How to Overcome Losing a Friend: 5 Ways to Grow Stronger

5 Ways to Overcome Losing a Friend
The Bottom Line

Losing a friend is a tough experience. I know how that feels: you both laugh, share opinions, form memories together – and then suddenly, they’re gone.

Whether you lost your friend in a heated argument or an accident, the emotional impact is real. The good news is: with the right principles and strategies, you can emerge stronger than before.

Pain doesn’t have to break you. In fact, those who transform pain into fuel for growth obtain inner peace and resilience to future strikes of fate.

In this article, we’ll discuss 5 ways you can overcome losing a friend and use this experience to get more resilient. Let’s begin.

5 Ways to Overcome Losing a Friend

Losing a friend is painful to experience. If you spent a lot of time together and made memories, it’s natural to feel empty and sad when they’re gone. The first thing you should do to overcome losing a friend is let yourself grief.

1: Let Yourself Grief

Source: quotefancy.com

Almost everyone loses a close friend at some point, but not everyone handles it well. Too many times, people try their best to distract themselves from pain by taking substances, going to parties, or overworking.

These approaches may provide short-term relief, but if you refuse to let yourself process the loss, the problem will intensify over time. No matter how much you try to escape, the sense of grief or emptiness will always come back stronger.

At the first stages of losing a friend, it’s necessary to let yourself grief. Grief can feel overwhelming, but it helps you adjust, remember the good times, and slowly transition to the new reality.

Remember what you used to do together, feel grateful for the moments shared, and smile that these moments happened.

Grief is love endearing. If you experience this emotion, it shows that you’re a good person who cares about people in your life. However, life doesn’t stay in one place.

After a few days or a week of grieving, you’ll need to move to a new stage in your life. This will require you to take more care of your wellbeing, both physical and mental.

2: Take Care of Yourself to Overcome Losing a Friend

Many people fall into depression after losing their friends, seeing no point in doing anything. Before you give in to despair, though, you should remember this:

Loss is a natural part of life. Just as we experience happy moments, we also need to go through hardships to strengthen our character and stay happy in difficult circumstances.

After spending some time grieving, instead of letting your loss define you, find a reason to keep moving forward and thrive in life. While you recover and think of where to go next, there are some things you can do to take care of yourself:

Journal about how you feel
Write 5 things you’re grateful for daily
Spend time in parks and nature
Hit the gym
Sleep deeply
Buy yourself your favorite food
Work on a project that matters to you (more details later)

These activities will ease your burden, keep your mental health intact, and help you recover from your loss. You don’t have to overdo them: just a single gym session with a few minutes outside is enough to help your nervous system rest.

For the best results, you should also try to do them consistently, as these habits build mental resilience that will serve you later in life. Additionally, they just generally make you happier and elevate your mood.

Overcoming losing a friend is hard if they used to provide you purpose and direction. As you keep working on your mental health, you should pursue something that matters to you.

3: Pursue Something Meaningful to You

A lot of people struggle to find their purpose, especially when faced with uncertainty and loss. In most cases, though, you cannot just encounter it randomly. You have to cultivate your purpose yourself.

During a journaling session, ask yourself some questions:

What are my strengths and skills?
What problems am I good at solving?
How can I improve the lives of others?
How can I contribute to my community or the world in general?
What can I do daily to make our society slightly better?

You’re probably wondering why you should find such a purpose when coping with the loss of a friend. The reason you should do it is that contributing to people’s well being directly increases your own.

The more you work to help others and genuinely solve their problems, the better you feel about yourself. You become more self-reliant, create happiness from within, and attract amazing people into your life.

Outside of studying or working on your job, dedicate an hour a day to side work. Write useful articles or posts (like me), draw art, volunteer in nursing homes, consult people on their problems. Do whatever that creates impact and that you enjoy.

Over time, you’ll overcome losing your friend, make new connections, and rise back up stronger than before. If it feels overwhelming and thoughts about your friend keep persisting, you can share your thoughts with others to ease the burden.

One of the primary reasons why many men’s mental health is declining is the lack of communication between us. A lot of men bottle up their emotions (without releasing or regulating them properly) and eventually break down because of it.

Of course, there are some men who can bear all challenges alone without much help, and you shouldn’t share your personal struggles with just anyone. But if you trust someone enough and know that they aren’t judgmental, speak to them.

It could be your father, brother, or another friend that you know will listen to and reassure you. Whoever it is, don’t be afraid to tell them about your loss and how it affects you.

This action will help you process the loss, feel understood, and look at your situation from a different perspective. It isn’t a sign of weakness – it’s a sign that you trust that person enough to share your world with him, and that can further deepen your bond.

Ultimately, though, you can’t solely rely on others to regulate your emotions. Eventually, you’ll need to accept that your friend isn’t there anymore and grow into a new state of being.

5: Keep Growing and Moving Forward to Overcome Losing a Friend

Hardships and setbacks happen to everyone. Losing a competition, growing up in a dysfunctional family, losing a friend – all of these are tests that either forge you or break you down.

At the end of the day, it isn’t about what you go through, but about how you bear it. When you accept your situation, put in daily effort, and refuse to break, you outgrow yourself and get immune to challenges.

Just like muscles can be trained to bear heavier weights through consistent training and failure, you can train your own mind to be tougher. There are 2 primary ways you can do this: erasing negative thoughts and pushing through challenges.

Start meditating regularly and keep up other mental health habits. Set new challenges and goals for yourself, and take daily action to achieve them. Accept the struggles and uncertainties of life, and keep living well despite them.

It will be hard at first, but it will get more routine and comfortable over time. At some point, you’ll overcome losing your friend and stay unaffected by what life throws at you. And that’s because nothing can truly break you except your own thoughts and perceptions.

The Bottom Line

Losing friends is hard. But it’s how you respond to this event that truly matters.

Losing a friend is a painful experience. Whether you lost them to an accident or a fight, you have to go through a tough process of grief and recovery.

There are 5 things you can do to overcome losing a friend:

Let yourself grief
Take care of your mental health
Pursue something meaningful
Share your struggles with those you trust
Keep growing and moving forward

It won’t be an easy process, but as you process the loss and put in effort to become better, at the end, you’ll get stronger and happier.

Express gratitude for the moments you had together, take some time to grief, and work every day to make your life better. That’s how you grow and overcome external events.

Lift weights, read, meditate, and be a strong person. Good luck, and have a peaceful day, brother.

If you liked this article and found it useful, make sure to share it with those who need the message. See you soon.