinced, didn’t have an ending.

And until you get to the end of that tunnel… I’m right here, flashlight in hand.

Written by: Natasha Adamo