How to stop losing someone is one of those topics that I tried to avoid writing about, just because of the absolute impossibility of it. All I want to do is help people get out of pain, suffering, self-sabotage, and patterns that I know very well. So, how can you reduce to a light switch, the kind of pain and longing that hijacks your joy, your consciousness, your thoughts, and your heart?
How can I heal through my words, a wound that runs so deep, that it allows your deepest fears to burst out of the closet that you thought you had bolted shut?
I didn’t think I could compete with this kind of wildfire until I found myself in the middle of an ever-bigger fire.
I get a request 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, help.”
I’ve been there.
I understand that, I feel your pain and I feel it with you now. Although my current pain is not rooted in romance, it doesn’t matter. Pain is pain. This is not a competition, this is something we all feel. And every ounce of it is valid because it is ours.
Since my grandmother died a few weeks ago, I wake up every morning feeling like I’m drowning. I have good moments, but the pain of losing her seems to have a radar that turns off any kind of inches toward movement. The experience of the death of a loved one is painful, but at least, comfort can be found at its end. Finality is a very painful and difficult truth to accept, but you can count on the knowledge that it will never change, and therefore, organically and at your own pace, accept it.
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I think that dealing with a breakup can be harder than dealing with death.
Death by separation is always subject to Resurrection. That’s weird. You could have completely moved on, a year down the line enjoying yourself over dinner, and suddenly, you get a “Happy birthday!”Text.
And just like that, I’ve been resurrected from a relational graveyard.
When it comes to knowing how to stop losing someone…
What do you do when you are mourning the death of someone who is still living and breathing?
I miss my mom every day. I miss the person she was before cancer. Most people won’t notice much because it doesn’t skip a beat, but I do. I miss her and struggle with how to stop, or at least reduce this longing to what it was and what my heart hopes will one day return. I can never fully trust this hope because there is always this looming fear that the cancer will appear somewhere else, just as it happened after her first surgery last year. I have overcome myself and feel guilty even to express these feelings when her situation is much worse.
That’s the thing with pain though. Not only does it discriminate, but as soon as it permeates guilt, self-sabotage, fear, anger, and a destructive level of missing, it will take on a life of its own as long as you continue to fertilize it.
This made me think about past relationships and the loss of an ex. I remember missing an ex so much, that everyone I confronted did nothing but highlight every detail of his absence. My decisions, immaturity, and dishonesty were a big reason to end the relationship. Because of this, I started beating myself up disproportionately after he dumped me, sinking less and less into “I’ll never overdo it or love him again,” Hell. That’s when it hit the fan.
As I sank less and less into self-blame, I didn’t realize that because I had sunk so low, I would look up and up whenever I thought about it. These inverted pillars, not only raised my feelings of despair but 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 already forgotten, ignored, and worthless, I failed to remember that there are two people in the relationship with their shortcomings and mistakes.
There was nothing I could do except watch (through a fake social media account because I was blocked), how his life was much better without me in it. How could you not miss me and be so happy? How could he forget me and everything we had?
Here’s how to stop losing someone when you’re so sad, you feel like you’ve already died an emotional death.
How to stop losing someone Rule Number 1: know the common denominator.
Losing someone you love is normal, but when it starts to affect your emotional health and livelihood, the common denominator is always: failure to accept by avoiding.
We engage in avoidance because as long as we can avoid acceptance (and continue to argue with reality), we have a valid license not to focus on ourselves and thus prevent healing.
And because we can’t heal, we feel flawed and blame ourselves.
When you spend your whole day focusing on how terrible you are, there is a one hundred percent chance that you will lose the chance of being the only person who has endured everything you have.
Now you have entered into a mindset based more on the illusion of your fears than on the reality that you are avoiding. It is necessary to accept the establishment of a healthy relationship with reality so that you can feel your feelings and heal despite your heartbreak.
How to stop losing someone Rule Number 2: stop running.
Before I did yoga, I ran on a 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 escape for me.
I ran to the point of such exhaustion, that I couldn’t think or breathe. Yoga showed me that the answers are all in maintaining breathing, not losing it.
Mirror yoga held me up that I could no longer run from and proved that I was more of an emotional runner than I had ever been a physical one. That is why I will sometimes cry during the yoga flow. I don’t run anymore-physically or emotionally.
When looking for how to stop losing someone, examine how fast you run. Today, I’m still dealing with pain, longing, missing, and heartbreak. The only difference is that I feel my emotions, regardless of my worth. I no longer run away from my feelings and devalue myself in the process.
I used to be like a dog that buries a bone and runs away. I was burying my trauma that had not been dealt with and literally, I faced the next toxic relationship because I had no idea how to be on my own and feel good about myself without having anyone “good enough” for me.
I convinced myself that if I just found someone who could” make me happy”, then the buried bones would either disappear, or I would magically have the confidence to return and dig them up.
How to stop losing someone Rule Number 3: not this – all that.
I learned the hard way that there were only so many bones I could bury and so many runs I could do before everything caught up with me. I was so busy swinging like a crazy monkey from one drama to the next; one toxic relationship to the next, that I didn’t deal with any of my pain, grief, and issues. I couldn’t. It was very painful and it required the only thing that I was convinced, I was incapable of to do it alone. So, I kept looking for a man to be happily ever after. I needed him to do all the legwork for me by making me 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 I talked about at the beginning of this post (the one I messed up), completely turned me over emotionally. I was so devastated, I couldn’t leave the House. I didn’t even want to take a shower. Our breakup was more painful than anything because it reopened all these unhealed wounds from my past.
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And because I was too driven from dumping to deal with all the discovered bones that I thought were buried my low self-esteem was convinced that this completely non-stick emotional state was more an indicator of the irreplaceability of my ex than it was of my avoidance and lack of self-love.
Be thankful for your pain. When you are in a state of gratitude, nothing can be with you. Are I still sad about the change that has happened in my life? Am I still struggling with figuring out how to stop losing someone? Yeah.
But guess what?
I’ve changed too. I use the pain as fuel instead of allowing it to bend me over. Discomfort is the only emotion you will ever need to make a lasting change.
You have to be uncomfortable enough to want a very bad way out, you are no longer shunned because you are no longer afraid. You are very uncomfortable and over everything until you notice fear; you don’t have time for this. You just act.
Put your pain in Checkmate and watch your life transform.
Now, I’m so grateful for everything that happened because it lights the kind of fire under my ass that nothing else can have. It made me hungry to expand my business and reach my country. For the first time, I didn’t care what my fears said. He gave me courage. Are you still scared? Sure, but the difference now is: that I do it anyway.
Trying to figure out how to stop losing someone is difficult, but not impossible. There is nothing wrong with losing someone. He is human and normal.
Adopt the three rules above and yes, it will still hurt, but I promise you light the light will start to appear at the end of the tunnel that I was convinced of, and it had no end.
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