Where did our friendship go? Dealing with the pain of losing a friend

When you lose a friend, the end of the friendship can feel as devastating as a bereavement. But it's difficult to grieve, exactly, because your friend is not dead. Just no longer your friend. So there's no funeral rites to help you, and no condolences from other people. The foundations of your life have been shaken - but everybody expects you to go on as normal.

Losing a friend can cause deep grief

You may know what it was that brought your friendship to an end. If it was by mutual agreement, you may have expected that you would be able to handle the loss of your friend with equanimity. You may be puzzled to find yourself going through the stages of grief. You may feel inexplicably weepy. Or angry. Or depressed. Because, even if you ended the friendship by agreement, you really have lost something important.

The pain of not knowing why the friendship ended

And it can be even trickier if you are not sure why the friendship has ended. Because then you may be questioning and blaming yourself - was it something I said? Something I did? And there is no answer to these painful questions. Although we like to think that 'there must be a reason', people's motives are not necessarily rationally explicable. Yet somehow you have to find a way to go on with your life without this friend.

Helping yourself come through losing a friend

If the friendship is not repairable (and only you can know whether this is so), there are constructive things you can do to help yourself adjust to the new situation. It helps to acknowledge your own pain - to other friends if you can, but at least to yourself. Allow yourself to grieve over the loss of the friendship. Friendships are important parts of the structures of our lives, and when they go, they deserve recognition.

Practical steps to help with grieving over a friend

You can take charge of the process of your grieving, rather than letting it swamp your life. Set aside some specific, limited times to think about the lost friendship. You can use these times to feel sad, but also to be glad of the good things that friendship brought you. You may like to note what, in particular, that friendship gave you that has lasting value, whether the friend is there or not. Such actions help you to come through grief.

How hypnosis can ease your path through grief and bring comfort

You can make the process of grieving for your friendship easier and kinder to yourself by availing of the help of hypnosis. Losing a friend is an audio hypnosis session which will gently guide you through the process of letting go of the lost friendship and the lost friend, and moving on in confidence and serenity.

Listening to Losing a friend will allow you to enter a state of deep relaxation, and soothe and relieve the emotional strain you have been experiencing. Your mind will become calm and clear, and you will find a deep peace within yourself as you let the hypnotic suggestions for integrating this experience take hold.

Download Losing a friend and begin to heal the pain of loss.